Hi all,

I’m new to this forum and relatively new to e-commerce all together. I own a business in upstate NY that sells flags, flagpoles, and just about everything related. business has been slowly growing for a few years but i was looking to get bigger. I bought a .com domain and a hosting package with godaddy.com.
the web site is up and working. for a customer to actually make a purchase they have to memorize the item number they want, then go to a "order form" page to put in the information.
I want to have a shopping cart like most websites that sell things. go daddy has an additional package, some sort of a store builder. but this comes with an additional charge and the website becomes a template. I’m not totally opposed to the template idea however I prefer having the freedom of using my own XHTML and CSS.
I guess what I’m asking is how does a shopping cart work, what’s behind the scenes? is it software that needs to be installed on a server of my own? can i write some kind of script of php that makes a cart? am i stuck with go daddy and their templates that i have to pay for?
I have other questions about how to use a database so i don’t have to make a single html page for each of my 1000+ products but i should save that for another thread.
Any information at all will be appreciated here. I'm just being introduced to all these different things and its all a little overwhelming.