Need a good book to help you with OSCommerce?
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.
This is some text prior to the author information. You can change this text from the admin section of WP-Gravatar 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
Hi Lindsay, I have the Pro version of David’s book, Monica’s book, and also the Design book from Clubosc. I am in the process of reading them now and you are correct in that they are very helpful resources. The hardest part for me so far is learning php. Do you have any reading suggestions? I found some video tutorials online but most are either over my head or REALLY boring. I don’t want to be Zend certified, but would like to learn the basics to get myself out of trouble. Thanks!
Honestly, you will learn more about php coding when working with it than reading a book.. This is why I suggested these oscommerce books. When you start getting into doing some of the changes that these books suggest, you will start to understand the workings of php. From working with oscommerce, I can now write and understand MANY php based scripts including wordpress, zen cart, magneto, etc. But i have never formally studied php.
My suggestion to you is to go one step at a time. When you feel like you have a good handle on what oscommerce is doing, and how to adjust it, then start working on learning php as a whole. This way, when you pick up a book on php and it’s talking about if statements and echos, you will remember having already used that in osc.
HOWEVER, i am a big fan of the FOR DUMMIES books. I have used them when learning dreamweaver, html, and css as well as now learning javascript. You can get a copy of the book here:
PHP FOR DUMMIES
I hope this helps! Just one step at a time.. right?
Yes, that helps a lot, thanks. I don’t plan on learning this overnight, but with V3 being developed and new forks coming soon, I don’t want to get too far behind. My goal is to hopefully have a good working knowledge of php within the next few years… along with a billion other projects!
you have a similar goal to what I had.. I am in my second year working with oscommerce, and although i would not consider myself a php “developer” i feel that I am fairly good working with oscommerce and ok with php.. Like i said, understanding oscommerce has helped me to learn other things like Zen cart and wordpress more quickly.
just dont get frustrated and give up.. theres LOTS of times where I felt that way.. LOTS.. but its all about chugging along. LUCKILY the osc support forums are a great place to get LOADS of infomation and answers quickly, so long as you ask teh right questions
Yea, I definitely don’t want to be a help vampire.
haha.. We totally need more people like you over at the forums. SERIOUSLY.. I wish more people would realize that it does take SKILL to design websites.. its not like any joe shmo can plug and play a completely custom cart
I’ve found that some of the dummies books are very limited (especially access) they tend not to answer the question you desperately want the answer to. I always tend to buy the books that are slightly beyond my skills and grow into them – but 90% of the time I use them for reference
I was able to pick up a copy of “PHP & MySQL for Dummies – Updated for PHP 5″ from a friend of mine (FREE!) so I’ll take your advise and start there. It was published in 2004 so I’m sure it’s a little outdated (which is why he gave it to me) but the basics should be the same and hopefully it will put me on the right path to understanding the code.