What is the best way of implementing a checkout process that allows customers to place orders without first requiring registration on the site, and without requiring that users create an account during the checkout process.
I was thinking of perhaps creating a anonymous customer entry which all orders not associated with a registered customer get associated with. Will that work?
How would you then recommend accessing order status?
Well the easiest way to do this is to create an account for the user as they checkout. You can generate a password for them to comply with the existing model, and depending on how you want to handle these users you could also flag the record as a "temp" user. You can then remove these users as time expires. These approach gives you the flexibility of also asking the user to create an account after they have successfully checked out; you'd be surprised how many users are willing to just enter a password when thats all they have to do to create an account. The key here is to make sure you use a unique id for these users as opposed to the email address; otherwise you will run into an issue when the same customer comes over to purchase again within the period where the user still exists.
There are multiple ways of doing "Guest Checkout"; it depends on how much work you want to do upfront and what your long term goals are.