Forum Moderators: buckworks
I've developed a store for a client of mine in a very similar manner. The client runs everything from his "business PC". He basically dumps his current inventory to a flat-file (text, ¦ delimited) about twice a month, and FTP's it to the server. I created a custom PHP script which takes his products (flat-file) and imports (inputs) the data into a MySQL database. Products and Category tables are created, amongst many other things such as picture/photo requirements and such.
The content is then generated on the fly with PHP and a MySQL database. Since the products only change twice a month, I even created a "On-The-Fly Content Generation" scheme, which actually writes out HTML pages as they are requested. This reduced the load on the MySQL server and frees up CPU usage (no longer PHP). I recommend the on the fly content generation for sites with lots of traffic.
Orders are pulled from the Web as they come in and processed offline through a Credit Card processor. While it's not as efficient as using Authorize.net, it a LOT cheaper. Since you are managing all of the product/order data offline, you should be able to "create" a custom Web solution without too much effort. Hope that helps some. If you have further questions, send me a sticky message and maybe I can help.
Cheers,
Jeff
dave