Hello everyone, I've been lurking around here for a little bit, trying to get a feel for Django. I recently had the need to set up an eCommerce site for my wife. After looking at all the alternatives, I chose OsCommerce which seems to be the dominate Open Source ecommerce application. It is pretty mature & has thousands of users. For the most part, it does what it says it does. However, after I've spent the last couple of months trying to get it working the way I like, the PHP warts & overall design are getting to me. My site is now functional but I'm really scared to make any changes for fear of the whole house of cards coming down on me.
I'm no PHP expert and won't go through the cons of the language but let's just say that the more I worked with PHP, the more I wished I were working with Python! So, I started looking at frameworks to setup my site using a python based solution. After looking around, Django looks like a good bet. There are certain problems with OsCommerce which are going to be non-issues with a Django site: - Templating: In OsCommerce there are some options but they're kludgy and can interfere with other pieces of code or add-on modules. Obviously templating is a core part of Django. - Search Engine Optimize URLs: Before diving into this project, I didn't realize how many people worked so hard to get URLs looking nice so that they show up higher in search engine results. As you can imagine, trying to modify these through PHP can be painful. Django's URL capabilities should make this another non-issue. - Performance and Caching: Scalability and general performance are huge issues. In stock OsCommerce, you can have nearly 100 db queries for 1 simple page. Without caching, you have some real performance headaches. The caching capability & proven scalability lead me to believe that Django will make these issues less of a concern going forward. There are some concerns I have around Django for this application: - Lack of ecommerce modules: There are lots of things like FedEx, USPS or UPS shipping interfaces that are available that would have to be re-coded. Also, payment processing modules would have to be created from scratch. I don't think these are show stoppers but it is a challenge. - Admin interface: I'm a little concerned about whether or not the default admin capabilities within Django will be usable for store management. I might have to come up with some other alternatives & it feels like that's uncharted territory in some aspects. - Deployment on shared hosts: This probably isn't too big a deal but it's certainly not as straightforward or ubiquitous as PHP app deployment. So, what is the point of my lengthy post? I know some people have started (or have completed) work on their own stores. Is there any framework out there that I can leverage or do I have to "roll my own?" I think it would be a great thing for this community to create a store framework. The Django plusses I mentioned would be awesome in a complete solution. I think it would also attract a lot of users to the project. Is there interest or any activity in this area? I'm willing to hack through by myself but I think if there's anyone that is an expert, we could move through this a lot more quickly. Thanks, Chris --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
