online shopping

Hello Folks,

I have been asked to build a shopping site for a client, he has about 200
products all probably between £5-50 each. He wants to use Paypall. Which
is the best way to do it? These are the options I see before me.

1.Writing my own ecommerce site with MySQL and PHP, but I wouldn't know
where to start unless someone can point me in the direction of a good
tutorial.

2.I have heard of a Dreamweaver extension that makes shopping sites easier
to build, does anyone know anything about this?

3.Buying something like Actinic Catalogue but this means you are tied to
their layouts.

Are there any others options? Which do you recomend?

Many many thanks

Darren

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "Darren Ludlam"
<darrenludlam (AT) darrenludlam (DOT) plus.com> writing in
news:4251cc24$0$94524$ed2619ec (AT) ptn-nntp-reader01 (DOT) plus.net:

Hello Folks,

I have been asked to build a shopping site for a client, he has about
200 products all probably between £5-50 each. He wants to use Paypall.
Which is the best way to do it? These are the options I see before
me.

1.Writing my own ecommerce site with MySQL and PHP, but I wouldn't know
where to start unless someone can point me in the direction of a good
tutorial.

2.I have heard of a Dreamweaver extension that makes shopping sites
easier to build, does anyone know anything about this?

3.Buying something like Actinic Catalogue but this means you are tied
to their layouts.

Are there any others options? Which do you recomend?

Many many thanks

Darren

I would go with option 1. I've always rolled my own because it's easier
than having to tweak someone else's.

Actually, once you have made all the modules, it pretty much takes care of
itself.

You need the following tables:
product - id, product_name, description, price, image_path, weight, added,
status
users - id, firstname, lastname, address info, phone, email, username,
password, added, status
shopping cart - id, quantity, product_id, user_id, added, status
shipping - id, method, cost, status
orders - id, product_id, user_id, total, shiptotal, name_on_card, billing
address info, shipping address info, card_type, last four digits of credit
card number, card expiry month and year, added, status

There are more tables that you might also need depending on your needs, but
these are probably the bare minimum. It's a good idea to store the path to
the photo of the product in the product table, not the image itself. You
can get shipping rates from the various shipping companies, UPS, FedEx,
USPS, etc.

Create pages where the client can enter/modify/delete products. Create a
login page for customers. Create pages where your client can view the
status of the various tables, customers, shipping, products, order, etc.

I would also create a web based form where you can run SQL queries against
the tables (do not let your client have access to this unless your client
is completely familiar with SQL queries). You might need this if you are
somewhere and need to make a change to a table but do not have access to
it.

I would use session ids for the shopping cart (explain to the user that
they have to accept Session Cookies), as they are less prone to user
errors/hacking.

The order should go this way:
1. Customer clicks on shopping cart icon.
2. Customer logs in if not already logged in.
3. Item is added to shopping cart.
4. Customer checks out, and price*quantity + shipping cost is confirmed to
customer.
5. Order goes to gateway for acceptance.
6. If order is accepted, order is written to order table, confirmation
email is sent to customer, and email is sent to shipping department to ship
to customer.
7. Shipping department changes order status to shipped once order is
shipped.

You can also get fancy and add package tracking if the shipping vendor has
that available. Most of the shipping companies have an SDK that will tell
you how to do this depending on what language you are using.

I would allow at least two weeks to build the tables and associated forms,
then another two weeks to completely debug.

Make it clear to your client that this is a big project and cost it out
appropriately.

--
Adrienne Boswell
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

Darren Ludlam wrote:

I have been asked to build a shopping site for a client, he has about 200
products all probably between £5-50 each. He wants to use Paypall. Which
is the best way to do it? These are the options I see before me.

1.Writing my own ecommerce site with MySQL and PHP, but I wouldn't know
where to start unless someone can point me in the direction of a good
tutorial.

Check out the book "PHP and MySQL Web Development" (isbn 0-672-32525-X)

by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson. It is a good tutorial for online
shopping and provides code for the example system.

--
jmm dash list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

Sorry for the delay in thanking you for this information

Darren

"Adrienne" <arbpen2003 (AT) sbcglobal (DOT) net> wrote

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "Darren Ludlam"
darrenludlam (AT) darrenludlam (DOT) plus.com> writing in
news:4251cc24$0$94524$ed2619ec (AT) ptn-nntp-reader01 (DOT) plus.net:

Hello Folks,

I have been asked to build a shopping site for a client, he has about
200 products all probably between £5-50 each. He wants to use Paypall.
Which is the best way to do it? These are the options I see before
me.

1.Writing my own ecommerce site with MySQL and PHP, but I wouldn't know
where to start unless someone can point me in the direction of a good
tutorial.

2.I have heard of a Dreamweaver extension that makes shopping sites
easier to build, does anyone know anything about this?

3.Buying something like Actinic Catalogue but this means you are tied
to their layouts.

Are there any others options? Which do you recomend?

Many many thanks

Darren




I would go with option 1. I've always rolled my own because it's easier
than having to tweak someone else's.

Actually, once you have made all the modules, it pretty much takes care of
itself.

