creating a fully functioned e-commerce website

Question

hi

I have created about 4 e-commerce websites during the last few year. But they were all dommy sites whereby when the users checked out their items, they did not get to give their account detailes therefore, there wasn't any transactions made (though, i was about to keep stock and count of what was purched)

now, i recieved a real project, where the client wants a small shopping cart to sell few items. now i am confident that im able to meet all his requirements, though now i'm thinking about the transactions, I have never had the opertunity, to create that (ending)

So, is there any resource or anything way that i can learn how to create this transaction to allow users to security use their creadit carts and therefore, creating this proccess in a secure and profesional standarts.

the allocated time frame is about one month to finish the website in question

I would realy apreciate it if you could give me some advice on how to create this

thanks a lot

Answer 1

Here is a good article for you:

• Accepting Credit Cards on Your Website

Its good to use existing and trusted open source shopping cart source:

• 8 Free Open Source Shopping Carts
• Free And Open Source PHP Shopping Carts

Answer 2

I agree with jnpcl - you probably should not do this yourself if you have never done it AND have a 1 month deadline AND it is not YOUR site initially. You should have a decent amount of time to test it yourself and in real cases if you are learning.

However, if you have a reasonable client and some decent flex time, then maybe you should begin by looking into ssl certificates and the whole encryption concept. Comodo SSL is good. Never pass credit card data through cookies, never store them in your database, never pass them as hidden form field elements. By this I mean multi-part checkout where the user enters card data then gets taken to another page on your site before the real processing begins. Your card data form should be the last in the chain before sending the request to the payment gateway, which will likely be handled via cURL if you are using a payment gateway and not something like paypal.

http://www.authorize.net has reasonable rates and a fairly easy API to get you processing cards in no time. If you follow their examples, they explain the security end of the API in their documentation.

If you intend to plug in a third party cart, then something like magento might work for you. But with a 1 month deadline, I would say the learning curve for skinning magento alone is enough to consume your production time. It does have a robust option selection and most of my clients love it. I think it is slow though.

Alternatively, if the goal of this post is just to find a solution to your predicament, then I suggest using something like http://www.e-junkie.com to handle your cart needs. If I recall, they handle variations and stock - like shirt colors, and quantity, etc - and take all major payment types while also handling the security for you since the user pays via paypal or google checkout and maybe some others.

In the end, it will serve you well to know how to do it yourself, so the path I suggest, if possible, is to get a SSL, then set up an account with authorize.net and follow the code they provide you with. Look it over, figure out what the software is doing, and integrate it. It took me about 2 weeks in my spare time when I was first getting into e-commerce many years ago.

Answer 3

Payment gateways tend to provide pretty good documentation themselves - this is where you need to start. However the PCI DSS requirements are a much bigger nightmare than the actual code.

Answer 4

Why not use an existing solution like osCommerce?

Since this is a site for a client, they should make the choice on which payment gateways to use. osCommerce supports every major one out of the box so integration should be trivial/

Answer 5

We had this question just about a month ago, and we started from 8 best open source shopping cart solutions

We chose Magento, because we needed flexibility and extensibility. For your concern, it provides interfacing with Paypal, authorize.net, credit card verification services and moneybookers.

One can also find extensions for Magento, some are free, others cost. One down-side is that it has a steep learning curve. But, since you seem to be in the business it seems that it will be useful for you in the long run.

Just in case, Magento also has a list of hosting partners. You can host it anywhere but we have had good experience from nexcess