New to web design, what technology for e-commerce site?

Asp, Php, Jsp,?

[Bucephalus]

Hi

I'm new to web development.
What kind of things should I be thinking about to make an ecommerce site?
Should I use ASP, or PHP?
I'm sure there are heaps of questions I should be asking, but I just need to know the basic things like what technology to use, or the pros and cons of certain technologies so I can at least get started.


Thanks.
David.

[lammert]

The choice between ASP, PHP or another development platform depends on your wishes and what you are familiar with. On an ecommerce site you will probably use existing modules for things like the shopping card, payment processing etc. Most of the time the rest of an e-commerce site is written in the same language as these modules. The first thing you can do is visit other e-commerce sites and look at features which you like and which standard modules (if any) they used to implement the site. Depending on that survey you may already be able to make a choice of the development platform.

PHP is mainly used on Linux servers whereas ASP can be found on servers running Microsoft. This is not always the case and you can use both scripting languages on both operating systems, but if you have a desire for either Linux or Windows as the server, you are are also softly pushed in one of the directions.

[maximillianos]

Agree with lammert. A lot depends on your backend system. If you are open to using anything, I would recommend a LAMP setup. It is most cost effective and highly reliable. It is also the most common configuration used on the net today by small/medium sized businesses. Many corporate site stick with Microsoft technologies (ASP) for historic and support reasons.

L = Linux operating system
A = Apache web server
M = MySQL database
P = PHP/Perl

Just my opinion!

[rocknbil]

What kind of things should I be thinking about to make an ecommerce site?

If you're coding it yourself, no matter the language,

#1. Security. Poorly cleansed user input is the primary cause of hacked sites, and in some case compromised servers. It's also the last thing most coders address, and should be the first.

#2. The liabilities of dealing with other people's money, e.g., managing transactions in a secure way. A good start is looking up PCI compliance. If you pass off payments to an external processor, most of the compliance rules may or may not apply to you, but they detail a good set of guidelines to go by.

[MatthewHSE]

If you're new to web development, I would not suggest coding something yourself for a site that you plan to actually open to the public. There's usually quite a learning curve, and if e-commerce is your thing, you'll probably want to go with whatever will get you up and running with the functionality you need in the least amount of time possible.

As far as platform is concerned, I've heard that ASP runs slower than PHP, and while I don't have direct experience with that as a developer, I do know that ASP sites tend to take longer to load for me when browsing with Firefox (although the performance hit appears to be less when using IE). This is all anecdotal from my end, but I'm just telling you what I've heard and observed.

I'd suggest using an open-source shopping cart such as ZenCart (others are also available). They can take some time to tweak and get just right, but they'll at least get you up and running in a minimal amount of time.

Just be sure to stay up-to-date with security patches, no matter what you decide to use. You have no idea the number of sites that get hacked just by using outdated scripts for shopping carts, blogs, etc.

[Bucephalus]

Thanks for all those responses. They were all very helpful. Yes security is something I have wondered about. I have saw a book lastnight on asp.net securty on an online bookseller. What are the best ways to learn web security? Is there an online course? Books, etc?
I have decided to go with .net because there is another factor that swayed my mind. There are heaps more jobs in .net than php from what I see on the job websites, so if I get experience in asp it might be better from a job hunting perspective.

Also, you're right, I'm better off to defer to a third party financial transaction handler. I don't havse to get up and running straight away. I have given myself a year to develop this site starting lastnight. That's probably a long time and maybe I can have the site up and running in half that time, but at least I have given myself a year.

Any more input on my security learning or any other learning facilities would be greatly appreciated.

David.

[baileytech]

magento is a good place to start, saves all the hardwork and is very configurable although is resource hungry

[Bucephalus]

thanks for your reply.
I am checking out the website now.

[g1smd]

There's osCommerce and ZenCart and a whole range of other offerings.

They all have multiple issues, but can get you started very quickly.