ASP, CFM, or ? for ecom site?

[rogerd]

Our web development activity has been mostly SEO work and "corporate" sites for small/medium biz, but now we are being called on to redesign an e-commerce site. It currently uses static HTML page to link to a third party secure site for shopping cart/order processing. With 1000+ products, changes are, of course, tedious. User interface is awful, too.

The objective is to go with dynamic pages and integrated shopping cart/order taking. This will streamline the user experience and make changing pricing, products, etc. much faster.

So, my question for you people who have done this plenty of times before: is there a preference for ASP, CFM, or some other flavor of database integration? We're using UltraDev 4 as our primary tool. How about a shopping cart script that isn't more than a few hundred bucks? Any pitfalls or things to watch out for with any particular approach?

I know there are lots of ways that we can go, and many will work fine, but I'd hate to go down a blind alley and have to rework the whole thing later. Any input will be appreciated.

(Once we make dynamic pages, then we can figure out how to make them look static... :))

[roscoepico]

PHP...it's easy to learn and easy to use, very fast , and it's free.......

Visit [zend.com...] to learn more

[stickytape]

I couldn't agree more with roscoepico. PHP is by far the best cure for you here. I learnt the basics of PHP in about 2 days, and am a capable programmer in it. There are hundreds of sites, there's a great article about MySQL and PHP at this site [webmasterbase.com] and it really is brilliant!

Anyways, good luck! I recommed downloading FoxServ [prdownloads.sourceforge.net] for using PHP on a windows machine.

Rich

(edited by: sugarkane at 7:06 pm (gmt) on July 19, 2001(edited by: stickytape at 9:40 pm (gmt) on July 19, 2001

[rogerd]

Thanks for the feedback. What about a shopping cart script? Do you agree that it would be reinventing the wheel to create one from scratch? Any suggestions?

I haven't worked with PHP before. Are there actual major e-commerce sites that use PHP scripting? Any security issues associated with PHP? Thanks... :)

[sugarkane]

If you foresee dealing with several e-comm sites, it might be worth considering writing your own cart rather than using an off-the-shelf solution. Your knowledge of the cart software will be deeper and you'll be able to add features to it a lot easier, adapting it to fit each individual site.

I'm not aware of any security issues in PHP in itself - but following the usual rules for writing secure scripts in any language is always a good idea :)

[stickytape]

As far as Im aware there arent any security holes in PHP - no blatants ones anyways. What I mean is that when you write a script, you have to be careful as there is someone out there who will always try and screw you over. So b basically, follow the normal safety guidlines as with writing all code and you'll be fine.

About writing your own cart program. Well, I think sugarkane hit it on the head. If you're going to be dealing with loads of e-com sites then it's going to be one heck of a lot better to know the ins-and-outs of the script you are using. It's also great practice in writing PHP as well, because a cart program will be using just about all the basic functions of PHP as well as a lot of the more complex ones.

If you want to have a look at examples of carts then try here [prdownloads.sourceforge.net]. Hotscripts.com is by far the best place that I've found to find some code, and have a mooch if you're not sure what you're doing.

Anyways, good luck!