So, my boss has decided we need to revamp our website (link below) because it is not "user friendly." Our current web designer (not an employee of the company) has told us that he can sell us a program for $1000 so that we can maintain our shopping cart from here. After much pulling of teeth, I have discovered that this program he says he'll sell us is actually osCommerce, which is open source, so I can only figure that what he's charging $1000 for is his labor to do the initial set-up. He is not planing to do any of the entry of items into the shopping cart system, so I'm not exactly sure what this set-up is.

My first question: Is anyone here familiar with osCommerce, and is there any reason we should be paying this guy $1000 (his hourly rate being from $65-$100) to set it up for us?

The web designer also wants to switch our hosting to his company (Blue Fox, Inc.) for $75 a month. However, we would not have shell access, and would still have to pay him for routine fixes to the site- even though we would be doing the maintenance on the shopping cart. (I haven't figured that one out yet.) Dreamhost offers a hosting package which would give us the secure server we need & the certificate, plus a Miva Merchant license, for $80 a month- and I'd be able to handle the shopping cart and the regular old website stuff from here, or from home.

So, my second question: Is anyone here familiar with Miva Merchant, and how it compares to osCommerce?

And finally, since I'm going to be the one expected to do all of this website maintenance stuff if we do switch to Dreamhost and the shopping cart maintenance regardless, what kind of compensation would it be reasonable to ask for, given that this would only be a small part of my job but that it requires a lot more technical knowledge and skill than I was hired to have?

Thanks for any help. :-}

~Mina "sometimes it's no fun being the only one at my company with a clue" moon