online reservation for products

[generic]

I'm working on a project for a concert sound and lighting rentals business, basically renting speakers, amps, DJ lighting, that sort of thing.

I'd like to build/buy an online system to operate as, a) a product database, and b) an online reservation system. So ideally, we'd like to be able to peruse, add, edit, delete pricing and amounts of each product, and more importantly allow website users the ability to reserve products online for a set period of time (online payment option not necessary, they'll pay when they pick up the product with their reservation ID number).

I could build my own system, but I'm not a PHP/mySQL pro by any means so I'm not sure where to start with this. Otherwise I don't mind buying an existing system, except most of what I've seen is specifically for renting properties and it would require alot of hacking around to make it work for my needs.

Can anyone recommend a good system for reserving products online? If not, can anyone point me to a good script or tutorial on this subject to give me an idea what I'm in for?

Thanks in advance,

gen

[andrewsmd]

PHP Nuke is an online content management system. I don't really know what it has for add ons but you might want to check that out. If you have access to a asp.net server, then I would recommend dotnetnuke. It has a built in payment module you can link up with paypal and it works fairly well. It's not the flashiest system in the world, but it's free and you get what you pay for. Also, if you go the dotnetnuke route, there are specific module you can purchase from snow covered. I have used a few of them and they tend to work ok. Just a couple of suggestions.

[caribguy]

We built a multiple widget reservation system with Zope and PythonScript. This class of websites doesn't normally come as a script...

Zope utilizes an object database rather than a RDBMS. Objects can be containers for sub-classed objects (e.g light systems > rail lighting > spotlights), and can have their own attributes (e.g. watts, color, in/outdoor) or methods (e.g. singleDayRental(), returnedBroken(), etc). There are some handy workflow management tools built into its content management framework that let you define transitions and modify the status of objects.

I guess since we're in the php forum that you've already set your mind on the tools you prefer to use - just wanted to offer an alternative that may be more scalable :)

Edit: made more generic