Ask HN: What is your favorite way of setting up online store in 2018?

You need to choose the solution that is best for your friend's business over the long term, not what is most interesting as a dev.

Use Shopify, as it's the most scalable over the long run, without a dev needed to keep the lights on. But even something like Etsy will do.

Do not go with Django / Python, and I say this as a Django dev myself. The second you get a higher priority project, your friend will be in a real jam. Maintenance with Django / Python is prohibitively expensive with freelancers, and needs a high level of engineering skill to keep up with business requirements over time.

Particularly things like packages & dependency upgrades, can lead to tech debt with cascading maintenance costs and increase likelihood of outages. Enough is changing in ecommerce around 3rd party vendor dependencies, security standards and regulations, that an un-patched Django site can get burned pretty quickly.

The cost of migrating to another ecommerce platform from something proprietary can become extremely expensive as well, so do your friend a favor and choose a scalable saas platform that will last. Good luck.

- Develop agnostically. This means don't build with any stack of tools in mind. I have a prepros-sass-pug-typescript template here [link redacted] specifically for generating an ecommerce frontend multipage mockup. Every ecommerce site is going to be built in HTML/CSS/JS regardless of what backend languages or frameworks you decide (PHP, python, etc). All you really need is a home page, category grid, product grid, product page, and checkout page. Throw in dummy data here, and then use whatever backend system and/or framework afterwards.

- Doing any backend development is just reinventing the wheel. Ecommerce is tried and tested already. Things like how to handle an abandoned shopping cart, security, etc. You shouldn't be doing these things honestly. Let someone else do this, or use a library if you have too. You'll need to evaluate backend / ecommerce framework depending on your requirements though.

- Frontend, data, and your product / marketing are the most important things for an ecommerce site. Your customer is not going to care about your backend. Chances are you might migrate your ecommerce backend down the road anyhow.

In summary, if you want to start from scratch, and want full control/portability, consider building your own frontend mockup for each unique page type (category landing, product landing, etc). Expedite this process by using a CSS framework like Bootstrap. Learn how to organize CSS code with Sass. Worry about backend later. You should have an idea of what content / data is going to appear on the frontend, and where it all ties in.

If you need to dial back even further for a truly agnostic approach, consider UX design only. This will also shorten the gap in explaining to your developer, should you outsource to one, what the final site should look like and do.

If none of the above matters, just use shopify or and throw your pictures + content and a template, call it a day.

Backend I personally have seen many successful custom enterprise level stores using Laravel+PHP+MySQL+Some-Javascript-libraries (image LazyLoading)+PHP-libraries(shopping cart functions). You can analyze what tools a store is using through wappylzer. Some tools for doing a simplistic hosted backend include 3dcart and snipcart if you want to forego backend all together.

Finally, what ecommerce framework you use also depends on what your selling. If your selling high markup goods, such as T-shirts and stitching work, 2.9% cut from shopify is going to be irrelevant. If you sell industrial equipment, 2.9% is like half your profit margins.