ECommerce for Beginners...

[wfernley]

Hi everyone. I am new to making ECommerce sites. I fooled around with the starterkit that ASP.NET offers, but I hear that MySQL is the way to go. I was curious if anyone knows where I can get a good basic tutorial on making an ECommerce site with Mysql, using ASP or PHP or whatever language you use for it.

I am new at this, and I'm also wondering if there are any considerations I need to know. Things like security, download speed, MySQL or Microsoft SQL, PHP or ASP.... I am very new at this, is there anywhere here who can answer my question and perhaps give me a basic rundown of ECommerce web sites? :)

Thanks.

Wes

[balinor]

Hi Wfernley, I was just recently in the same boat as you. Once upon a time, I knew how to do sites with CGI, but a lot of good that will do now a days! So I decided to go with PHP and MySQL mostly because the web host I use is running Linux, but also because PHP and MySQL seem to be the hot ticket right now.

I picked up a couple of books:

1. PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites by Larry Ullman and

2. PHP MySQL website programming: Problem - Design - Solution by a bunch of authors

What I found was that neither of these books gave me a 100% understanding of either PHP or MySQL by themselves, but they are good books if you have a basic understanding of PHP and MySQL.

After reading these books and getting an understanding of how everything works, I started doing some research on pre-made systems like Xcart. These guys have already done the leg work of putting the whole thing together and if you have a basic understanding of PHP you can tweak their templates and code to get it just where you want it. I actually ended up going with LiteCommerce which is sort of Xcart Lite. Has a few less features, but for this particular client it is more than enough. I have so far been very happy with it, and while I know HTML and CSS like the back of my hand, my PHP is pretty rough and I have had no problem with it.

Granted, if you are going to do very complex sites it will probably be better to write everything yourself, but I have found that I have learned quite a lot by looking at how the e-commerce packages work. Probably not a bad way to start!

Hope this helps!

Regards,
Padraic

[TallTroll]

If you intend to develop an ecommerce solution, then you really need to have, or be prepared to learn, considerable development skills, ie being able to prepare a logical workflow chart for the application, including any offline elements, a working knowledge of database development (any database), preferably a knowledge of accounting procedures, and one or more accounting and/or stock control packages, application integration techniques (if for instance, you intend to use 3rd party CC checking / authorisation servcies), and last but not least, maybe some HTML and CSS

>> making an ECommerce site with Mysql, using ASP or PHP or whatever language you use for it.

You can use pretty much any combination of technologies you want. Its not the technology that makes or breaks an ecomm solution, its the business logic.

Getting hold of a copy of an existing ecommerce package and "reverse engineering" the code to see how others have identified and approached the challenges would be a good starting point on the learning curve

[cfx211]

I will second TallTroll and say that the business logic is key here. Don't build a cart for use until you know exactly what it needs to be used for.

[lorax]

You may find this thread [webmasterworld.com] helpful.