cpCommerce is a free ecommerce application that is openly available for anyone to use. It is constantly looking for supporters who can either contribute a domain name, hosting, bandwidth, or monetary contributions to maintain the cpCommerce servers.

Currently cpCommerce requires the use of 5 servers. Two of these servers are for storing backups of the cpCommerce website, the forum, and the database. Two more servers are used for development, one being a machine for testing the PHP files and the other to test the database. Finally, the fifth server is used to run the cpCommerce website.

Now each of these servers have a cost behind them to keep them up and running, three of them are donated to be used freely, though each of them still require hardware upgrades from time to time which does cost money, and I like to contribute such donations to the people who donated the servers.

If you wish to make a donation you can do so by clicking on the below PayPal button.

cpCommerce has a forum that is built for any questions ranging from "How to install it?" to "How to customize its' output." If you are experiencing an issue with cpCommerce, there are a few features in this Administration Area, you need to know how to use.

First of all, you need to know the 'Configuration' Area. In this area, you can make changes regarding how your store operates and you may be asked to do such. More importantly though, you need to know how to use the 'Traceback' Area. Simply, this gives a list of variables and their values, so the users on the forum can help resolved any complications you are having. Now there is no guarantee that the issue you are having is related to a misconfigured variable, but this helps any forum staff narrow down the options.

To visit the cpCommerce forums, click on the 'Need Help?' link at the top of this Administration Page. When you get to the forum, you will have to create an account (if you do not already have one) and then PLEASE post your question in the most appropriate forum. However, before you post it is recommended to do a search for your question first. For example, if you were experiencing issues with how the Store Front is being display (IE: The page is blank), do a search for 'blank store front' or 'blank page'. This is likely to turn up better results than typing out the entire question.

Currently cpCommerce supports the following Payment Methods:

Offline Processing:

Allows you to have your customers send you a check/money order or send you their credit card details for you to process manually or show the customer your bank account information so they can do a direct deposit.

2CheckOut, NoChex, ProtX, and SecurePay:

Allows you to process credit cards online and get back an instant result on if it was approved or denied.

As you begin to activate Payment Methods, you will find that every field requires a value to be inserted, even if you are not using that particular option of the Payment Method. The reason behind this results in how the Method Variables are stored and processed. The variables are stored in the database and therefore the script does not know if a variable depends on another variable's value, so all fields are required.