Huge PHP project for a newbie or for hire?

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Dan
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Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2003 1:43 pm

Huge PHP project for a newbie or for hire?

Post by Dan »

Hi,

I have a huge potential project and I'm fairly new to PHP. I've been managing shopping carts for years for people, Miva Merchant, designing sites, etc., but would like to try my hand at a custom PHP cart if possible. I Was wondering if for the project requirements below ...

a.) Any PHP ready made scripts already exist for the something similar to the below requirements, for sale or free, that I could modify, customize, etc. Something with a GUI admin page like PHPbb would be great. Or

b.) If any PHP coders reading this might be interested in quoting this job, or

c.) Can anyone point me towards any books, sites, etc that would have a how to, or sample scripts, snippets of code, etc geared towards the below project that I myself could use to do this project myself?



What I'm looking for is a hotel reservation system, just for a small bed and breakfast, six rooms. It would enable a potential hotel guest to rent a room on either one or a consecutive block of dates. Using a click able calendar tied to the payment system. Once the renter is ready to pay via credit card, the code would generate a price and then go into a simple shopping cart where the customer can enter in his billing info and pay by credit card.

Maybe the same customer could rent more than one room with the same date ranges, or on the same order rent different rooms for different dates, and date ranges, etc., with discounts available for quantity purchases of either rooms, or extended date ranges, or both. Also with the ability (for me) to set discounts differently (in the code) depending on if a customer rents more than one room, or more than one day, and extra discounts for renting multiple rooms only, multiple days only, and also additional discounts for renting both multiple rooms and multiple days, like for a convention. With ability to set my own discounts in various ways, i e depending on length of stay, number of rooms rented, number of days, etc etc, etc.

I'd like it so that a customer could place a deposit on a room or group of rooms for the reservation, with the administrator (me) able to set the required deposit depending on what the price range is for the reservation, i e, a percentage of the purchase price of the total order. This option is not absolutely necessary but it would be a very nice feature.

I need a service fee for cancellations, with variable cancellation fees settable by me, which depend on both the closeness of the reserved date to the cancellation and the amount of the sale, independently. The cancellation would be automatic, so that if a customer cancels a reservation, they are auto refunded on their CC either their deposit or paid in full price, minus a pre cancellation fee which is variable, with the ability to set that cancellation fee depending on the total sale price.

Is this do able by a newbie with lots of gumption and the right books, snippets? I already have Wellings PHP and MySQL web Development and the Professional PHP 4 Wrox books. I read on another forum that there is a book written for Dreamweaver MX and a sample project is a hotel reservation system in PHP, but I use Go Live 6 and don't want to waste the money on that one.

:?:
McGruff
DevNet Master
Posts: 2893
Joined: Thu Jan 30, 2003 8:26 pm
Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Post by McGruff »

I suspect you'll need some custom scripts, but take a look at http://www.oscommerce.com/.

You definitely do not want a newbie coder on the job. If you mess around with credit cards online you must be absolutely sure all the security issues are properly considered (no shared hosting for example).

It's bad for business if someone hacks into your site and steals some credit card numbers and it's bad for the reputation of php and indeed the internet as a whole as a safe place to do business. The media just can't resist stories about internet hacking - sort of like a plane crashes. A dozen die in an aircraft disaster and it's front page news; the same dying each day on the road doesn't even get mentioned.

I've worked as a webmaster with a couple of (non-php) online shops in the past and currently I'm setting up a php/mysql backend for whoownsscotland.co.uk. I'd be interested in discussing the project with you.

Email me at webmaster@grindingcentre.co.uk. I'm sure you'll get lots of other offersas well :)
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twigletmac
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Joined: Tue Apr 23, 2002 2:21 am
Location: Essex, UK

Post by twigletmac »

Please don't cross-post, choose the most appropriate forum and put your message there (and only there).

viewtopic.php?t=6852

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