Need some suggestions and help since this isn’t my area of expertise. My stepdad requested a site that he can manage for selling snow plow equipment. He wants to get off of eBay since they eat a large portion of his profits. He doesn’t have much technical know-how and I don’t want to spend all day managing it for him, so it needs to be accessible for a non-technical person to manage and make changes when they need to without any help from me.
General Requirements:
Ability for him to list inventory and make changes on a daily basis
Not hard to pick up and manage for a non-technical person
Is free or near-free (I’ll be hosting it for him for no charge, so I don’t want to pay a monthly subscription for anything if I don’t need to)
Can take CC payments (PayPal, maybe? or other suggestions) or mark for pay-in-person (cash/check)
I’m guessing that a wordpress template/theme might be best for this, but I’ve never used wordpress in my life so I’m not sure what to go for or what to avoid. Any help is much appreciated, my friends. I hope to have this up and running by the end of the weekend, if possible
When I first read your post I immediately thought about WooCommerce, I know a few non-tech gals administering a 200~300€/mo fashion-related e-commerce here without too many issues (actually it’s more of a showcase, but they sell their products online as well)
They use a plugin from axerve (local bank) in order to get any kind of payment into WooCommerce, but I have no doubt you’ll find plenty for your area
If you’ll be hosting it for him you’ll do all the heavy-lifting already
@404error I agree with you and haven’t used WooCommerce to the extent that I can deny the need of addons. But upselling always happens. The basic features of adding and selling a product should be free though. Just like an unlimited number of products because I wouldn’t reckon an open source solution would put a limit here. When it comes to Joomla vs. WordPress I’d choose WP any day. That’s probably biased though, because that’s basically all I use these days.
@Mason Why not make it an easy to understand flowchart then?
Install WordPress
Install Divi Theme (I will PM you).
Choose one of 140 layout packs and import it with a few clicks. . Picky? Choose one of 445 Free Divi Layouts that were created before they were implemented directly in Divi (takes a bit more clicks to import; how-to is usually in the description of your chosen layout).
Install WooCommerce Plugin on WordPress.
Learn about Divi’s 16 WooCommerce Modules and you’ll probably have something to make up for the missing “paid extensions” of WooCommerce:
Further enhance your shop with Divi’s Shop Module which is made to be WooCommerce compatible and allows for even more customizations.
If you are interested PM me and I’ll get you started with Divi and a lifetime API key
I was going to suggest Etsy, as it was kind of a not-as-ghetto eBay, but I guess it’s gone the way over Overstock now.
Of all of the above options, my suggestion is that WordPress is one of the easiest to deal with. Joomla and anything Drupal based can become a personal hell quite quickly when people want to mess with stuff.
+1 to @Ympker’s idea to use Divi. I recently started trying it and it’s been fantastic – super easy to use and honestly saves me a lot of time.
I used to be pretty afraid/averse to WordPress because I found it impossible to use but since I started using Divi I actually find WP pretty easy to use.
If you want to look at what I’ve been working on - check out https://wp.unixfy.me which I made from scratch in about an hour with Divi. Overall, highly recommended.
@Mason I am just thinking of laying a few pointers that may help things go smoother down the line and to lay down the “ground works”.
In the world of hosting, you kinda never wanna give out free services (even to your family, close friends, etc) since once you got the “cat out of the bag” it kinda hard to put the cat back into the bag.
Case in point, set realistic terms beforehand so he doesn’t expects you months or years later to buy him tens or hundreds in resources and/or say for a cluster every month.
You will thank me later when he get his own premises, warehouse(s) and/or etc. Instead of selling a used snowblower here and there.
As for recommendations, why not just pay forward somewhere like WPCycle and call it a day? That $20-$30/month for a “kitchen sink” Wordpress provider will likely save you hours every month of having to do stuffs even if you tries really not to by “preparing” him for it. Or worst yet having to work with him at 3AM in the morning because he deleted or forgot to save his site…
It depands how chose to your “family”. My cousin and uncle both own a company and I do everything I can to help my uncle.
He used to help when my family was in financial difficulties. I regard him as my father. As for my cousin… I said that I don’t have time to handle.
Haven’t chosen anything yet, but honestly yeah, I’m leaning towards weebly. Seems to be the option that’ll let him be self-sufficient and without needing my help constantly. Going to check out their free tier today/tomorrow and have my stepdad sign up for the pro plan. Probably will just sit down with him an hour or two this week to help him get acclimated.
While wordpress is the easiest of the self managed cms, nothing is going to beat the simplicity of shopify, weebly, etc. Never worry about upgrading plugins, security beyond your password, or hosting.
Just pickup a domain name from porkbun, sync into your choice and can be selling within the hour. Compared to ebay you’ll only be paying the monthly fee plus CC fees. Family is great, being their web dev not so much
but since I started using Divi I actually find WP pretty easy to use.