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Creating an eShop?
Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:50 am
by Sindarin
I am on to the next project which is an eShop. Again, I won't use any ready solutions as they'd be hard to customize to my needs and I want to have full control over my work. What do I need to know php/sql wise? What is the way eShops can work?
Re: Creating an eShop?
Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 6:29 am
by onion2k
It's quite a big topic. You'll need to be a bit more specific.
Re: Creating an eShop?
Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 11:06 am
by Christopher
There have been a number of thread in these forums. Search for 'ecommerce' or 'shopping cart'.
Re: Creating an eShop?
Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 12:50 pm
by josh
Sindarin wrote:What do I need to know php/sql wise?
Nothing really, you might have to tweak a setting but you can learn as the problems happen?
Sindarin wrote:What is the way eShops can work?
From my observations, the eCustomer logs onto your eStore, and chooses Eproducts that you created, when he is done he checks out with your eCart interface finally finishing with an ePayment gateway
Sindarin wrote:Again, I won't use any ready solutions as they'd be hard to customize to my needs and I want to have full control over my work.
Right, cuz the software that thousands of other people use, noone probably thought to build a
control panel so non programmers could customize it? You say you're not a programmer but you want a store, when I want a new car I don't try to build one myself, I recognize its not something you just do overnight otherwise everyone would be doing it
Re: Creating an eShop?
Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 2:10 pm
by jana
Online shopping gives an insight to buyers mind and creates a will to purchase. The details of the software have to be very specific and keeping in mind wide range of products/articles.
Re: Creating an eShop?
Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 2:32 pm
by Christopher
jshpro2 wrote:From my observations, the eCustomer logs onto your eStore, and chooses Eproducts that you created, when he is done he checks out with your eCart interface finally finishing with an ePayment gateway
Hey ... I get it! ... It's just like a regular website but you put 'e' in front of all the words!

Re: Creating an eShop?
Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 3:52 pm
by Sindarin
Right, cuz the software that thousands of other people use, noone probably thought to build a control panel so non programmers could customize it? You say you're not a programmer but you want a store, when I want a new car I don't try to build one myself, I recognize its not something you just do overnight otherwise everyone would be doing it
No, I meant like the recent project I finished. It was a CMS solution. I didn't want to use Joomla or Drupal, or anything like that because it would be time consuming and hard to make it suit my own needs. Instead it was a great experience, coding it from scratch, learning new useful PHP functions, learning SQL and finally customize just every aspect of the system. If I used a ready CMS, I'd be still wondering what SQL is by now.
From my observations, the eCustomer logs onto your eStore, and chooses Eproducts that you created, when he is done he checks out with your eCart interface finally finishing with an ePayment gateway
That gateway thing confuses me. I've never worked with them. Is there someone/some service I need to talk with to install it, like e.g. a bank?
Isn't there another way to do it like showing the num. of orders the time the admin logs into the system? (e.g. You have 2 new orders! Click here to finalize them. )
Re: Creating an eShop?
Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 4:30 pm
by Christopher
Sindarin wrote:That gateway thing confuses me. I've never worked with them. Is there someone/some service I need to talk with to install it, like e.g. a bank?
Yes, contact your or your client's bank to see which payment processors they support. The download the SDK from that payment processor's website.
E-commerce site generally have the following parts:
- Product category, listing and detail pages
- Shopping cart
- Checkout sequence
- Order processsing
- Order administration
We can discuss and or all of those in detail if you want.
Re: Creating an eShop?
Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 6:36 pm
by josh
Generally the payment processing is handled by a payment gateway that abstracts the interactions with merchant account providers, what that means is you have to pay not only the bank for a "merchant account" ( which is the same account the brick and mortar stores use ), you'll end up having to pay for and configure both the merchant account and gateway, unless you go with something like paypal or 2checkout.
Also I'd recommend at least looking into the existing solutions, and asking yourself which requirements exactly is it that you have that the software does not meet. After this question is answered you will have a better understanding of what to build
Sindarin wrote:Isn't there another way to do it like showing the num. of orders the time the admin logs into the system? (e.g. You have 2 new orders! Click here to finalize them. )
That's right, some store implementations do not process live payments, and merely capture order data to be processed by manual human intervention, generally the cost of automating it is less then the cost in the long run of doing it manually
Re: Creating an eShop?
Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 10:12 am
by aceconcepts
At this point the last thing you probably want to be thinking about is a bank and merchant integration.
Try developing a web site that uses dynamic pages in order to retrieve products stored in a database.
Forms will obviously be used to add, delete and update shopping carts.
Also, consider shopper authentication such as user login. How do you keep their shopping cart products - sessions? cookies? database?
In terms of database structure, a basic structure may be:
1. tblProduct
2. tblCustomer
3. tblOrder
4. tblOrderDetail
5. tblCart
You have a lot to consider - there is no one way of creating an online shop.
Get some ideas from visiting current live online shops.
Hope this helps

Re: Creating an eShop?
Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 1:22 am
by Sindarin
Also, consider shopper authentication such as user login.

I've never done multi-user login.
Also, consider shopper authentication such as user login. How do you keep their shopping cart products - sessions? cookies? database?
There's something about sessions and session cookies that confuses me, I have to study them more.
Some person told me session cookies are safer than just sessions. Also, storing cart items in database for each client... wouldn't that be heavy?
Re: Creating an eShop?
Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 2:30 am
by aceconcepts
Each to their own i guess.
Multi-user logins are simply session or client-specific logins. Each client (computer/broswer) is assigned a unique session_id (providing you use a session). This is how multiple users can login at the same time.
After doing some research into sessions and cookies it's down to you which one you use.
Storing cart data in db can be heavy if you dont get rid of it after a certain period of time. Or you could just store it in a cookie or session

Re: Creating an eShop?
Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 2:50 am
by onion2k
aceconcepts wrote:Storing cart data in db can be heavy if you dont get rid of it after a certain period of time.
Never delete cart data from an online store. That information is
incredibly useful regardless of whether the customer actually bought anything.
Re: Creating an eShop?
Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 4:59 am
by aceconcepts
I agree. However, I tend to move that data to a different table or database.
Re: Creating an eShop?
Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 3:23 pm
by Sindarin
Never delete cart data from an online store. That information is incredibly useful regardless of whether the customer actually bought anything.
But you can't maintain that data with a cookie though as it always expires sometime.
I've been reading about sessions and cookies, I think I understand the concept, but I can't figure out what to store for example when a user clicks on "Add to Cart " and "Checkout".