I have officially been working with oscommerce for 2 years now, and I started by learning the good old fashioned way – that is MAKING MISTAKES!! Thank god that I have the good frame of mind to backup my work before i even START thinking about making changes to my site.. But here’s the thing, there are a few tips that can make doing things in oscommerce a tad bit easier.

First is ALWAYS MAKE A BACKUP because you WILL mess up, and you WILL cry long hours if you don’t
Second, USE A MERGE PROGRAM! Its so obvious, but yet people still forget that they exist. When you install contributions, dont go through the code piece by piece, just open the contribution file and your file side by side and merge them. You can use WinMerge(for PC) or DiffMerge(for mac) BOTH are free, and both will save you a LOT of time.

and FINALLY. GOOGLE YOUR ISSUES!! There is nothing more annoying than going to a user forum and seeing the same issue posted over and over again. And the thing is, these people THINK they will get instant gratification because they THINK people will just come by and give them an answer. Well, that’s rarely true. If you simply go head over to google and type in the following into the search form:
site:forums.oscommerce.com then paste your error here
You will get ALL of the threads on that site that reference your particular error.

Now there is one bit of info that I have to give you that might be common sense to one person, but not to the others.. When you copy your error, DONT include your file path. No one else in the world is going to have the same file path as you. So JUST include the error. PLEASE.

We all know that the user forums are VERY helpful, but we all have to remember that oscommerce is FREE and that the support given is literally people giving their own FREE TIME to answer your questions. No one is ENTITLED to any support, and no one has to give YOU customer support, but we do. We all have a passion for what we do, and I personally am a strong believer in that you should put back what you take away. So if you are getting answers to all of your questions in the forum, then you should also answer other people’s questions. Who cares HOW newbie you are, you will still have someone else in there that has a question that you already answered. So when you get a problem solved, head over to the installation or general forum and see what newbie YOU can help!

So that’s it for now. It know its been a while since I updated, but i promise, i will be back more often. I will try to update at minumum once a week. In the meantime, if you have questions about oscommerce, please post them here or CONTACT ME I will be happy to answer them.

Well, its not a tutorial on how to design your website, although i will be giving some quick How-To’s as I figure things out.

I have been hack-fully (yep its MY word) building a php based shopping cart website using oscommerce for about a year now. I have never, in my life, taken any class or even had a tutor, so yes – I AM A HACK.

The code breakers club is what we over at the oscommerce forums have been calling ourselves.

So anyways, here it is.. The code breaker’s club blog full of fun information.
And just to start, i wanted to share with you a nice little tidbit of information i have. And that would be the best host that I have found for people like me, who are website design clueless.

AND THAT WOULD BE HOSTMONSTER!! *check them out through this link!*

These people are awesome for a number of reasons. The best reason is that they have actual english speaking people right here in the USA (Ohio i believe) that are actually read live computer geeks.

When i FIRST started, i had no idea how to get my website from my computer to the internet. I created this cheesey little thing on iWeb and had NO CLUE what to do. I called Hostmonster and spent about an hour and a half on the phone with the guy, who didn’t just laugh at me for being an idiot, but actually explained web design 101 to me, and even TAUGHT ME HOW TO USE DREAMWEAVER.. way above and beyond the call of duty.
So anyways, if you are new at this, and would liek a real host with real feautures and real help, try them. They’re cheap too (but not too cheap, if it sounds too good to be true, they are – Globat is a good example)

So there it is, my very first post on my very first ever BLOG! woo hoo.. can i get a pat on the back please?