NYCPHP Meetup

[Ben Sgro (ProjectSkyLine)]

Re: [nycphp-talk] Two part question: Shopping carts & E-commerceHello Cliff, 

hah, ok, that's convincing enough.

The budget and timeframe are both in my favour, so I can choose the best tools for the job.

Since I've yet to work w/joomla, would it be a good idea to try to set that up for e-commerce.
I remember a few days back, an answer to my Framework question, some responding saying
they had great success with joomla & e-commerce.

miva, cart32 or shopsite are carts? I didn't know that. I guess that's what THEY (the client) want to use.
Any experiance with those?

Im googling right now and it says miva is a merchange account as well.
http://smallbusiness.miva.com/products/merchant/
and shopping cart software
http://smallbusiness.miva.com/

Hmm..cart32 is windows based, so that's out!

Shopsite: looking at their website.

I guess I need to read up on the e-commerce and shopping cart basics. Do some carts only
work with certain merchants?

- Ben

Ben Sgro, Chief Engineer
ProjectSkyLine - Defining New Horizons
+1 718.487.9368 (N.Y. Office)

Our company: www.projectskyline.com
Our products: www.project-contact.com

This e-mail is confidential information intended only for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Cliff Hirsch 
  To: NYPHP Talk 
  Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 10:13 PM
  Subject: Re: [nycphp-talk] Two part question: Shopping carts & E-commerce


  > They want to start with about 12 items and have the shop interface w/miva, cart32 or shopsite.
  These are carts, not merchant accounts or gateways, so I'm confused.

  >And as far as time frame and budget, I could build a cart from scratch. I have the Apress book  "PHP5 & E-commerce", plus all the obvious online resources.
  No, no, no!!! A cart can be deceivingly complex. I used the same book as a sort of "Framework" for a tangential project that is cart-like. The three layer architecture is great, but upside down. The presentation layer selects the business logic - go figure. Plus, it covers maybe 20% of what's really required.

  > Is it a wise idea to build the cart from scratch?
  NO. See above.

  >If I don't build the cart from scratch, what are some alternatives? I need it to be totaly skinable...

  There are a gazillion carts - both open source and commercial .Even the commercial are dirt cheap. Another alternative is a hosted solution. You've got to have a really, really good reason to develop a cart from scratch. 

  The big open source cart is oscommerce, which has a reasonably good fork called Zencart. X-cart is a good commercial alternative. The code is a nightmare, and will make any oop purist barf, but very easy to hack and skin. There's numerous others. First, figure out the budget and requirements. That will wittle down the list.

  Cliff 


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