[The Mitchell]

Ok so i have built the entirity of my site for a record label. im currently working into the store section of the page and looking at A) tutorials to integrate my own shopping cart function and premade solutions which i can simply integrate with my site. I guess basicaly my question is what are the advantages of a premade store. there are very few functions i need from the store and i believe i am getting to a point where i am understanding mysql connections and queries etc with the database and how to manipulate the data sing php. If i can i would like to build the cart myself however i am wondering mainly if there may be security issues with this or other problems i may encounter. if security issues are a problem then an prebuilt store may be my only option as i want to m ake things secure as possible for my customers obviously.
thanks in advance folks

[BlueDreamer]

While writing your own cart scripts is perfectly doable it can be a long complex process if your needs are complex.

The advantage of using premade software is that it's usually been well tried and tested, secure, is still being actively developed, and most importantly comes with direct develoepr support for when you encounter problems. The fact that XYZ shopping cart has a zillion features you'd probably never use shouldn't be a barrier. The important thing is finding something that's going to work for your business. As an example of all the ecommerce sites I've built for customers very few use up to 75% of the carts features.

This post has been edited by BlueDreamer: 07 April 2010 - 08:16 PM

[rallport]

BlueDreamer, on 07 April 2010 - 08:15 PM, said:

While writing your own cart scripts is perfectly doable it can be a long complex process if your needs are complex.

The advantage of using premade software is that it's usually been well tried and tested, secure, is still being actively developed, and most importantly comes with direct develoepr support for when you encounter problems. The fact that XYZ shopping cart has a zillion features you'd probably never use shouldn't be a barrier. The important thing is finding something that's going to work for your business. As an example of all the ecommerce sites I've built for customers very few use up to 75% of the carts features.

Kind of agree and disagree with that.

Especially for ecommerce, I always write my own stuff. This isn't a pain even if the requirements are complex (although, a shopping cart really needn't be complex) as I have a kind of template made for my cart. E.g. jst the bare bones such as updating the whole cart, applying discounts, links to increment the quantity of an item in your cart etc. All the basics that I can get up and running easily.

Not sure that this will apply to everyone, but I've personally had loads of people come to me because they've applied and update or fix to cart system xxx and its buggered everything up.

Just my opinion, I'm sure others will differ.