I want to have a shopping cart on my site for one item. I have been reading that there is a shopping cart in Virtual Mechanics but it seems that it is not a working shopping cart????
Is it possible to use it to set it up get a SSL and connect it to a payment portal with my merchant bank? My paymnet company Heartland payment systems said I need an open source cart.

I have seen a "shopping cart" somewhere, perhaps on the VM web pages, and I seem to remember that was just a mock-up. So you won't be able to use that one -- if we are both thinking of the same thing.

Try the 'Find' button at the top of this page -- we have discussed shopping carts here and they do work with SS. I haven't used shopping carts myself, so let's hope someone happens along who has....

A free javascript shopping cart that is fairly easy to integrate into SS is the NOP Shopping Cart. It is ideal for small shops that do not require a database back-end inventory system. However, it does not support your merchant payment system. But if you have the proper access codes for your payment system, you should be able to use one of the systems it does use as an example to integrate yours.

Also try Roman cart. They are very versatile, prices can be changed without publishing the site again. They have many tutorials.