I am a graphic designer and I know html, css and basic JS, and I want to start add a simple shop to sell a limited range of products.

My host offers 'oscommerce', which seems like an option but it seems as if it is hard to customize the layout and I want the shop to match my simple site design.

Can anyone recommend e-commerce courses (in nyc), or any web-tutorials, books etc that they have found helpful? thankyou!

Well most shopping carts are built using a combination of a server-side language like PHP or ASP, a database like MySQL or SQL Server, and then the html/css/js for the front end that a user sees and interacts with.

I understand your hesitation with oscommerce due to the lack of customization. There are plenty of software products that you can use to build a shopping cart or you can learn a new language and build one on your own.

If you want to do it right and get the best shopping cart possible, I would recommend going to your local bookstore and into the computer book section. Look for a book that might be able to help you with an example of building a shopping cart. (I have included one of many books that you can find on the subject).

And if you plan on accepting credit card information, you can also ask the bookstore clerk about online credit card processing (using something like itransact..see link below). Maybe a book on Paypal if you want to go that route instead.

This information in combination with what you find at the bookstore and what you might take at your local college/university will get you moving in the right direction.

Hope it works out for you in the future. Good luck!

If you are a web designer then you can add the STS template contribution (which is what most HTML people prefer) to osCommerce and you can read up on how to skin it using that.