Never set up an eCommerce site

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Soldato
Joined
9 Nov 2004
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Yeah, so I've never set up an eCommerce site, but I guess it's only a matter of time, and I'm never one to turn down work! I've heard of stuff like oscommerce and zen cart - are there any other PHP-based payment gateways that I need to consider? Are there any decent tutorials on this sort of thing? I've never liked dealing with other people's money so I'd want to get it right!

thanks in advance
 
You'll need:

- An internet merchant account (IMA) from your bank

*and*

- A card capturing service such as protx.com or securetrading.co.uk or one provided by your merchant account provider

*or*

An integrated solution such as Worldpay or even Paypal/Google checkout

You'll also need shopping cart software such as oscommerce/xencart/actinic catalog/similar. These will typically integrate with all the major card capturing service.

The rest is fairly straightforward assuming you're web-savvy :).
 
awesome, thanks for the responses guys - doesn't sound as difficult as I'd thought!
 
I only use PROTX or google checkout, both of which are a doddle to setup. I've only used them with ASP, but the methodology is the same reguardless of language.
 
I think you would be surprised at how much PayPals API's have to offer :) But it's not a "nice" a solution as a real payment gateway.
 
I think I'd rather go for the less branded solutions. I've used card payments with paypal, but I'm not over keen on their branding.

having said that, I've used protx sites before, and they're pretty overbearing too. I'd want to use something that was pretty subtle so as not to detract from the feel of the site. I'll have a look at some of the posted links and see what best fits my needs.

Thanks again for the responses :)
 
Sic said:
I think I'd rather go for the less branded solutions. I've used card payments with paypal, but I'm not over keen on their branding.

having said that, I've used protx sites before, and they're pretty overbearing too. I'd want to use something that was pretty subtle so as not to detract from the feel of the site. I'll have a look at some of the posted links and see what best fits my needs.

Thanks again for the responses :)
Click to expand...
With Protx's VSP Direct, the visitor never leaves their site. We use Protx, for example :)

You've probably seen VSP Form, which is much like a standard Paypal or Worldpay transaction. Paypal Pro and Worldpay Invisible are a couple of alternatives to Protx's VSP Direct, for example.

But don't /ever/ use Worldpay. They cost me a goddamn fortune in time, effort and money over the summer and then decided to hold £2k of our money for 6 months! Took two weeks to persuade them out of that one....
 
Beansprout said:
With Protx's VSP Direct, the visitor never leaves their site. We use Protx, for example
Click to expand...
Where do you stand on things like storing credit card numbers etc. with this method? Also, do you need an SSL cert. for doing it this way?
 
I've set up and currently run 3 shops, all sell expensive watches, 2 used zencart and 1 oscommerce however the 3rd has been merged into zencart as we prefer it. Merchant account is with natwest and we use protx VSPform on all 3 sites. Took a while to set up and we found that protx were completely incompetent and would like to spend time looking for an alternative. The main worry is Fraud which is a big problem until we had something called 3D Secure we got quite a lot but luckily its quite easy to pick them up.
 
Spunkey said:
Where do you stand on things like storing credit card numbers etc. with this method? Also, do you need an SSL cert. for doing it this way?
Click to expand...
The software running your site takes the details from the user and passes them to Protx. So an SSL cert is absolutely required, but you can choose whether or not you store the details - for example if it's just a one-off purchase you probably wouldn't, but if you're offering recurring billing (eg. a monthly service), you probably would (as your software can then take the payments automatically)
 
Beansprout said:
But don't /ever/ use Worldpay. They cost me a goddamn fortune in time, effort and money over the summer and then decided to hold £2k of our money for 6 months! Took two weeks to persuade them out of that one....
Click to expand...

I've used worldpay loads of times. Never had a problem.. In fact their integration and callback methods are incredibly easy to use.

Barclays ePDQ is ok apart from having no test/sandbox facility, meaning you have to use live credit card transactions and then refund them

Google Checkout is fine for simple integration but overly complicated to setup callbacks etc

Its a while since I've used paypal, but from memory their API was pretty good
 
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