Writing mom a PHP website...please help

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Hi all. My mother is attempting to sell on etsy with no success. I offered to build her a site, and she accepted.

I plan on writing something in php since that's pretty much all I know right now. The layout will be displaying products for sale in a table. Nothing fancy.

I have 2 questions:
1. Mom has paypal. Would she benefit from some sort of shopping cart software, or will paypal be sufficient?

2. I would add an admin area for her to add product descriptions and pictures. I'm scared that it won't be secure. I know very little about php security. What should I look into?
#programming #mom #php #website #websiteplease #writing
  • I would suggest you save yourself a huge amount of time and energy and look into one of the Open Source shopping cart offerings out there. Many of them are written in PHP so you have the skills already if you need to tweak them, but the security etc has already been taken care of.

    You should be able to find plenty of resources on Google, and if you need somewhere to start, have a look at osCommerce - it's as good a place as any to start.

    [NOTE: I'm not looking to start a "widgetCart is better than wotsitCart" debate...! ]

    I would build a few sites on a local host and try out the various offerings and see which one you like best from the point of view of installation, customisation, etc. Once you have a favourite, stick with it and get to know it inside out.

    Hope this helps!

    Kind regards,
    -John.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • I should add, if you REALLY, REALLY, REALLY have to do this yourself for whatever reason (please don't - you'll thank me later! ) then I can highly recommend Larry Ullman's "PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Websites".

    -John.
  • Thanks John. Most importantly, I'd like to get mom's site up. Secondly, I am interested in applying some of the things I've picked up at PHP, which I'm sure I can accomplish by trudging through some open source code. I'll let you know what I find. Thanks again.
  • As has been mentioned already you will be "reinventing the wheel" and you will get hacked. By all means write the site yourself if you are selling single items using PayPal and shipping after you know you have been paid. If you want a shopping cart and/or digital delivery use something pre-built and well tested.
  • try to use zencart, magento etc , they ll work for you. for better security you can use SSL , and one more thing most of the shopping carts have paypal integrated
    • [1] reply
    • Like they said already, don't reinvent the wheel. There are some really good open source carts available.
      I would upload to your host, build up a site with out publishing to the web, test it out with your Mom's products, and see how it looks.
      Most of these have Paypal already integrated along with regular credit cards.

      I did a quick google search "list of open source shopping carts" and found lots of free or open source shopping carts.

      This is a good free one
      • [1] reply
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    Writing mom a PHP website...please help

    Hi all. My mother is attempting to sell on etsy with no success. I offered to build her a site, and she accepted. I plan on writing something in php since that's pretty much all I know right now. The layout will be displaying products for sale in a table. Nothing fancy.