What steps should I take to build my first e-commerce website?

Hi,

I have decided to build an e-commerce website as example work for my digital portfolio. Does anyone have any tutorials or videos I should look at before making a start on this?

Thanks,
Liam.

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Since no one else has answered …

No offense, but I’m going to guess that if you don’t even know where to start, then you’re not ready to build one from scratch.

That would at the least require some backend work. Do you do any backend languages? FCC teaches Node/Express paired with Mongo. If you had those, you’d have the tools to build something like this. I don’t see how you’d do it without a backend. At the most, you could build the frontend interface that worked with a pre-exisitng backend, but that isn’t the project you want.

I’d recommend finishing the whole FCC program before attempting something like this, I guess you wouldn’t need the Data Visualization section. But the frontend and backend sections would give you enough info to do it.

If this is just a portfolio piece, you don’t really need a backend, as you might just want to show that you could build a good front end for one. In that case, all the skills you use for the freeCodeCamp Portfolio challenge would suffice.

It can be as complex or as simple as you like. Hundreds of thousands of these have been built with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery.

Nowadays, they are more likely going to be built with Angular or React.

If you do want to go the whole hog and make the backend, too…I’d start with learning Node and MongoDB (check out https://university.mongodb.com/courses/M101JS/about, which starts it’s next cohort in January. While you wait for that, get really good at the frontend!)

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Here
is how to create your own online store for any product from start
easily. I will take you through the entire process step by step
including the prerequisites, technicalities, design and set up until you
know everything you need to know to develop your online store.Step 1: Shop for Stuff You’ll Need to Setup Your Own Online StoreStep 2: Start with Domain Acquisition to Create Your eCommerce WebsiteStep 3: Design Your eCommerce Store to be Crowd-FriendlyStep 4: Set up Product Categories and ListingsStep 5: Set up Order Fulfillment and Shipping ChannelsStep 6: Add Some More Muscle to Your Online StoreStep 7: Invite Everyone for the Launch Party

Try this one at https://upskillcourses.com/
You will go from basic HTML/CSS to learning some JavaScript, the Ruby programming language, Ruby on Rails framework, sass, bootstrap, and a good bit about e-commerce, including how to work with Stripe (a company that takes user’s credit card info and returns a user token so you do not have to worry about a breach that leaks sensitive info… they even have a test mode. You will learn how to use cloud9, Git, GitHub, and finally how to deploy to heroku, where you can link it to your portfolio. Also covered is sqllite3 for a development database and migrating to PostgresSQL for production.
Starts off assuming you know zero about web development.

I am not done yet, but my work in progress can be seen on heroku at https://guarded-fortress-64336.herokuapp.com/

What is there is functional, however the paid membership signup uses Stripe’s test suite.
To see it in action you can use the stripe provided dummy card numbers
One of which is
Card: 4242 4242 4242 4242
CVC: 123
Expiration: any date in the future from the drop down month and year.

I am at 85% completion, so I am not sure how much more will be added, but If nothing else, I will have something for the portfolio and a decent idea of how to set up an e-commerce site. You also end up with a nice repository on GitHub.
It’s all free, but a credit card is required for an account on cloud9 (I have had mine over a year and never incurred a single charge, you have to opt in to upgrade) and a Mail host also required a card number even though I am using their free tier.

If there is a better full stack e-commerce tutorial out there For free I would love to see it.

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I think the first step would be looking at other ecommerce sites to get an idea of how you want to build the site. Also you need to decide what products you will be adding to the site.

Building an Ecommerce site from scratch is a massive bear.

I’m not talking black bear sized either

More like polar bear sized… in a blizzard… in Antarctica

Things you have to consider are building out a shopping cart, handling payment transactions securely, connecting your backend to a fulfillment service, how you’re going to handle taxes both in the States and internationally, and finally not get slapped with fines from PCI violations

Thus, I suggest looking up a platform like Shopify and play around with their APIs. All the infrastructure and legalities are handled for you so you can do the more important stuff like building the front end and handling business logic related to the business.

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If you are going to create a portfolio then no need to watch any tutorials.