The very first e-commerce site I built was using an open source perl shopping cart when I took the job.  I quickly dumped it because it was horrible and feature-limited.  At the recommendation of someone who had been in the business a while, we setup Miva Merchant and redesigned the site.

After two years of Miva, they decided to go to a compiled version of their software which would have helped our performance issues, but would have limited our ability to customize the site.  We held off on upgrading until the performance of Miva could not handle the exponentially growth of the website.  On one of the busiest nights of the year (after a big event for the website) the entire server grinded to a halt and would now allow anyone to checkout.

It was at that point that I discovered OSCommerce.  I had it up and running and a design around it in a couple of hours and by morning I had the entire site swapped over.  I have been using OSCommerce/CRE Loaded ever since.  I have done many dozen e-commerce websites, all using a variant of OSCommerce.

Over the last couple of years, I have had my eye on Magento Commerce. It looks fantastic and the development has been steady over the last couple of years.  I have a new project in redesigning WalkingCanes.com, and I think I am finally ready to give it a chance.  This client is already running a different OSCommerce site, so we’ll see if they like it.  If not, I may have to double my work for the same money, but it’s a chance I’m willing to take to see if this system might be right for some of my upcoming e-commerce sites.