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Bes

Bes

Bes

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
7,318
Location
Melbourne
Hi

I am trying to develop a site where a user can take a product, customise it, and then buy it. This requires a shopping cart that allows me to break up the workflow with my own pages in the middle or have a shopping cart with a single item in the 'store' to add to the cart at the end.

The alternative it to write my own. This would seem easier than trying to shoehorn a pre- built solution in. Are there any decent tutorials out there to show how to do this?

Thanks
 
Not sure on any tutorials but when I did it about 2 years ago I didn't follow a specific shopping cart tutorial but just read up on sessions.
Basics of it all are :

Start session when page loads
Store their shopping cart in a session array, item id, item amount
The shopping cart is just going through the session array and pulling data from the database and you have the usual edit / delete item which is just altering the session data.

What type of customisation are you looking at for the items?

Sorry if this post seems like im talking to you as if you don't know PHP but I don't know your level of coding! :)
 
I'd suggest customising the "product page" section of an off the shelf cart then add the item to the basket once all the configuration is complete.

The basket will need to support arbitrary data on each item line (not that unusual a requirement).

The real question is will the customisations affect the price of the item? (rather than just picking the colour or some such) If so it's going to be tricker. A separate item (sku) for each combination would work, and you'd only have to customise the product page again. Or you could have a basket line for the base item, and extra lines for the customisations. (this would show up as separate lines on the order, and invoice).

Writing your own basket is not a task to be undertaken lightly, it takes a lot of time and effort to get right (both in code & usability), and has a huge impact on your revenue stream.

If your able to reveal more details about the nature of the customisations, or the billing process we should be able to help more :)

akakjs
 
+ if you are taking on-site payments your bank will want PCI compliancy and you will have to get your cart approved.
 
Hi,

Thanks for the replies.

No customisations do not increase price.

The actual site is for designing invitations online (Helping my GF get a little bit of side work going). She already does this locally and her designs are very popular, so she wants to try and expand online).

The idea is you select a basic invitation (like wedding, birthday, or whatever) and then customise the text on the invitation and select some adjustable bits of art, etc on the invitation (This already works fine and all info is held in a PHP session) and then send the whole order to a single address (for now).

As Akakis says, I do like the idea of trying to insert the customisation part into the workflow of the cart.

As for software, I am playing with a CubeCart 4 demo, but it is very hard to modify. I want to stay away from OSCommerce (A fork of OSCommerce IIRC) as I have heard horror stories about security breaches and such.
 
Last edited:
gord said:
+ if you are taking on-site payments your bank will want PCI compliancy and you will have to get your cart approved.
Click to expand...

Contrary to what a lot of information says, PCI compliance is not actually required to take card payments. Most banks and processors will simply load your transaction fee by any extra 0.5-1%, which in most cases, is much cheaper than going through SAQ D at least.

Worldpay lost their PCI compliance recently from Visa (or it was taken away from them)... and they don't seem to have trouble taking payments. ;)
 
Anyone able to help any more? I need help in what is the best actual product to use really.

Thanks :)
 
daz said:
Contrary to what a lot of information says, PCI compliance is not actually required to take card payments. Most banks and processors will simply load your transaction fee by any extra 0.5-1%, which in most cases, is much cheaper than going through SAQ D at least.

Worldpay lost their PCI compliance recently from Visa (or it was taken away from them)... and they don't seem to have trouble taking payments. ;)
Click to expand...

True enough. My current project has low transaction numbers and high item costs so my mindset is on reducing any % I can.
 
gord said:
+ if you are taking on-site payments your bank will want PCI compliancy and you will have to get your cart approved.
Click to expand...

Not just your cart, but you'll need the entire hosting platform audited (normally automatically) which is a pain as they don't take into account backported patches and simply look at version numbers.

Just use an external, skinnable, payment provider - or make sure you can tick the "I don't store card details" if you use a "direct" method like Protx Direct or PayPoint API.
 
philjohn said:
Just use an external, skinnable, payment provider - or make sure you can tick the "I don't store card details" if you use a "direct" method like Protx Direct or PayPoint API.
Click to expand...
The "I don't store card details" appears to be quite a grey area. Technically details are always stored in order to transfer them from the cart to the PSP (with on-site payment like VSP Direct) and this seems to be a topic of debate.

Bes, as for the best product thats quite debatable too, but I would suggest looking at Interspire, X-Cart, Trading Eye and Magento.
 
Because every free version I have seen has issues:

Magento= slow
ZenCart/ OSCommerce= history of security issues

Interspire= expensive
XCart has more modifications available and has no limits on product numbers.

Any reason you do not reccommend it?

Thanks
 
I think you are right. But I think the additional cost of the Interspire product is offset by its appearance and ease of use both front and back end. That was quite important for me because the users are not technically minded.
 
Ok but there are other features I want- for instance XCart allows integration with aMember Pro for VBulletin/ CMS integration... Interspire cannot offer this.
 
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