Shopping cart for a photographer

simple cart needed, no payment to be taken online

[rich_b]

My wife is a semi-pro photographer who does family portraits. I wrote a PHP script to upload her photos to her website and automatically create a gallery to display the thumbnails and images. However, when a client wants to order a photo though there's no way to do this easily. They have to manually make a note of the image numbers they want and send an email through with the list of photos they want to order. Obviously that isn't great. What I'd like to is add that basket type functionality to the site. I've been researching ecommerce solutions for another friend and it struck me that there must be a solution out there that just gives me basic cart functionality.

It would need to allow:

Add image to basket - with options for finish (matt, gloss), size and colour/bw
Delete image
Amend quantity
Show all images (as thumbnails)
Total amount with subtotal for shipping
Some way of storing the list so a customer could compile the list over two or more sessions and not have to restart every time (wouldn't have to be a database - cookies would do I think).

Payments would be handled offline - at least for now.

I have a little PHP experience so could probably handle integration into the site but is there something that will give me the base functions in a framework to get me started?

Thanks a lot! :)

[rocknbil]

For small apps like this, payPal is the way to break in all around. The way for your wife, the way for you as a programmer - it's easy to implement and is a good "starter commerce project."

You can use their simple in-page HTML weblinks to get started, then do a full integration as you progress.

I know you said "offline" - but the whole deal about the internet is the idea of immediacy, I want it now. Many will abandon if checks or money orders is the only way to buy.

[rich_b]

Thanks for your reply rocknbil. I've been doing a lot of Googling over the weekend and I found a reasonably priced cart that is aimed at photographers, does everything needed and more (including a useful admin section that will take a lot of the customer management and order tracking workload off my wife). So it makes financial sense to go that way rather than create a bespoke solution that will only do a fraction of the package. It also integrates with PayPal and I think you're right - this is a good way to start taking online payments.

To be honest, we've never found taking cheques only to be a problem as the client hires my wife to get photographs so they have an inherent interest in ordering. However, she is starting to do more christenings and other large gatherings where guests of the client might also order a print if it was easy to do so we need to seriously consider this.

[Marcia]

There's also Mal's Ecommerce, which is a remote cart that takes the orders. I used to make use of it quite a bit but haven't recently; I think it does integrate with Paypal and it's very, very simple to implement.