osCommerce Popular Contributions
Probably the largest strength of osCommerce is the extreamly large amount of contributed code out there in the form of contributions. It is possible to do just about anything with a combination of osCommerce and a selected set of Professional contributions. Some contributions are very easy to install, and others can be a nightmare, espically if you already have a heavily modified site.
Infobox Skin Manager
This is one of those pieces of code that can make you look like you know what your doing with osCommerce, even if you don't have a clue. This contribution allows you to take a simple image (gif or jpg) that looks the way you want all of your infoboxs to look, and automatically create that look on your site. It is really quite increadible the way it works with the GD library. Every osCommerce novice that doesn't know how to create great designs with HTML should download and install this piece of code.
Interact E-mail Money Transfer
This is a module to allow you to accept Interact E-mail Money Transfer payments. An Interact Email Money Transfer is a bank-based, Person-to-Person transfer of funds that uses email for fast notification, while financial institutions transfer the funds using established and secure inter-bank settlement systems
Credit Class & Gift Voucher
This is one of those highly ranked contributions that one day I will fold into our default install, but until there is a large client need, I don't really want to spend the days merging files and testing to make it work. This contribution allows you to create gift cards and credit discounts and rebates and all that fun stuff. The only problem, unless you are coming from a clean osCommerce install, adding this contribution is just a nightmare because it touches so many different files. If you are going to use this contribution, I recommend that you add it first before you install any other contributions.
Google Analytics for osCommerce RC2a v 1.0
This Contribution Allows you to implement the Google Analytics Tracking Code on your osCommerce Shopping Cart
If you have enabled the eCommerce Tracking, you can track every sale from your eCommerce Website. I recommend you to add Sales Funneling. This can give you more accurate results.
There is no additional Code necessary for eCommerce tracking.
UltraPics + WYSIWYG
I could live without the WYSIWYG editor, but I know HTML, the UltraPics image pack on the other hand is a contribution that you can't live without. By default, osCommerce doesn't allow you to upload two different images for thumb nails and the full size image. Instead i just allows you to upload one image, and then it scales that image with the client site browser.
There are a million things that are wrong with this approach. First, and the most obvious is that the thumbs, due to the fact that their scaled by the browser, look like "BLEEP". They just look awful, and any good site would not allow this. The other large problem with this is you have to download the entire large image just to see the thumbnail. That is also a really dumb idea.
UltraPics fixes this problem by letting you specify a different image for the product listing thumb, the produt display thumb, and then finally the actual large image. On top of that it also allows you to specify 6 additional images for each product, yet another short comming of default osCommerce.
Individual Product Shipping Prices - v1.0
This shipping module will allow you to set an individual shipping price for each product. This module is kind of like the 'Shipping rate per product', or 'prodrate' shipping module designed by Joe Janos, except this module does not use the 'weight' field. Instead, this module adds a new field to your products table to hold the individual shipping price data. This means that you can use this module with any other module if you like. Integration with the contribution 'multi-vendor shipping' is also explained.
All Customers Report
This contribution simply generates a list of all customers and their mailing addresses, alphabetized by last name (surname). Depending on several things, it may take several seconds to generate. The resulting data can be easily copied/pasted into spreadsheets for mailing list labels, importing into other customer management software, etc.
osCommerce Search Engine Friendly URLs
Have you ever wondered how to optimize your osCommerce website links for the search engines? If yes, this component will greatly suit your needs. It will change your URLs from:
http://www.yoursite.com/product_info.php?cPath=1_4&products_id=1
to:
http://www.yoursite.com/Hardware/Graphics-Cards/Matrox-G200-MMS/
This component has proved to largely increase the website page rank.
Optimize stock tracking with osCommerce
It's vital that every online store maintains adequate stock levels to meet demand. The Low Stock Report contribution helps to centralize and simplify this process by displaying a dynamic, interactive list of all products and their current stock levels.
The report's color coding feature allows to you to see at a glance which products are below the stock reorder level, giving you all the warning you need to reorder on time.
Improve search engine results for your osCommerce store: Google Sitemaps
Google's new Google Sitemaps service lets you submit information about the pages in your website directly to Google, ensuring Google knows about the content in your website. As well as being able to submit site data, you also have access to your site's search statistics.
We recommend Google Sitemaps for anyone wanting to improve their site's search engine results.
For osCommerce store owners, the Google XML Sitemap Feed contribution lets you feed information about your store's products and categories to the Google Sitemap system. It is very easy to install.
QBI - QuickBooks Import
This has to be the most activily supported piece of free contributed code that I have ever seen for any project. The author, Adam Liberman, answers questions posted on the forum usually less than 24 hours after they are posted, and he certainly knows what he is talking about when it comes to QuickBooks and osCommerce integration. There is a commercial osC to QB solution out there, but I have a very hard time believing that it could be as supported or as good as QBI. If your going to use QuickBooks as the back end to your store, this is a must have.
Tracking Your Store's Performance: Sales Report contribution
It's important for merchants to stay up to date with the overall performance of their business. The Sales Report contribution helps by automatically calculating hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly sales data for your store.
We think this is a worthy addition to your cart. The report shows:- Total number of orders
- Average order amount
- Total sales
- % variance from previous hours/days/weeks/months
Country State Selector
This is a contribution that should be part of default osCommerce, and I don't know why they haven't taken the time to just fold it into the mile stone 2 release. I guess once you set a mile store release, you don't add any more code without making a new release number, but still, you need this contribution. When you first install osCommerce, when a user goes to check out, they have to set their country, causing a page refresh to populate the states. The Country State Selector takes care of this issue.