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General Discussion

Posted by Tom Lawrence
Tom Lawrence
8,685 Points

Shopping Carts and CMS

Hi,

Been doing the HTML/CSS courses and doing fine with those, but if I was ever going to get work, the businesses would want a website to do more than what HTML and CSS can do, a shop or the ability to let them update pages and so on for example.

How would you go about a shopping cart? Magento maybe?

Any decent free content management systems I could use to let them update certain pages, texts and images?

Thanks

3 Answers

Luis Galvan
Luis Galvan
5,247 Points
Luis Galvan
Luis Galvan
5,247 Points

HTML and CSS are used primarily for the structural and visual presentation of your website. They are useful for front-end development, which every website needs if you plan on establishing a brand.

I recommend diving into backend development if you want to discover how to make dynamic websites as you described. Treehouse has plenty on this subject if you visit their Ruby on Rails and PHP videos, and it's not too hard to learn.

Here are a few good ones for beginners:

You will need to at least be well-versed in PHP before trying to tackle Magento or other similar shopping cart software as most seem to be written in PHP. It will prove useful when trying to understand their documentation.

As for good CMS', Wordpress is one of the most popular. Treehouse also has plenty on that topic.

Tom Lawrence
Tom Lawrence
8,685 Points
Tom Lawrence
Tom Lawrence
8,685 Points

Wordpress might be a good idea, I have been looking up local website companies I live near and a few offer websites built on wordpress even offering shopping cards on then so I think it might suit both, I guess no point reinventing the wheel and I would rather stick to front end design for sometime as I want to really nail it before I even think of getting into backend stuff.

Does that sounds like a good plan? wordpress ok as a store?

Luis Galvan
Luis Galvan
5,247 Points
Luis Galvan
Luis Galvan
5,247 Points

It really depends on what your goals are. This is really a case where maybe the right tool should take into account how complex your project will be. Wordpress with shopping cart plugins sounds about right for a basic store, and definitely not unheard of.

I still suggest a bit of backend knowledge if you will be tackling this alone. Wordpress is very easy to develop themes for, but there is still a little code grease to fight every now and then.

Otherwise, definitely research what your needs are and what tools can provide you with the right solution. Good luck!

Tom Lawrence
Tom Lawrence
8,685 Points
Tom Lawrence
Tom Lawrence
8,685 Points

Seems with wordpress I would need to get into PHP also, my goal would be to offer more than a static website to businesses, so I would like to in the not so distant future be at least able to offer an eCommerce website, and to offer to small to medium sized businesses.