Shopping cart scripts

[acrobson]

Hi all,

 

Hope your still enjoying the Christmas break.

 

The head of IT has asked the technical team to create a demo, web site which has a shopping cart for one of the units they are teaching the A level class under e-commerce.

 

How when she says, demo, she means real thing, and when she says she'll be teaching, she means us to teach her and then she'll pass on the notes!

 

I could either do with a free shopping cart which is V V V easy to implement as web design isn't my side of thing.

 

It is meant to implement with Google checkout, I have offered he buy now buttons which google generates for you, however she won’t have it!

 

Something as simple as a basket, with 'Add to basket links' which then add any items in that basket to google checkout is what I was thinking, but they either cost money - which we all know is a know in education IT or are far too complicated.

 

Any suggestions...? This is one of the management members that gave us each a crate of lager.....i told you they would want something in re-turn! :x

[Edu-IT]

What about osCommerce or Zen Cart? These can be used out of the box so students wouldn't necessarily have to code or design anything which is probably not what you're wanting.

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/

http://www.zen-cart.com/

 

Does the script need to be PHP or ASP?

 

PHP: http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/E-Commerce/Shopping_Carts/index.html

ASP: http://www.hotscripts.com/ASP/Scripts_and_Components/E-Commerce/Shopping_Carts/index.html

[CyberNerd]

I'd use the drupal ecommerce modules, because we use drupal already.

 

Drupal e-Commerce is a package of modules to let you create your own online store. It is totally free, open source, rich featured and flexible.

With e-Commerce, you will be able to:

 

* Shopping cart and product 'look and feel' are themeable

* Create taxes, charges and discounts

* Subscriptions and recurring payments

* Receive donations

* Sell file downloads, shippable items, bundles or even customizable products

* Inventory management

* Payment and shipping plugins: The system can use PayPal, Authorize.net, eWAY, C.O.D. or you can roll your own.

* Invoice generation and email notifications

* Transaction and payment workflows

* Reports and sales summaries

* Customers can review their order history

* Run an auction site

* Charts and Statistics! (Soon...)

 

And more because e-Commerce is designed to be expansible

 

http://www.drupalecommerce.org/

 

All the source code is available (php) for students to learn by (and contribute to).

[acrobson]

EDU-IT:

 

Personally i am just using 'Macromedia dreamwever' as thats what the kids will be using, so i am guessing HTML

[Edu-IT]

EDU-IT:

 

Personally i am just using 'Macromedia dreamwever' as thats what the kids will be using, so i am guessing HTML

I don't think you'll be able to do it in just HTML unless your site uses a payment processor such as PayPal or Google Checkout, which you said isn't a possibility. This is because the shopping cart will need to be dynamic.

[acrobson]

EDU-IT:

 

Personally i am just using 'Macromedia dreamwever' as thats what the kids will be using, so i am guessing HTML

I don't think you'll be able to do it in just HTML unless your site uses a payment processor such as PayPal or Google Checkout.

We are using google chckout, however she isn't too keen on using the google chckout 'buy now' buttons, however we are aiming to use Google checkout for the order processing. We just want something that puts all the selceted items in one place to process all at once, other wise with google checkout they have to purchase each item individually, which is not user friendly.

 

I am trying to get them to adear to good practices at the same time.

[Edu-IT]

If that is what you want to do then you'll need to use a coding language such as PHP or ASP and students may also require access to a database.

[CyberNerd]

I think you'd need to use a 3rd party shopping cart that supports google checkout if no buttons. the current list is here : http://checkout.google.com/seller/integrate_getnew.html

google are working on drupal intrgration, http://drupal.org/node/71568

why no paypal?

[georgebush]

I did something like this at Uni, was a complete pain, ended up using PHP Sessions (for the login/out and cart) coupled with mySql to hold the information on all the stores products and securely store the usernames and passwords(encrypted) for each users account.

 

Took close to 48 hours solid work with instructions (albeit shabby ones) and never did work totally properly. I'd have offered you the code but it was only ever stored on my uni filestore since I could only work on it their labs.

