Building eCommerce
Well... it's been a heck of a couple of days. I should have written more, but I was just so busy getting things working I didn't have time. Here's what I've been up to: I have built a development eCommerce site with PHP4 and PostgreSQL on tux for North Hollow Farm. It's very simple - you see the entire catalog (which for them isn't much). You select the quantities you want and go to the next page. On this page you check the order items and enter your shipping and billing information - you're in SSL now, and stay that way for the remainder. The next page is a complete order summary, and if you hit continue on this one you are presented with an order confirmation sheet. Your order is in the database, and an email has been sent to the Farm indicating a new order.
It's very simple, very clean, and very nice. I can't imagine where it'll break because it doesn't do a lot of the more complex eCommerce processing steps:
- Card Processing - not a chance, but it's certainly possible if I get hooked up with a card processing gateway. Since Leslie puts the transactions into QuickBooks and it clears them, this is not a bad thing not to have. Sure, if I was Amazon, then I'd need an automated system, but this isn't Amazon.
- UPS Tools - this might be nice, and it's certainly the next thing to look into, but what this would give us is more accurate shipping information and times. The problem is it's all in XML, and while my PHP4 has XML compiled, I'm not sure about the others. Also, there's getting into it and figuring out what they need, and what they provide. It's certainly on the wish list, but it's not required today.
All in all, I'd have to say that this is one of the better pieces of coding that I've done lately. It's nicely laid out, it's fast, simple, and there's almost no possibility that any reasonable web surfer can make a mistake or get lost in it. I've put in tons of well-worded error messages, and even added an administrative side to view orders and update the order status. It's pretty nice.
Now for some well deserved rest and let Leslie have a go at it. Tomorrow I have an interview and will be looking into the XML in PHP4 routines to try and get a handle on the UPS tools.