small shopping site advice

[rmedek]

Hello all,

I have a website with a very small shopping section (selling two CDs). I have been using third parties to sell them so far, but I think I'd like to take matters into my own hands.

Most sites I see w/ "e-commerce" are large projects using php or cold fusion, ssl, etc. I have only two products to sell, maybe up to ten in the future. I'm not sure if ssl is required for credit card transactions (it adds a huge cost to my hosting account). I'd like to set something up that is inexpensive, easy to maintain, and most importantly, not overkill. Any advice on how I should go about implementing this?

[Len Whistler]

How about Paypal?

I have used it twice now through Ebay and it's very easy to use.

Leonard Whistler
www.stubby.ca

[rmedek]

I've used it before, too, and it's great... except they charge fees if you want to accept credit cards (which of course I do), and more than a few people have had problems receiving money, accessing balances, etc. (for the record, I've never had a problem).

I'm trying to do something self-contained: a) it lets me be in control, with no fees, customer service problems, etc., and b) it'll give me a good intro to learning about setting up these sort of sites.

[raf]

i don't think your requirements are realistic.

free payment gateways? never heard of any and i doubt that much users would trust some obscure free paymenthandler. Wouldn't it be a lott easier to just add the fee to the products price?
setting one up yourself, without wanting to pay for ssl? i don't think you'd be able to, and it would be a huge effort for just 2-10 products and without ssl to transmit between the client and server, it simply would be so insecure that do sane user would wanna post his cardnumbers on your site.

[mindlessLemming]

I'd recommend getting a third party to handle the transactions. That way you don't need SSL
Here are some options, quoted from various pages

# Web-to-Fax: the easiest and least expensive option. A visitor completes your website order form including credit card information. The form's data is cleaned and sent to your fax machine. For backup, a duplicate of the order (without the credit card number) is sent to you via email. You now process the order as you would any other fax order (note: the credit card information is now exposed at your fax machine).

# PGP (Pretty Good Privacy): a more secure way to manually handle orders. A visitor completes your website order form including credit card information. The form's data is cleaned and sent to you via encrypted email. You have PGP software installed on your computer; you type in your key each time you download orders. The order and credit card information is now exposed for manual processing.



In order to process credit cards from your own site, you need to have several elements all arranged:
1. Secure Socket Layers and an SSL Certificate
2. Internet Merchant Account
3. Payment Gateway
4. Processing Software

...and watch out for dodgy companies (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/archive/thread/256552-1.html)
Just some things to consider :)

[rmedek]

Thanks for the advice, guys... I figured that a third party would be the way to go. I am very new to this side of the web world, though, so I had been wondering if there was some way to do it manually. I also wasn't sure if SSL was the only way to go for security...

So php scripts I've been seeing for shopping carts and the like, are those mainly just ways to get the order info to a credit-card processing site?

[mindlessLemming]

So php scripts I've been seeing for shopping carts and the like, are those mainly just ways to get the order info to a credit-card processing site?
Sometimes. Some will be the fourth step in the list I posted above... all depends on the system.

[raf]

if you take a look at www.hotscripts.com ( http://www.hotscripts.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?bool=AND&query=shopping+cart&catid=2 ) then you'll see there are a loot of free shopping cart which have payment through Paypall and the likes, nicely integrated. All you need then, is to get an account at one of the included gateways.