Advise on starting a web store site

Hi, I'm going to start my first e commerce website for a small web shoe store. I think I know enough PHP to keep my head above water, I'm using an add on shopping cart package to deal with the transactions. My question is, what's the best way to design a site where each product appears to have its own page. Is there a way to create the site *without* having each product have a physical separate page ? Is there a method of web design which makes creating new pages simple if they all follow the same pattern. i.e thumbnail, description etc. Thanks guys, Matt.