How to Create An Ecommerce Shop for Under $150usd

April 11, 2011

This was presented at the 3rd meetup in Shenzhen by Nik. Here is in English and chinese:

如何花费不到150美金建立一个电子商务网站

In next few steps you will see we can still do it and compete with the big guys

在接下来的几个步骤，你会看到我们仍然可以做到这一点和竞争的大家伙

step1: Buy a Domain
if you search the internet enough you will see it costs around9-12美金. anything lower than 8美金 is a trick pricing

第一步：买域名
如果你在网络上有做搜索调查的话，你会看到买一个域名的成本a是9美金 -12美金。任何低于8美元的价格都是骗人的噱头。

step2: buying webspace to host the domain
choosing a good webhosting provider
You can see price range is 60$ – 80$
assuming higer side total spend so far $10+80$-90$

第二步：购买网站空间来承载域名
选择一个好的虚拟主机提供商

你可以看到报价范围是60 $ – 80 $
即使采用总费用较高的报价的话，迄今总花费是10美金+80 美金=90美金

reading the fine print( secrets of this trade)

  1. most providers will tell you they give you unlimited space but this is not true. they limit it by restricting the no of files they allow you . it works like this: total space+no of files*size of each file

  2. database size limit. they will give you unlimited database but put a size limit on the maximum data u can put inside the database.

  3. cpu limit
    限制条款（商业机密）
    1）大部分供应商都会告诉你他们给你无限的空间，但事实并非如此。他们通过限制允许放置的文件数量来限制。它是这样的：总空间=文件数量*每个文件的大小

2）数据库大小限制。他们会给你无限的数据库，但会限制放入数据库的最大数据的大小。

3）CPU限制

note the storage size used and the files used
so practically i am left with only 2GB more space

注意存储空间大小和已经使用的空间大小。
所以实际上我只剩下只有2GB的空间

Revision : Now We have got a domain name and also bought some webspace to host our
website

Next ?

Choosing a good ecommerce Software
Lets look at some of the options we have

1)Oscommerce : The grand daddy of ecommerce software : Oscommerce is mentioned here only because it has been around for the longest time .But lot of functions were added later and the code is got a lot messy .Also modifications and not easy to do

2)Magento : Vey attractive looking software but very resource hungry .Needs lot of tuning to work properly and in most cases will require a dedicated server instead of shared hosting

3)Virtuemart : Based on very popular Joomla design .Loads of features .Template based design easy to get templates .lots of free ones too

4)Prestashop: Very new shopping cart but very well designed and has lots of features built in

5)Zen cart : Old shopping ,very robust , almost all modules are developed for this cart already including alipay,chinese version of the software etc which are specific to China .

Among the 3 we will now install one and it will be prestashop because it the latest one and has many features . Please remember for people in china

修订：现在我们有一个域名，还买了一些网络空间来承载我们的网站

下一步呢？

选择一个好的电子商务软件
让我们看看我们的一些选项

）Oscommerce：电子商务软件的鼻祖：osCommerce是这里被提起只是因为它是市场上最早的软件且存在时间最长，但很多功能是后来添加的，代码也乱七八糟的，不容易做修改。

2）Magento的：界面非常有吸引力但是很占用资源，需要作很多调试才可以正常工作，在大多数情况下，需要一个专门的服务器，而不是共享主机

3）Virtuemart :基于非常流行的Joomla模板设计。 个性化的功能设计，基于模板化的设计，免费的模板也很多。

4）Prestashop: 非常新型的购物系统，但设计得非常好，并内置的很多功能。

5）Zen cart : 旧的购物系统，非常强大，几乎所有的模块都已经涵盖，包括支付宝，软件等是专门为中国开发的中文版。

我们现在从后三个种选择一个安装，（Prestashop），因为它是市场上最新的，且功能强大。

Installation
what we need
1)Ftp Software : File zilla ( highly recommended)
What is FTP SOFTWARE?
FTP stands for file transfer protocol and as the name suggests it is used for transferring files to/from the webserver
File zilla is a very good FTP software though there are many others
2)Server login information from hosting provider
a)Ftp login /Password
b)Database server IP
Database name :
Database user name :
Database password:

安装
我们需要什么
1）FTP软件：file zilla(高度推荐）
什么是FTP软件？
FTP代表对文件传输协议，顾名思义是将文件传输到/从网络服务器传输文件时使用
file zilla是一个非常好的FTP软件虽然市场上有很多其他家。
2）服务器托管服务提供商的登录信息
一）ftp登录/密码
二）数据库服务器的IP
数据库名称：
数据库用户名：
数据库密码：

Now we proceed to do live installation

After Installation we will try and use the remaining 60$ to make a beautiful website

现在我们开始做现场直播安装

安装后，我们会尽量利用剩下的60美元，使一个漂亮的网站