Easy Basket Article

Introduction

Hi, I’m a young, inspiring, web developer in the United Kingdom and I am currently interested in the ecommerce side of web design which lead me to find this great solution for many beginners like myself.

Shopping carts are one of the most frequently used parts on the web. But for a programmer creating them has never been easy. Even for a few items the programmer has to create a database and other support files to create a functioning shopping cart.

This is where I find Easy Basket to be different and next I will tell you why.

How Easy Basket Works

EasyBasket basically works by manipulating XSL forms. When an item is added on the client page, EasyBasket with the help of jQuery serializes the form and sends it to the server. On the server PHP uses the core.xsl file to update and transform the received form and send it back to the client. The complete shopping cart functions – create/update/add/delete (CRUD) is handled by the XLST logic; this is something original I’ve seen related to shopping carts.

Note that in all this flow a database is never used. This allows small websites having a few items to quickly add a shopping cart to their site.

Pros

EasyBasket takes a different approach at creating a shopping cart; although technically complex in its execution, it is extremely simple for the user to install. With EasyBasket you can quickly insert a shopping cart anywhere on your web page with a single line of code. No need of installing a database or a dozen class files. Google Checkout and PayPal Checkout are integrated into the code, all you need to do is change the credentials and your cart is ready to go. Other things I liked about my experience using Easy Basket are, the code-less WordPress Plug-in option and the amount of support you can get directly get from the website, including live remote support. Other small things I like were the drag and drop feature and Skin Tutorials.

Cons

In my short experience using EasyBasket the only con’s I would mention are, the lack of Payment gateways beyond PayPal and Google Checkout. I also noticed a minor problem with the buy now button, but after talking to the developer on there live support I was pleased to find out that this has been addressed and will be fixed in the next release, due before Christmas 2011.

Conclusion

In Conclusion, I would say EasyBasket is one of the best free e-commerce solutions for small business’ available on the Internet, after browsing other shopping carts, all of them offer a lot less unless I am willing to pay high amounts of money, which just isn’t a realistic option for the smaller e-commerce shops on the web.