You need the following tables:
product - id, product_name, description, price, image_path, weight, added,
status
users - id, firstname, lastname, address info, phone, email, username,
password, added, status
shopping cart - id, quantity, product_id, user_id, added, status
shipping - id, method, cost, status
orders - id, product_id, user_id, total, shiptotal, name_on_card, billing
address info, shipping address info, card_type, last four digits of credit
card number, card expiry month and year, added, status

There are more tables that you might also need depending on your needs,
but
these are probably the bare minimum. It's a good idea to store the path
to
the photo of the product in the product table, not the image itself. You
can get shipping rates from the various shipping companies, UPS, FedEx,
USPS, etc.

Create pages where the client can enter/modify/delete products. Create a
login page for customers. Create pages where your client can view the
status of the various tables, customers, shipping, products, order, etc.

I would also create a web based form where you can run SQL queries against
the tables (do not let your client have access to this unless your client
is completely familiar with SQL queries). You might need this if you are
somewhere and need to make a change to a table but do not have access to
it.

I would use session ids for the shopping cart (explain to the user that
they have to accept Session Cookies), as they are less prone to user
errors/hacking.

The order should go this way:
1. Customer clicks on shopping cart icon.
2. Customer logs in if not already logged in.
3. Item is added to shopping cart.
4. Customer checks out, and price*quantity + shipping cost is confirmed to
customer.
5. Order goes to gateway for acceptance.
6. If order is accepted, order is written to order table, confirmation
email is sent to customer, and email is sent to shipping department to
ship
to customer.
7. Shipping department changes order status to shipped once order is
shipped.

You can also get fancy and add package tracking if the shipping vendor has
that available. Most of the shipping companies have an SDK that will tell
you how to do this depending on what language you are using.

I would allow at least two weeks to build the tables and associated forms,
then another two weeks to completely debug.

Make it clear to your client that this is a big project and cost it out
appropriately.

--
Adrienne Boswell
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "darren"
<darren (AT) NOSPAMemdnet (DOT) co.uk> writing in
news:d8mr1e$kel$1 (AT) nwrdmz03 (DOT) dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com:

Sorry for the delay in thanking you for this information

Darren

No problem, Darren. Glad I could be of help. How's the cart going?

"Adrienne" <arbpen2003 (AT) sbcglobal (DOT) net> wrote in message
news:Xns962EAF4FE77FFarbpenyahoocom (AT) 207 (DOT) 115.63.158...
Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "Darren Ludlam"
darrenludlam (AT) darrenludlam (DOT) plus.com> writing in
news:4251cc24$0$94524$ed2619ec (AT) ptn-nntp-reader01 (DOT) plus.net:

Hello Folks,

I have been asked to build a shopping site for a client, he has about
200 products all probably between £5-50 each. He wants to use
Paypall.
Which is the best way to do it? These are the options I see before
me.

1.Writing my own ecommerce site with MySQL and PHP, but I wouldn't
know where to start unless someone can point me in the direction of a
good tutorial.

2.I have heard of a Dreamweaver extension that makes shopping sites
easier to build, does anyone know anything about this?

3.Buying something like Actinic Catalogue but this means you are tied
to their layouts.

Are there any others options? Which do you recomend?

Many many thanks

Darren




I would go with option 1. I've always rolled my own because it's
easier than having to tweak someone else's.

Actually, once you have made all the modules, it pretty much takes
care of itself.

You need the following tables:
product - id, product_name, description, price, image_path, weight,
added, status users - id, firstname, lastname, address info, phone,
email, username, password, added, status shopping cart - id, quantity,
product_id, user_id, added, status shipping - id, method, cost, status
orders - id, product_id, user_id, total, shiptotal, name_on_card,
billing address info, shipping address info, card_type, last four
digits of credit card number, card expiry month and year, added,
status

There are more tables that you might also need depending on your
needs, but these are probably the bare minimum. It's a good idea to
store the path to the photo of the product in the product table, not
the image itself. You can get shipping rates from the various
shipping companies, UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc.

Create pages where the client can enter/modify/delete products.
Create a login page for customers. Create pages where your client can
view the status of the various tables, customers, shipping, products,
order, etc.

I would also create a web based form where you can run SQL queries
against the tables (do not let your client have access to this unless
your client is completely familiar with SQL queries). You might need
this if you are somewhere and need to make a change to a table but do
not have access to it.

I would use session ids for the shopping cart (explain to the user
that they have to accept Session Cookies), as they are less prone to
user errors/hacking.

The order should go this way:
1. Customer clicks on shopping cart icon.
2. Customer logs in if not already logged in.
3. Item is added to shopping cart.
4. Customer checks out, and price*quantity + shipping cost is
confirmed to customer. 5. Order goes to gateway for acceptance.
6. If order is accepted, order is written to order table, confirmation
email is sent to customer, and email is sent to shipping department to
ship to customer.
7. Shipping department changes order status to shipped once order is
shipped.

You can also get fancy and add package tracking if the shipping vendor
has that available. Most of the shipping companies have an SDK that
will tell you how to do this depending on what language you are using.

I would allow at least two weeks to build the tables and associated
forms, then another two weeks to completely debug.

Make it clear to your client that this is a big project and cost it
out appropriately.

--
Adrienne Boswell
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

--
Adrienne Boswell
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share