Getting a handle on concepts

Well, I'm about to make the plunge into e-commerce. Do I have this right? I need to set up the following:
Domain name
Hosting service
Merchant Service Provider (cash only up to now)
Shopping Cart

It looks to me like the shopping cart companies provide lots of choices in templates as a starting point (I'm looking at squirrelcart, but I've browsed others that seem similar). Then I can modify them to personalize them as I like. So it seems like there's not a lot of point in spending time creating a website from scratch when it will be easier to begin with the cart company's starting point.

One thing that will will have to learn is MySQL. Does the phpMyAdmin program work like a GUI (the limits of my techno-speak) and make it easier to work with?

I'm not an absolute newbie; I created a simple non-interactive website about 10 years ago for a non-profit. That's one nice thing about DreamHost, that they provide free hosting for 501(c)(3)s.

Thanks! - Lisa

That's pretty much it. If you've already gotten your free hosting set up here, you can experiment with Zencart, which is a One-Click install here.

http://zencart.com/

In the past, I've gone the lazy route and used PayPal.

-Scott

Thanks - I'm at the point where I must explain this to others! I appreciate the reply.