Is there a difference between a storefront and a shopping cart?

I see there are different links in the link section.

I want a website and a separate store, meaning the entire isnt made
my the eCommerce software. I am interested in MIVA, does anyone
know if this does this?

ie: mysite.com = all my stuff
mysite.com/shop/ = shopping area

know what i mean?

Sure there is. A storefront is basically what you see on the content pages: about us, customer service, product categories, product details, etc. The shopping cart is just the section that stores what you've added to it and allows you to "checkout" by going through the step-by-step process.

The shopping cart itself can be used totally outside your regular site, just referencing the "add to cart" code into your pages if you want. Some scripts are all-encompassing, where the site IS the e-commerce software (like osCommerce) ... others are just the cart code that you plug into your site. Each one will be different so you'll want to check and see if you need to use the entire code or just part of it.

I haven't tried Miva so I don't know if that requires it or not. By the looks like it might be all one system. Another thing to consider is which language it's programmed in. If it's open source and you can modify the code (and you know the language) you may be able to alter the code to accommodate it into your site a little easier.

thanks much :]

Let me see if I understand this correctly. With a storefront, you could use a software solution like oscommerce, or zencart to build your entire site, front to back, while a shopping cart would just be tacked on to hold the goodies that your customer buys? I've been playing with zencart for a while, and like the ease of adding products and such, but it seems to me that it is pretty far flung and somewhat hard to modify to match the pages I designed. Maybe I would be better off with strictly cart software solutions.

Well you don't use the software (like osCommerce) to actually build the entire site, it's basically all encompassed. If you go look at their demo, the entire demo site is the same format, same 3 columns, same header, etc. The non-product pages (Shipping & Returns, Conditions of Use, etc) are the content pages (like on a storefront) but they are built into the system. It uses the same template and you can modify them through osCommerce.

When I say a shopping cart can be added, I mean that SOME strictly cart software doesn't control the entire site. Instead, it is just the cart / checkout process. Your inventory management is done by your own system and you just need to add the "add to cart" link on each one.

If you do want to control the layout of your website instead of using a template system for each page, you may want to look into a smaller script. Granted, the cart software that you just use for the end process may not be as feature-rich as the others, so you have to weigh the positives and negatives of each.

Can you recommend some good strictly cart software?

Thanks

Check out www.pdgsoft.com or www.shopsite.com - both offer good solutions. ShopSite has order anywhere buttons you can place literally anywhere on your site and just link them straight to the shopping cart. If I remember correctly, PDG Cart does the same thing.