It is at this point that I should confess that I have lied to you ever so slightly. Recall that our aim in this chapter was to get 80% of the configuration done for only 20% of the effort; well, that’s not really what has happened. There are quite a few more tasks to perform before we can consider the site to be more or less configured－we have done maybe 50-60% in reality, with many of the settings subject to change once you have finished testing and so on. That’s not to say you should get despondent about how much further there is to go, because there have been some very valuable lessons learned in this chapter for very little effort.

What we have done is gone through the very basic and most general settings, which in turn has forced us to think about how we want our osCommerce application to behave in the end, which is always a worthwhile exercise. This is extremely important, as you have now been exposed to the type of things one needs to contemplate before making decisions that influence the running of the site. Furthermore, you have seen how to relate the changes in settings to the changes customers will see. Also not to be ignored is the newly learned ability to make use of the administration tool, which will form a big part of the site’s development and administration in the future.

The rest of the configuration settings coincide with more specific development tasks—such as populating our product database and implementing payment facilities—and as a result are going to be discussed in their specific chapters. But for now you should feel safe in the knowledge that you have learned much about the way in which osCommerce works, and have (hopefully) built up a set of development notes that will help you pinpoint the settings to be looked at before you announce the site to the public.