nick in* england Posted January 10, 2005 Posted January 10, 2005 i designed a very bisc website for a firend of mine... she thinks its great - but it's really very simple. i have dabbled in web design a little - but only at the very basic end - just cobbling together graphics and text with lots of white space to make it look funky I reckon I am a pretty basic level. i know enough Javascript to get me thru some tricky spots, but can't author much... now comes a request froma friend for me to have a look at a site of hers to have a go at enabling the site for e-commerce. bugger. i'm not sure i know where to start. anyone got any advice (other than get a professional!!) or know of any good easy ways to make e-commerce happen? I think i'll have a lot of qns about this - so a PM might be better.......
nick in* england Posted January 11, 2005 Author Posted January 11, 2005 also - how easy is PHP to get to grips with? it seems like i need to get up to speed with it soon... and most shopping carts are php driven... so if i have a shot at this i'll need to learn. fast.
Fezmid Posted January 11, 2005 Posted January 11, 2005 If you're doing e-commerce, you want to hire a professional (or at least buy pre-packaged software to handle it). Too much risk of bad code being able to be exploited to steal the database full of customer information (or worse). Do you know how to setup an SSL certificate? You'll need one of those before most people will do business with you (it encrypts the web traffic). It's a much larger undertaking than you're probably imagining. CW
Tux of Borg Posted January 11, 2005 Posted January 11, 2005 First thing you will need a shopping cart program. There are some good cgi and php ones on the net. Some are free, while others can set you back some cash. It all depends on what you are looking for. It would be best if you had a secure server (SSL) to do business on. You can spend $100 (a year) for a secure certificate. You can also rent space on a 3rd party secure server. If you do a lot of transactions you will want to look into merchant commerce. Basically its an online bank. When the customer 'submits' their order, the merchant commerce will automatically charge their credit card. All you have to worry about is shipping the order. If you don't plan to do a lot of business, you can use PGP key to encrypt the customers orders, and then mail them to you. You have to manually process the credit card and order yourself. Hope that helps...
nick in* england Posted January 11, 2005 Author Posted January 11, 2005 It's a much larger undertaking than you're probably imagining.CW 201066[/snapback] That's what I feared........ I may just pass her off to someone qualified!!!
drnykterstein Posted January 11, 2005 Posted January 11, 2005 Check out paypal and its solutions. Paypal has a thing where users can add items to a paypal shopping cart and then buy the items using paypal. Totally secure and for the most part should be easy enough for you to do.
Mr Info Posted January 11, 2005 Posted January 11, 2005 i designed a very bisc website for a firend of mine... she thinks its great - but it's really very simple. i have dabbled in web design a little - but only at the very basic end - just cobbling together graphics and text with lots of white space to make it look funky I reckon I am a pretty basic level. i know enough Javascript to get me thru some tricky spots, but can't author much... now comes a request froma friend for me to have a look at a site of hers to have a go at enabling the site for e-commerce. bugger. i'm not sure i know where to start. anyone got any advice (other than get a professional!!) or know of any good easy ways to make e-commerce happen? I think i'll have a lot of qns about this - so a PM might be better....... 200926[/snapback] Nick, If she wants to get things moving on her site and a professional impression is important to her, it might be best to have someone experienced with e-commerce enable it for her. Then you could look at the source and add some things, enable others, etc. If there is no quick desire to have this up, I suggest you look at some books by Jennifer Niederst. I own an off-shore company (but, then you are already off-shore), Chone, LLC, that does software development. Mostly, we augment staff or perform the actually coding for web designers. I'll send you a PM with some of our costs. I can guarantee you that you will not be able to find better talent at a better price. By the way, don't know how much international calling you do but have you checked out Skype? It's the rage in Europe & Asia. I call and teleconference my staff for free using it. Tony
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