Maybe you've realized that the e-commerce system you're using just doesn't do things the way you want them done. Or you want to add a particular feature to your site because you know it will improve sales. Or maybe you simply want to change the look of your site beyond your existing system's capabilities. If any of these apply to you, it might be time to look into osCommerce, the open source e-commerce system.

osCommerce software is available free under the terms of the GPL (Gnu Public License). Similarly to Linux, there is a large community of avid supporters actively involved in using the system and in making it better. You can benefit from this grassroots activity because other users' modifications and add-ons to the software are made available on the osCommerce Web site.

Bottom line: You get an expandable and always-improving e-commerce application for free.

Free and Clear
Not only is it free, but the typical setup of the osCommerce software is simple -- if you have a server. You download the application, unzip the files and run a script that installs the application on your server. After making some configuration changes, you have a full-featured e-commerce system ready for use. osCommerce will run on any server operating system that supports PHP, Apache, and MySQL. That list includes Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows environments, so it's likely your server will be able to host the application.

If you've been running your store on Yahoo!, eBay, or another hosted site, this will be a significant change for you, since you'll be leaving a fully managed service and will be responsible for managing both your server and your store software.

But should managing your own server sound like more than you want to handle, you can contact a hosting providers who specializes in osCommerce. There are several to choose from, including chainreactionWeb.com and snappyserver.com. These companies charge monthly fees for their hosting packages like any other hosting company, but they include osCommerce at no charge with some or all of their offerings. This kind of arrangement lets you concentrate on your store rather than maintaining the software.

Community Contributions and Customization
Most users say that customization is one of the most valuable aspects of osCommerce. And a large part of customizing your software is thanks to the efforts of the open source community.

Indeed, a significant advantage to open source software is the effort put in by a community of users and developers to making modifications -- also called "contributions" -- to the basic product. And as part of the open source licensing agreement, when a user makes an add-on or improvement in the osCommerce code, they make the module available to the public at no charge.

Consequently, there are nearly 2,000 different contributions listed on the osCommerce site. They add or improve shipping, design themes, reports, and other functions. Hosting companies that offer pre-configured osCommerce systems typically include several of the most popular contributions pre-installed, but you can add any others you find useful.

The add-on contributions represent one form of customization, but there are a number of changes you can make to the system without adding modules or doing hard-core programming.

osCommerce is written in PHP, a fairly simple programming language used extensively in the open systems community. And while it isn't mandatory to fully understand the language to use osCommerce, many users say that they have easily learned enough of PHP to make changes on their own.

"The basic setup of osCommerce is very easy for a systems administrator," said Steve Howland, who operates three Web stores using osCommerce and installed the system himself. "This means that initial setup must be done by someone with at least basic Web experience and who understands what PHP and MySQL mean. Once the setup is done, however, the store can be easily managed by a novice person with no HTML experience."

You can get an idea of the extent of customization possible by viewing some stores using osCommerce through links on osCommerce's Web site. Looking through some examples, it's clear there is a wide variety of ways to set up a store using the basic system.

Continued on Page Two: Inexpensive alternatives.