Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with ecommerce and php

How do I set up an e-commerce site that accepts photo uploads and takes credit card payments?

designbot — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:42:48 -0800

How do I set up an e-commerce site that accepts photo uploads and takes credit card payments? I've been asked to set up a website for a client who wants to custom-print an item using photos uploaded by customers. They need to accept credit card payments.

As one option, I am considering setting up a custom front-end for Shopify, but I'm not sure whether that's overkill, or whether they can accept an uploaded picture sent as part of the order information.

What's the simplest/best way to do this? My PHP/Javascript skills are rather rudimentary, but I'd like to learn more. Should I try to do something from scratch, or are there good solutions out there already?

It seems like there would be a few parts to doing this manually:

Getting the customer's order info from a form (I can handle the HTML for this)

Getting the customer's photo, making sure it's within specs, and displaying a reduced preview (I don't know the best way to do this… I assume there a image processing libraries available or something)

Processing a credit card payment (I don't know the best way to do this)

Doing something with that order data (could it be emailed to the client, or is that too insecure? would I need to set up a front end for the client to access orders stored in a database?)

Hope me, Metafilter! You're my only help.

I can haz developer???

spicynuts — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:33:30 -0800

Does this person exist, relatively cheaply: drupal, PHP, Flash, CSS developer? All rolled into one. I am tired of paying time and materials to outsource new dev/maintenance of our ecomm website. We are a start up and the costs of continued development now look to be about the same as the cost of hiring an in house resource, depending on whether my estimate of salary for this kind of person is accurate or that a single individual that can do all of this exits.

So here is what I would need this single person to be able to do:

1) implement new drupal templates for design of new pages on site
2) write new functionality that uses drupal/php to access database and manage data, users, products, etc
3) our site is an integration of Flash and CSS using a drupal engine - I want someone who can develop/optimize/fix the functionality that uses communication between the Flash customer facing stuff and the back end for transaction management, customer activity, non-transactional features, etc
4) handle day to day changes to pages on site based on promotions or testing of 'stickiness' to see how customers respond..so, like swapping out banners, areas of content, moving content around, etc
5) develop better interfaces for product and content management into drupal and the MySQL database - we use a stupid excel file now and drupal falls apart easily...I'd like to be able to develop some kind of web-based interface that uses php or something to directly into the product database and do our inventory and product management.

Is this completely unrealistic? For example, is this a team of three people rather than one person? If it is one person is this someone who should be earning 150K/annum due to the skill set or is it a lower level salary? Can anyone help me understand what's possible here better?

Open Source Shopping Cart

pinto — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:28:10 -0800

Simple e-commerce solutions. I have a fully built site, with individual webpages pointing to specific product items. I simply want to add a backend shopping cart functionality that resides on the server, without relying on PayPal. Whats the best opensource solution that allows me to pass a variable (ie, add a "Buy This" button to already-designed pages) to a shopping cart php function (inventory isn't necessary at this point) and allowing checkout/payment? Is this possible or is PayPal the easiest way to go without completely
rebuilding my site in an opensource commerce engine (ie OsCommerce)?

I know this has been addressed to some extent before , but I don't think I need a sweeping e-commerce solution, just a cart, checkout, and merchant services (visa/mc) hookup.

What's the easiest shopping cart app to set-up/configure/use?

jbickers — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:23:24 -0800

What's the best/easiest open-source e-commerce program? I'm helping a buddy set up a web store, and I need a great open-source shopping cart app. And it needs to be reeeeeaaally easy to configure - gotta set this up quick, with a minimal amount of tweaking.

Several years ago, I set up one for another friend using OSCommerce. That felt like pulling teeth - poor documentation, lots of trial and error. I looked at Zen Cart at the time, and it looked a lot better, but I don't know how well those products have evolved. PHP is preferred, because of my familiarity with it.

Are there better choices out there? Looking for a cart app that's as easy to set up and run as Wordpress is for blogging. The guy's got between 50 and 100 items, pretty simple stuff - any thoughts? (He's already got credit card acceptance abilities, but again, easy will trump sophisticated in this instance.)

Best solutions for setting up a pay-per-download video service?

superboy422 — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:16:32 -0800

I'm an expert web developer looking to set up my own pay-per-download video service, preferably on a PHP platform. I'll need to be able to provide users with the ability to easily pay for purchases and receive limited access to download their purchased content. I've investigated some pre-baked PHP script options, as well as some micropayment services like BitPass. Ideally a BitPass-esque solution would be perfect, because it would take the delivery/payment processing architecture off my hands, but it's questionable to me whether the BitPass service agreement excludes adult content. My search-fu has turned up contradictory information on this subject, and although the BitPass service agreement doesn't appear to exclude adult-themed content, I'm skeptical.