 

If you cant use the google checkout buy it now buttons though you're probally going to have to use the Google API to integrate whatever you design with it.

[acrobson]

Right then... that has given me a lot to think about.

 

I think it may just be worth me checking my contract, as this is not my area. Then explain how me doing all of this could affect response times within the college and then suggest them employing/hiring a third party to do the work and i'll liaise with them, and learn some stuff at the same time!

 

Cheers people for the input.

[CyberNerd]

Right then... that has given me a lot to think about.

 

I think it may just be worth me checking my contract, as this is not my area. Then explain how me doing all of this could affect response times within the college and then suggest them employing/hiring a third party to do the work and i'll liaise with them, and learn some stuff at the same time!

 

Cheers people for the input.

 

WTF? you can have a LAMP/drupal install done within 40mins. installing another module and getting the thing configured really isn't going to take more than a few hours! and requires very little support.

[localzuk]

WTF? you can have a LAMP/drupal install done within 40mins. installing another module and getting the thing configured really isn't going to take more than a few hours! and requires very little support.

 

If he isn't employed to do this, has no experience at this sort of thing and it will add to his workload, then what is wrong with him saying it is not his area, he's got some ideas and will speak to the powers that be and maybe arrange for a third party to install/maintain it?

[CyberNerd]

 

If he isn't employed to do this, has no experience at this sort of thing and it will add to his workload, then what is wrong with him saying it is not his area, he's got some ideas and will speak to the powers that be and maybe arrange for a third party to install/maintain it?

 

There are better ways of not doing any work, my favorite is "sure, when have I been booked onto the training course"

[Edu-IT]

WTF? you can have a LAMP/drupal install done within 40mins. installing another module and getting the thing configured really isn't going to take more than a few hours! and requires very little support.

Would that cover the grading criteria though? From what I understand students will be creating the site in HTML. With Drupal wouldn't the site already be built?

[localzuk]

CyberNerd, what are you going on about? He hasn't got experience of this area, it may not even be his job to do it, so why should he do it?

 

And yes, saying 'when i've been booked on a training course' for something you have no knowledge of is perfectly fine - you cannot be expected to do something you have no knowledge or experience of.

[localzuk]

WTF? you can have a LAMP/drupal install done within 40mins. installing another module and getting the thing configured really isn't going to take more than a few hours! and requires very little support.

Would that cover the grading criteria though? From what I understand students will be creating the site in HTML. With Drupal wouldn't the site already be built?

 

You cannot build a shopping cart system in plain html. You can build static websites and that is it. To do something like a shopping cart, you have to use a language such as PHP or ASP. In order to build a good one you would also need a database server.

 

An example of what you are asking: I did a web course as part of my degree and one aspect was to design and implement a e-commerce website, complete with shopping cart and database backend. This was custom written in Java and took about 200 hours of programming in order to get right. (But considering I was just learning then, it could probably be done by anyone with actual Java knowledge in half that time).

 

So, in order to implement it, you'd either need to implement an existing system - which would leave little for the kids to do, or write your own/have one made, and considering you also want GoogleCheckout tied in (which is not as widespread as Paypal), you are looking more at the latter than the prior.

 

However, that said, if you provide us with a rough outline of what the system must do and what the kids must do then it may be easier to narrow down such a system. My guess is that you want a system that allows you to format web links which pass item details to a generic cart? ie. Next to an item 'A dozen diamond encrusted eggs' you have a 'add to cart' button which sends the name, item code and price to a script?

[acrobson]

Righty then. Outsource it is.

 

Or i could pass it onto the LEA girls and boys to look in to, they get paid more than after all!

[CyberNerd]

Would that cover the grading criteria though? From what I understand students will be creating the site in HTML. With Drupal wouldn't the site already be built?

 

yes, but you can add html to drupal and the ecommerce is just a module.

 

CyberNerd, what are you going on about? He hasn't got experience of this area, it may not even be his job to do it, so why should he do it?

 

obviously I cant talk about another persons contract, but mine covers something about installing software. You should do anything which is reasonable. I'd argue that installing and configuring some ecommerce web server software is reasonable for a technician but writing an ecommerce site from the ground up isn't.