E-Commerce Question

[tomyknoker]

Hi All,

I have seen heaps of online shopping carts ready made and all that. I am wondering though if you actaully have a merchant account with a financial institution then are these not needed? Do you just need to set up a database, say with php/mysql... Which people can order of, and then when they place the order link it up to your own merchant account? My bank has this and just wondering if this would be all I'd need? http://www.national.com.au/Business_...,23513,00.html

Cheers!

[djr33]

Dunno. If it works, then great. Try it. We can't tell you if a particular service works or does what you need, unless we have happened to use it ourselves. (I have not.)

Generally, you could create a database and store information and use an outside site for the actual business end of things.

However, once you start dealing with payment, I REALLY wouldn't trust non-professional code.

Coding your own "let's play with credit cards page" just seems like a really stupid idea. I wouldn't want to do this myself. Now... it IS possible, but just asking for trouble, I say.


Remember, your host may offer (for additional costs, usually) options for this.

[tomyknoker]

So then could I use something like http://www.oscommerce.com/ as it's a template, and then use this with a payment gateway, say the one from my bank if they offer it?

[codeexploiter]

So then could I use something like http://www.oscommerce.com/ as it's a template, and then use this with a payment gateway, say the one from my bank if they offer it?

That would be a nice idea because osCommerce is one of the best open source shopping cart application which is free to download and use. This product has got a large user community and lots of manuals are available in the net.

[tomyknoker]

It seems quite big, can you strip it back to only bits on the cart that you need? Does it rely on php/mysql?

[codeexploiter]

Its a full featured shopping cart application that can be customized in such a way that it fits for your purposes.

But if you are dealing with shopping cart applications most of them are large

[tomyknoker]

Has anyone ever heard of this one http://www.cubecart.com