Has anyone worked with any good (preferably open source) PHP cart solutions that might automate some of the processes that I'm going to need to implement, such as download link generation?

Also, in the realm of payment processing and micropayments, have any of you had any experience in this area? I'd like to get some recommendations for services that would allow me to automate content delivery and payment, while still having a fairly liberal policy in regard to material intended for mature audiences.

PHP Ecommerce software for a coder?

malphigian — Tue, 23 May 2006 06:10:43 -0800

Modifiable out of the box ecommerce software recommendations for a coder, preferably PHP? Apologies in advance, I tend to be wordy in my questions to provide all the information I can.

What I'm looking for: I have a few small scale ecommerce sites in my near future, each having somewhat different requirements and very different designs. I am looking for a free or cheap (under $1,000) ecommerce package that will support all the usual ecommerce functionality (cart, catalog, checkout) out of the box, and which allows for open modification of the code.

As a bonus, I would love something that has significant third party style "plug in" support -- support for payment gateways, POS systems, etc. POS in particular would be valuable (integration with the Quickbooks POS a lot of small businesses use).

Who is going to use it: I'm an experienced PHP coder (as well as java/jsp, but I prefer PHP). I'm also an experienced actionscript coder, but I'm not terribly optimistic about Flash ecommerce. I will be solely responsible for the tech side of these stores.

Like a lot of coders, I have a tendency to say "screw it, I'll just write it from scratch", but I'm trying to remain disciplined here and not reinvent the wheel.

What I've tried in the past: The last time I had this problem I selected os commerce. Oscommerce was awesome because there were so many features supported out of the box and users had made add ons to do pretty much everything I could ever want. However, oscommerce's code was horrifying. I'm generally not a zealot about MVC/rigid display/logic separation, but osc was just a mess, PHP code splattered all through the HTML. The HTML itself was old school nested table hell. That said, I did manage to learn my way around in the mess and overhaul the design. On two different stores.

My dilemma right now is do I deal with the "devil I know" (osc), or face a new one?

I've been reading about Zen Cart (an oscommerce fork that's supposedly cleaner), X-Cart (a cheap smarty template based system), Virtuemart (a mambo based system). But I'm having a problem evaluating them because 99% of the reviews are from non-coders. I don't care how easy it is to change the design without knowing HTML.

So, long background out of the way, any first hand experiences or recommendations for how I should proceed?

PS. I know there seems to be a trend lately to recommend Ruby on Rails for everything in the world. I guess I'm open to that, but I watched the must lauded "15 minute to make foo" demos and wasn't too impressed. I could have knocked out the same apps in PHP in the same time easy, and the code would have been plenty clean. I guess I'm open if there's some huge benefit other than rails being Teh New Shiny.

Looking for a PHP e-commerce store and a decent SSL certificate

spinko — Fri, 05 May 2006 15:32:36 -0800

Looking for a PHP e-commerce store and a decent SSL certificate Right the story goes, I used to do everything in ASP. I now have a dedicated php Linux server and I want to move all my new clients to it.

Im currently using CandyPress (www.candypress.com) ASP store, which does a great job. I need to find a similar store in PHP (no OScommerce). Regarding prices the cheaper the better. Ill need to be able to customise the look and feel to meet my design.

Jizo (www.jizo.co.uk) looked like my cup of tea but its still in beta. Does anyone know any similar ones what do the same or close too.

My dedicated server doesnt have a SSL certificate, do you know any cheap ones that work well. I got a quote of $20 from my other developer but that was with his asp host.

Im moving everything to PHP because I have found that Windows servers are more expensive in the long run.

Thanks for your help in advance.

Online shopping cart minus the kitchen sink?

evil holiday magic — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 16:03:13 -0800

phpHelpFilter: Is CoffeeFool.com based on an existing shopping cart system? I've been tasked with installing a shopping cart system for a small company with a product line probably extending (eventually) to a few dozen individual models. The designer is very picky about clean design and minimalism.

The system at Coffee Fool has been the best I've seen; but I don't know whether it's custom or based on existing designs.

I've tried free, and paid, distributions, such as CubeCart, X-Cart, Agora and osCommerce. I found the process of making them match the designs given to me daunting to say the least. The shopping cart systems I've tried are, out of the box, huge, generic, one-size-fits-all Amazon clones. Is there a cleanly designed shopping cart out there?