How complicated are shopping carts?
Posted by admin in Shopping Carts Thursday, 28 October 2010 01:51 3 Comments
I have a client who wants an online magazine that she can sell subscriptions to. I’ve never dealt with having to get SSL Certifications and Shopping Carts, and I was just wondering how complicated this process is? I am pretty tech savvy–I know XML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, the list goes on and on. Is it hopeless?
Wow thanks guys! I am off to attempt to build a shopping cart!
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ZenCart is a nice solution. It is written in PHP, is simple to install and has a large user base for support. It’s fairly simple to customize as well.
SSL certificates can be a bit complicated. I suggest reading up on them in Wikipedia before diving into that. Depending on the host, they’re pretty simple to install.
Another cart that I like is Magento. It’s a bit more complicated than ZenCart, but has a lot of nice features.
If you want to do something by yourself, the first thing you need to do is specify the modules necessary to the shopping cart.
For example:
- product
- product item
- order
- order items
- payment method
- payment gateways
and so on…
After you got all modules listed, is just a matter of setting up the frontend and backend.
Just a note, for security porpoises, passwords should use md5 and all credit card information should be encrypted including in the sessions.
If your client is looking to sell an online magazine, you need a shopping cart that supports digital product purchases (as distinct from physical goods).
Have a look at ShopFrontPro – http://www.shopfrontpro.com
Should do the trick.