databasing

Can u help me answer a question...

[scashman]

I am starting out fresh to having a wesite.Please excuse my absolute ignorance here. I need to provide a large amount of photos on my site for people whom I have photographed the day before. I shoot them and then give them a business card inviting them to access my site, look up the day and time i photographed them and then email me to order a copy. I know to provide people with a low res image with a watermark over it for viewing, but then they can order a copy I will charge them for. What is the best easiest and cost effective way to do this?
Thanks,
Simon

[goodroi]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld.

The two biggest issues I see you will have to deal with are #1 money and #2 tracking. You will need to figure out how you can get the money, PayPal, accept the credit cards yourself etc. Tracking each request and matching it with the right photo. You will need to figure out how to make the file names to be unique and identifiable so that when someone pays you they will get the right photo.

[zomega42]

Well, here goes the long answer.... I don't know how much you already know, so I'll start at the beginning.

Step 0: If you have an established photo business, and can afford it, higher an ASP or Coldfusion programmer to do it for you. Otherwise, read on...

1. Create a database in MS Access with two tables, "customers" and "photos". "Customers" will store your customer names, their passwords to see their photos, date of photo shoot. "photos" will store the filename of each photo and who it belongs to.

2. Learn to use Coldfusion or ASP on your website to interact with the database.

3. Develop an "admin" section of your website, where you can upload your photos using coldfusion or ASP. This can be a very simple interface, just a couple buttons like "add customer", "list customers", "delete customer", "post photos".

4. You will need to give yourself the ability to upload your photos. You can do this using ASP or Coldfusion. You can also manipulate the photos, ie resize them and add a watermark. (I use the CFX_image custom coldfusion tag for this)

5. Create unique photoID for each photo uploaded, and store it in the database. Also store photo height, width, and customerID in the "photos" table.

6. Create the display interface for your customers using coldfusion/asp. This makes them log in, then gathers all their photos filenames from the "photos" table, and gives a button to order them.

7. If you want to have a "shopping-cart" like feature, I would say just use cookies. Store a cookie on your customer's computer that has a list of all the photoIDs in the person's shopping cart.

8. Checkout -- you'll have to work in a payment interface. I'd recommend paypal if you're just starting out because there is no setup fee. Or since these are people you photographed, you might just want to make them send you a check (I've always paid photographers by check anyway).

Whew.... I'll bet that's more than you were asking for, but hey. Trying to avoid working on my own site today...