E-Commerce Project Phase 1 - Dedicated Servers With SS2..

Chandler_90

Chandler_90

Chandler_90

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I've just sorted a deal to build an e-commerce for a new clothing distribution company in the UK.. and thus far I have not actually built an e-commerce site but have had decent experience with building websites.

I have decided to start from the ground up..
The guys already have the name registered, which is handy, so as far as I'm aware I now have to find a dedicated server as the site will no doubt have a decent amount of traffic.
As the site will require a Secure Socket Layer and a Dedicated server is it a good idea to purchase a dedicated server that will offer SS2 as well?

Having looked around at a few posts before submitting this thread I have become aware of companies such as Vidahost and Register 1.. but what are the other recommendations?

I would like to keep costs down if possible, does anyone have a rough idea or experience of what sort of traffic I could expect per month? I'm presuming that 50GB - 75GB will be more than enough.. but to be honest I'm basing that on website hits alone and not transaction traffic.

Any help with this will be greatly appreciated as this is a pretty big project for me and I'm hoping to make a good job of it.

No doubt there will be more threads from me in the future on this subject.. I'm only just starting to look into payment gateways/Inter Merchant Accounts and Card Handling facilities now.

At the moment I'm just gathering facts and figures to put into a cost forecast document, I will make sure that anyone who helps me with this project gets a mention on the site itself!

Thanks,

Ray
 
50Gb would be easily sufficient unless the site contains lots of large high-res images :)

Also - is it wise to generate the system from the ground up given that it's your first ecommerce project and that they're a startup? You could have an undue effect on their operations should your system take longer than estimated to develop, or have any serious errors - not what a startup needs :)

I would look into something like X-Cart (.com) - excellent software, and all the source is open so you can fiddle away :)

Just my £0.02 - good luck :)
 
Beansprout said:
50Gb would be easily sufficient unless the site contains lots of large high-res images :)

Also - is it wise to generate the system from the ground up given that it's your first ecommerce project and that they're a startup? You could have an undue effect on their operations should your system take longer than estimated to develop, or have any serious errors - not what a startup needs :)

I would look into something like X-Cart (.com) - excellent software, and all the source is open so you can fiddle away :)

Just my £0.02 - good luck :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for your advice..
By building from the ground up I was meaning in general, there is no way I would attempt to build an e-commerce system on my first attempt for, as you pointed out, it would probably take a very long time to tweak and iron out the bugs.

I am going to impelement a 3rd party system such as OSCommerce, Cube Cart or, as you mentionned, X-Cart as at the minute the company would like to keep costs as low as possible.
I was looking into purchasing Actinic as I have used it in a job before and found it to be a decent setup, however the cost of 900ish pounds put a hurdle in the way of that.

At the minute I'm just compiling a forecast document with a number of options for the company to consider.. however I am, as stated above, looking to get the background issues such as payment gateways and card handling fully covered before beginning the actual site construction.
This is just to ensure that the site functions correctly when processing data and generally operating.

Again thanks for your input.. I'm gonna need help through this at times and I will keep you guys updated on how things are going. :)
 
osCommerce is very good you shouldn't have any major problems with it, plus their forums are very helpful. The only problem is that it's a pain to integrate extra features into it, there isn't a proper plug-in system so you often have to hack the PHP files your self. But I'm not complaining, I get paid to do it ;)
 
Chandler_90 said:
Thanks for your advice..
By building from the ground up I was meaning in general, there is no way I would attempt to build an e-commerce system on my first attempt for, as you pointed out, it would probably take a very long time to tweak and iron out the bugs.

I am going to impelement a 3rd party system such as OSCommerce, Cube Cart or, as you mentionned, X-Cart as at the minute the company would like to keep costs as low as possible.
I was looking into purchasing Actinic as I have used it in a job before and found it to be a decent setup, however the cost of 900ish pounds put a hurdle in the way of that.

At the minute I'm just compiling a forecast document with a number of options for the company to consider.. however I am, as stated above, looking to get the background issues such as payment gateways and card handling fully covered before beginning the actual site construction.
This is just to ensure that the site functions correctly when processing data and generally operating.

Again thanks for your input.. I'm gonna need help through this at times and I will keep you guys updated on how things are going. :)
Click to expand...
Don't use Actinic - it's about 17 years out of date, give or take a century :)

X-cart uses Smarty templating, so it's nice and easy - especially compared to Oscommerce, which is a total & repetitive mess :)

Regarding payment, Protx ( http://www.protx.com/ ) is a very good place to start looking and researching - they're pretty good, and very good value.
 
Another vote for protx here, masses cheaper than most other gateways, however their uptime isn't perfect (and their online server status tool lies...), having said that its been a few months since they last went down.

akakjs
 
Looking into this further, feeling pretty tired too so this may be completely irrelevant.

I'm at this moment in time doing a bit of research into Payment Gateways and Merchant accounts.

Is it my understanding that Payment Gateways are used to process the transactions and the merchant account is there to recieve the funds?

As looking into the merchant accounts at HSBC they appear to offer payment processes included in the accounts..
Not too sure if I'm getting this wrong??

I'm mainly looking at HSBC, Natwest and Barclays as the Merchant account handlers.. are there any other banks out there that are worthy of consideration?
 
Sorry to hijack the thread, but saw Protx mentioned.... Had contacted their support twice and never got an answer so gave up. I was looking for info on recurring payments, to see if they handled them as everything else about them seemed cool but couldn't get this info and figured they didn't as they didn't bother getting back to my two email enquiries. Anyone know if they can handle recurring payments at all or is it single transactions only?
 
I would suggest using cubecart, or X-cart as said above. Personally i'd avoid OSC having used it before and now moved onto vubecart based systems now.

As for payment gateways, surely this clothing distribution company must have a merchant account for taking money, all you need to do is implement it within the site, things like Cubecart have gateways built in making it easy.

I'm a little concerned that what they want, and what they are prepared to pay are miles apart, £900 isnt a lot for software, yes its more than the £60ish for cubecart or free for OSC but it then depends how much work you have to do customising it from there.

You will find that 50GB is a massive ammount of traffic, i dont know how many hits you expect to get but i doubt youll use 50gb in a year with a new site, let alone a month!
 
Chandler_90 said:
I'm mainly looking at HSBC, Natwest and Barclays as the Merchant account handlers.. are there any other banks out there that are worthy of consideration?
Click to expand...
A little birdie told me Barclays have a special offer on at the moment for merchant account registration, so I'd give them a call :)
 
Right.. I really need to crack on with this!

Thanks for all the info so far.. however there is one more thing that I need some info on.

I'm not sure about actual hosts..
Does anyone have any recommendations for a dedicated server host?
I really only know about Fast Hosts..
Would just like a few more options :)
 
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