How to create an online catalog?

[drdna20]

Hello,

Firstly, I want everyone to know that I have no web site development experience at all. I was tasked with designing an online store for our retail business this past January. I outsourced the development to a company that I found on e-lance in India. The project went smoothly until it became time to bring our catalog online.

I have been STUCK trying to figure out how to do this. At first I uploaded photos of most of the products that we carry but didn't input the information for the price, weight, or product description. I figured that I could do this second. But it now seems that I should have created a database to import into the site with the price, weight, and product descriptions and THEN upload the photos for the products.

I would greatly appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction and give me some information as to how a product catalog is usually constructed.

Thanks,
Chris

[DanInManchester]

A database is usually the best way to go if you have more than a handful of products.

www.oscommerce.com is an open source solution that is also a good one to study if you are creating your own. Although it is slightly over complicated by certain features which may not be relvant to you.

If you already have a datasource for your products it's usually best to work from this.