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developing a shopping cart


akurtula

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hi

 

Today i have started my first "real world" project, where the client was asked me if I could develope an e-commerce website where he will sell few items.

 

Previously, I have created few e-commerce (dommy) websites, where I have managed to develope the sites to the transaction point. However, I never created the real transaction process.

I am aware that there are third party Merchants like the paypal, but again, I never looked at this in more detail before.

the client has given me a period of one month.

 

My question is, assuming, that i have never created this before would i be able to accomplish this goal within one month, and do you have any advice on how I should go about achieving this.

 

I also heard that there are opensource carts that I can use, but again I have not looked into them in detail.

 

I am only "worried" if this task is not ment to be undertaken by people that never done this before. is there any recomendations that you could give me into how to achieve this task within the one month deadline

 

 

thanks a lot for you help

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You set up the cart (open source or paid for) and the interaction of the cart with the gateway or Paypal, but it is Paypal or the gateway that do the actual money transaction. Depending on the cart you are using, the set up can be really easy or more complicated.

 

If you have to advise the client on which payment platform or type of cart to use, you will have to do some homework, as there are often hidden costs, setup fees etc. I'm sure Eddie (Newseed) will chip in with a lot more information.

 

Make sure your client pays you for the time you are going to be spending on this project.

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KillerSites does have a tutorial series on building a shopping cart with PayPal (http://killerphp.com/tutorials/shopping-cart-tutorial/) but I would be hesitant to try to build out something based on that if you only have a month to complete the job. Especially if you need more features that the tutorial doesn't show and you need to figure out on your own.

 

I can't really comment on which cart you should work with, since my ecommerce work is limited, but hopefully others will chime in. The advantage of going with something premade is that it will probably have more features than you could build out in a month if you tried to make it on your won and probably will have less errors/security issues too. And of course there is a big time savings if you go with pre-existing software.

 

You might check out FoxyCart, since Chris Coyier from CSS Tricks recommended it, but I don't know a huge amount about it. http://css-tricks.com/video-screencasts/45-using-foxycart-for-ecommerce/

 

I would stay away from Magento if this is one of your first ecommerce projects unless it fits your needs perfectly. I did one project with it, and found that while it is incredibly powerful, it can be a bit tricky to understand how to customize and may take you a while to get up and running.

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I was thinking of creating the website all from the start withought using any open source, is that i good or a bad idea.

 

as again i can just re produce a website using the code that I have from my domy projects. Also if I used an opensource, is there any legal issues or aknolagments I would need to inform the client on.

 

as this is almost like a work experience scheme, where im getting the minimum rate, I think I have to forget about the money for the moment and figure out how to satisfy his needs as as I said this is my very first project on web development, and the client in question, is not within the web sector, therefore, i am sure from what he said, he does not know how much work I would need to do (though i'm working from home, so i guess/hope that one month is going to be enough)

 

I'm sure I'm right in believing that being the first project, it is crutial for me to create a good website, I really need the experience.

 

when ever I'm not sure about something, i tend to just keep write... though thanks for the help :)

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falkencreative: i read your comment after I posted mine

 

I am so new at this as I have not hear of Magento, but i will look at FoxyCart and see how it goes

 

If I end up using a premade service, would I need to explain this to the client, in that would it be "profesional", or would such info be errelavent for the client as he may get confused

thank

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Foxycart charges about $19 a month, so you would absolutely have to inform the client as he will be paying for it. The advantage is that with CSS you can completely integrate the look to that of the site.

Edited by virtual
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As for the legal stuff, in a nutshell you just can't take the code, repackage it and sell as your own without getting written permission. Some require that you do not remove any copyright from within the code but most will allow you to remove it visually from the rendered page. It's not a problem if you are building a site for a client using such programs because you are doing the work (i.e. intall, graphical design, design template implementation, custom code changes to the core files, ect).

 

Online cart tend to have a bit of different legal stuff altogether.

Edited by newseed
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I just installed osCommerce, am I writing in thinking that this is just like content management system, and the payment gateways is something else completely,

 

so basically the osCommerce helps me with the structure. Like I would create my own blog but why should I when there are things like wordpress (as example)

and I would need to create the connection between this and the payment gateway (e.g. paypal) as a another task

 

also, the client at the moment does not have a hosting account or a gateway arrangements, can I develop this on my domain and transfer it to the clients domain when he is ready. And is it ok that the gateway payment account is not setup yet

 

and typically, considering that I’m new at this, and I will not be getting any physical help in development, do you believe that this one month deadline, is a reasonable time scale for me to accomplish this (or at least be as close to finish as maybe ask the client for few more days, as of course he is not going to be happy with a 3 month delay), or is it an impossible thing to complete within the time scale (or close to)

 

really appreciate the help

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  • 2 weeks later...

I know that this is a slightly old topic and maybe i should not add this but just wanted to share by experience with using oscommerce so far

 

I am using sts templates to help me re-arange the looks and is all going perfect, very easy to get used to it, and the add-on are fantastic,

 

I'm now nearly ready to start intergrading this with paypal (and am not confident on this part) as it is completely new and I cant seem to find any tutorials (not good ones anyway)

 

of course, this is my first e-commerce library, so i cant say if it's the best, but its doing the job for now :)

 

the only thing that i dont like is the fact that it uses tables for the layout, therefore, i had to mess around with the code where i spend hourse trying to remove the take structure (on the bits i needed slightly more freedom)

 

 

I would like to ask one final question on this topic if i may:

 

(if i were to use paypal gateway) there are 2 options in paypal, the one where you redirect the users to the paypal site, for the compleation of the order form, or the one where you keep the users in your website and let paypal work behind the scenes? which would be better from the audience point of view as I read that when the users see the paypal logo, they would trust you (the shop) more. so in that case, re-directing the user to paypal site, would be better, but is this not the case?

 

 

 

thanks

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