Drawar

Depends on a lot.

• What language are you coding in (PHP / ASP.net /etc)?
• How are you looking to manage the store and what controls are you looking for?
• How many products are you adding and what attributes?
• Is the client going to be maintaining this / are you / or will there be no need for maintenance?
• Are you technically savvy or just looking for the easiest to implement?
• Is the whole site being built around the store / or is the store being built around the site?

Take a look at Magento.

It's relatively new and all sorts of shiny.

Well this time around its just a small scale thing with about 60 items but I was thinking of something scaleable in PHP.

Funnily enough I was looking at Magento earlier and it looks very interesting. Though maybe more suited to large stores perhaps?

I've had some experience with osCommerce and have found it to be decent software, though at times it can be a little bit difficult to configure. Zen Cart is pretty decent also, but osCommerce was my preference when choosing between the two.

Another perspective -- buy a license for SunShop or Interspire's cart and charge it to your client.

I've experimented with nearly every open-source commerce package of the last few years and I cannot recommend any of them in good faith. Bloated invalid code, confusing templating, table-based layouts, inability to customize easily, bad commenting, bad CSS... Avoid OSCommerce, X-Cart and ZenCart like the plague. CubeCart is passable, but very limited. Magneto comes closest, but SunShop (proprietary) is still preferable.

If money is the issue, remind the client that the relatively low price of either of those solutions is worth it for the documentation and support. Anyone investing in an online store should be willing to go the extra mile to get it looking and functioning correctly.

(Note: I use open-source solutions for nearly all projects -- just not e-commerce)

I just installed Magento on a local server. WOAH!!!! Thats is an impressive piece of work it has to be said, we've been using digiSHOP since we have a reseller license, so we're gonna try and implement Magneto on the new shopping cart we can do. Unfortunately the examples are few and far between at the moment :( let's step on it guys!!

Check out Zen Cart (PHP, MySQL) I like it... It's not the plague. :) I can see why, especially on old versions, one would think it is... Use it all time. It's as easy to set up as wordpress and almost as easy to customize.

I am going to check out Magento though, it's Video Tour looked promising. I think I'll give Sun Shop a spin also, but for cheap and easy Zen Cart works great. Well that's my two cents.

Here's a cart I took live last week, the client is still adding inventory...

www.mwop.org

There's a Wordpress theme out there that lets you create a basic marketplace... I believe it's called market. Not sure of the link...