Shopping Carts
The CPanel developers have included two Shopping Cart options. The Shopping Carts may not be available on all plans. Shopping Carts allow you to sell items or conduct business over the Internet. The two shopping carts available on CPanel are listed below:
NOTE:
It is strongly encouraged that if you are selling any items on your site that you utilize the Secure Socket Layer (SSL). This helps to encrypt any data and gives your customers piece of mind. SSL does not insure 100% security, as you still must store any information you have about your customers in a safe location. Leaving this information on the server is probably not a wise solution. While we try to insure that our servers are the safest they can be, there are always new exploits that become available. Because the server is out in the open it is at a greater risk of being attacked. We STRONGLY advise that you keep any records in a secure location on your local computer or in your office and not to use the server as a storage place for any confidential records. We cannot be held accountable for any lost or stolen information on the server. Most of our servers have a server-wide secure certificate that can be used to access your cart and forms over SSL. If you need to know what the path to your site is, using the sever-wide secure certificate, please contact us. Alternatively, you can contact our technical support department to inquire about getting your own secure certificate, so that you can access your site securely at https://yourdomain.com.
Interchange
The Interchange shopping cart is a very nice looking shopping cart. It has many features and makes for a very easy to use site. However the one downside to the Interchange cart is that it is not very easy to set up. We only recommend this cart to those users who have previous experience with it. Secondly, the Interchange shopping cart initiative was started by Redhat and was intended for those sites that focused soley on selling items. Because of this, it is intended for a more dedicated server enviroment and has a tendancy to eat a lot of resources, continually bringing the server down. While we still offer this shopping cart to our users, we strongly recommend that users seek another option, especially if you are not familiar with the Interchange cart. Because of the shear scope of all the options available on Interchange and its tendancy to hog server resources, we do not actively provide support for it. If you have any questions or comments about Interchange we recommend that you contact the development team at ICDevgroup.org
Agora Shopping Cart
The Agora Shopping Cart is a simplier cart than Interchange, but it is still very powerful. However, once again, since we focus mainly on the Hosting needs of our customers, we find it best that if you have any questions or comments concerning the Agora shopping cart, that you direct those questions to their support staff, by visiting their website.
Other Shopping Carts
There are several other shopping cart programs out there. If you are serious about starting a business and selling products over the Internet, it may be in your best interest to consider contracting a programmer to develop a custom shopping cart program designed specifically for your needs. However you may want to look at some other options that are available.
NOTE: We cannot provide support for any custom cart or any of the shopping carts listed below. If you have questions or comments about any shopping cart, it is probably best if you contact their respective technical support department. Because each programed is developed differently, the developer of the program will better understand the code of their work.
- OSCommerce -- This is quickly becoming a very popular Shopping Cart with a a large user following. This cart is still in its development phase, but they do release builds that are fully functioning. If you are a programmer or have experience with PHP and MySQL, you might want to have a look at this cart. Because it has such a large following group, support seems to be readily available.
- Mal's E-Commerce -- This is a shopping cart script that we have heard many success stories with. This cart is run independent of our servers. There is no installation, all you need to do is set up your catalog with the products you want to sell. You can provide a link off of your main site to your shopping cart there. Because there is no installation required, the set up quite a bit less difficult than any other shopping cart.