# Rails Solutions for E-commerce / Oscommerce / who to hire?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-solutions-for-e-commerce-oscommerce-who-to-hire/125392>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [January 8, 2008, 8:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-solutions-for-e-commerce-oscommerce-who-to-hire/125392 "2008-01-08T20:17:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Phil\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/c89c15/32.png) [@Phil\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Phil_B)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2008, 8:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-solutions-for-e-commerce-oscommerce-who-to-hire/125392/1 "2008-01-08T20:17:11Z")

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Hi Rails folks.

I have a client who has been running oscommerce for many years. And  
I, back in that day, helped him deploy it. I have deployed over 40  
oscommerce installations and done 1000+ hours of customizing for  
various folks. Not that I am an expert, but at least you know I’ve  
suffered.

His store really hums now. But he hates the bloat of oscommerce, and  
the mingling of controller logic with presentation. Anybody who has  
messed with oscommerce knows what I’m talking about. And there are  
still bugs deep in the oscommerce code that surface sometimes.

This client is a computer science guy, but he has a head for  
business. He has to run the shop and doesn’t have time to develop  
code.

The other day I showed him rails. We spent a few days and he loved  
it.

His question now is: What solutions are out there for his store in  
rails-land? I’ve poked around substruct and it is nice, but it has no  
paypal support, which is a must. Shopify is grand, but they shield  
you from the database and code, and we want to be able to tweak.

Any recommendations? First of all, he is willing to hire someone to  
do it from scratch if that is the best option. Is that the best  
option?

* * *

One thing he dreams of is to have one database that keeps track of  
product inventories and descriptions, and be able to deploy multiple  
stores that sell items from that one database. Has anyone done  
anything like this?

Has anyone ever built a rails shopping cart / store that could  
coexist with oscommerce, i.e, use the same database?

Your thoughts and wisdom are greatly appreciated. Eventually I will  
need to hire someone, and if anyone has any ideas about the best way  
to go about that, I would be grateful.

Phil

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Phil\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/c89c15/32.png) [@Phil\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Phil_B)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2008, 8:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-solutions-for-e-commerce-oscommerce-who-to-hire/125392/2 "2008-01-08T20:51:50Z")

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hi,

our company 80beans has just released [https://shop.ethnicchic.nl/](https://shop.ethnicchic.nl/)  
at the moment i’m implementing paypal (via: triple deal payment  
services), which was not that difficult, since tdps has an easy to use  
interface (i didn’t use paypal directly, but would assume, that they  
have something on the line, too, after all, you send them a few numbers  
by https and get an ok or errors)  
but it’s not using oscommerce in any form, just a simple shopping cart  
thing

another thing i’ve seen was “active merchant”, a plugin that may help  
you  
[http://www.activemerchant.org/](http://www.activemerchant.org/)