Web Design For Idiots

Forget about searching through all of those thousands of addons over at addons.oscommerce.com. Just get this book. When I first started designing my first e-commerce store, I went to Borders and sat on the floor in the web developement section, and read through books upon books about php coding, basic mysql, and even Dreamweaver books. Then I realized that all I needed at the moment was to learn OSCommerce. Yes, if you really want to learn how to completely customize Oscommerce, you should learn php and mysql. But for people who just want to adjust their websites to make them look the way they want, and function the way they want.. then, just learn oscommerce inside and out.

While sitting there, and browsing Border’s online books, I found these two books and ordered them right away.

The first is by Monika Mathe. Its a great book written as a recipe book, and its about as easy to follow as a recipe. It gives you step by step instructions on how it impliment the most nessecary changes to you Oscommerce shop. So instead of going in and out of the addons.oscommerce.com web page, and hoping that you chose the right version without any bugs, refer to this book first.

The second book that I purchased was by David Mercer called OSCommerce: Beginners Edition. This is a great book to start out with. It will teach how things work, and why. Its the best option for those who look at their website, and go “WHAT IN THE HELL??” I’m sure thats most of you reading

This book will walk you through installation and basic customization.. But if you need more. If you want something a little bit more indepth, there is a second book called Oscommerce:Professional Edition

The professional edition with just go deeper into customizations and the inner workings. I ended up skipping the “beginners guide” because I had already spent weeks playing with oscommerce. I wish that I had found these books sooner, simply because those weeks could have simply been days. But you live and learn, and this is what I am showing you!

I hope that these help you all out. I know that most people who end up here want to just get an e-commerce store up and running, and want to do it now. Unfortunately, there is a reason why web developers charge a pretty penny for designing websites. Its because it takes a lot of skill and knowledge, and that does not come cheap. If you can give yourself 3 months to get your website up and running, you can have a really nice looking site that works.. Just use as many resources as you can, and start with these books. I promise you that you will get your money’s worth out of them.

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Want to know who is offering this awesome content? Here it is! Someone who is relatively new to web design. I am new enough to still remember how absolutely frustrating it was to try and get anything done in this field, but have also been around long enough to be able to help those that are where I was a year ago. Aside from web design, I run the office of my dad's engineering business, and do book keeping by trade. I love my pets.. All 6 cats, 1 peg legged dogs, and 1 hedgehog. LOVE THEM!! Oh yea, and my husband. He lets me chase my dreams and I let him do the same. We are happy people because of it. Read more from this author

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 4th, 2009 at 10:45 am and is filed under Design and Looks, OsCommerce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.