[alistairfellowes]

I've never used the shopping carts you can buy, and I'm going from using PayPal one one site, to developing a new site and for the first time using a Payment Gateway and encoding, with the help of a book, my own PHP, SQL, SSL to create a secure payment shopping cart...

What's the pitfalls?

[necrobyter]

Hiya,

I don't think it's that risky but you should always consider carefully your motivations for doing so.

As a beginner you are going to need to get quickly up to speed with securing data via SSL and dealing with payment providers over secure connections etc...

Open source solutions like Magento have all this available out of the box and a great range of templates available, which you can customise with little know how.

Is there a specific reason you want to build this rather than use an Open Source technology? Magento is my fav but there are loads of options.

[alistairfellowes]

I don't mind using open source technology like you mentioned, but I'd very much like to be proficient in PHP SQL SSL so that I can have more control. No major reason. I have an e-commerce book with tutorials in on two shopping carts that I'm working through.

[Ste Hughes]

You as a one man band will not create something as good as opencart of prestashop or what ever...

They have years and many men on you.

Just learn to theme opencart effectively. Its extremely easy and you can almost do anything.

Themeing for opencart will teach you plenty of PHP Its a great system to use to start with.

[alistairfellowes]

I think I'll have to have a look into open source carts Thanks

[alistairfellowes]

What's your opinion on shared and virtual private servers with e-commerce?

[rallport]

I think it's a good thing he's trying to understand how an ecommerce sites works before using something that is already written for him.

This came out recently when we were interviewing for a new web developer. One candidate described themselves as an "ecommerce expert", they used Opencart. All fine, until I asked them a small question that would require them to amend a little code in an opencart controller and template file. They had no idea what I was talking about, saying they would just edit the html template files.

Now that's quite scary really as it shows a huge gap in understanding of how opencart works - imagine you have an ecommerce site built in opencart by someone how doesn't have extensive knowledge of how to extend opencart - you're knackared. Same goes for Magento, if not more so, as that is a lot more complicated than opencart.

However, if you have a good understanding of how an ecommerce store works and flows, from the ground up you at least know where to start to look. This is just the actual shopping cart. You then have all the PSP integration methods that vary greatly. With that comes lots of considerations on what SSL certificate to use and PCI compliance.

For open source carts one of the big areas to pay particular attention to is how complicated the admin area is and how much control would you want a client to have. Granted, Magento is a great piece of software, but the admin area is insanely complicated and it's brought some people I've met to their knees.

The majority of clients I deal with have little knowledge and need a good couple of hours for me to go through a basic admin area (I always built this time into prices) that is a lot simpler than opencart for example. I really wouldn't like to start showing my clients how to use something like Magento.

Opensource vs bespoke is one of those areas that sounds like a total no brainer initially, bit in reality there are lots of other things to factor in.

I'm not against using an open source piece of software, I'm against people who blindly use open source software who have little understanding how it functions behind the scenes.

[TamVo]

If you're creating an ecommerce site for clients it's easier to get existing ones.
There are a lot of opensource carts you could use but if you don't want to mind the hassle of managing server yourself with backups and such you can go for hosted carts. ex: magento/solidshops/spiffystores

hope you find what you need

[rallport]

TamVo, on 28 September 2011 - 07:40 PM, said:

If you're creating an ecommerce site for clients it's easier to get existing ones.
There are a lot of opensource carts you could use but if you don't want to mind the hassle of managing server yourself with backups and such you can go for hosted carts. ex: magento/solidshops/spiffystores

hope you find what you need

Are your clients ok with a mamoth control like Magento? Are you ok giving them lots of controls with the possibility of buggering things up?

[TamVo]

rallport, on 28 September 2011 - 09:02 PM, said:

Are your clients ok with a mamoth control like Magento? Are you ok giving them lots of controls with the possibility of buggering things up?

I know magentocommerce.com and solidshops.com have the options to give different permissions for different logins so you can avoid shopowners messing around the layout.

[Dx3webs]

alistairfellowes, on 26 September 2011 - 01:28 PM, said:

I've never used the shopping carts you can buy, and I'm going from using PayPal one one site, to developing a new site and for the first time using a Payment Gateway and encoding, with the help of a book, my own PHP, SQL, SSL to create a secure payment shopping cart...

What's the pitfalls?

I guess the pitfalls are you create a bunch of insecure code that exposes a load of client data to bad guys.

having said that .. I think it would be a great exercise.. however, have you considered looking at the zend framework and getting to know this. once you have that under control you can branch out in to any of the projects that build on this. I was speaking to a college who was recruiting PHP devs the other day. They are mainly a magento house but the were really looking for those with good framework skills who they could train up to be magento devs.

hope this helps

[rallport]

Dx3webs, on 03 October 2011 - 11:26 AM, said:

I guess the pitfalls are you create a bunch of insecure code that exposes a load of client data to bad guys.

having said that .. I think it would be a great exercise.. however, have you considered looking at the zend framework and getting to know this. once you have that under control you can branch out in to any of the projects that build on this. I was speaking to a college who was recruiting PHP devs the other day. They are mainly a magento house but the were really looking for those with good framework skills who they could train up to be magento devs.

hope this helps

He's learning PHP/HTML and you recommend he jumps into the deep end and uses Zend?

[Dx3webs]

well... more of an aspirational target than a recommendation

[Gaelen]

I've recently started working on an opencart site (locally) and I have to say you may want to look at something like this. Complicated enough to get your feet wet yet easy enough to have some fun (like im doing)

[rallport]

Gaelen, on 07 October 2011 - 09:59 PM, said:

I've recently started working on an opencart site (locally) and I have to say you may want to look at something like this. Complicated enough to get your feet wet yet easy enough to have some fun (like im doing)

That's exactly what I mean. If you've ever built a system from scratch you'll know exactly what goes into an ecommerce site, will know how to better trouble shoot things etc. Even if you ultimately end up using a off the self solution, you'll be in a much better place to start with. For instance, if you know about the MVC style of coding, you'll find Opencart much easier to update and add functionality to.

Remeber, whatever system you choose, it's you who'll need to proivide support and updates to it for the client.

This is one of my biggest annoyances about companies jumping into the whole Magento boat. Yes, it's an amazing system that can do everything, but it's inheranty huge and complicated.

I'm currently in the process of updating a clients website - currently hosted with a web company based in Essex who the client wants to get rid of pronto. LIke many other companies, the company in question has jumped on the Magento boat and sold every feature to the client. Result: a £6,500 website that has been setup craply, the client has given up on the Magento admin area as it's too complicated. The web companies response - "there are lots of resources online to help you".

My client wanted to customise some of the invoice and order conformation emails to match that of New Look too. The company in question told my client that this wasn;t possible in Magento. When I called them up to tell them otherwise, they were shocked.

If you;re going to be using such a large and complicated system you have to have the knowledge to support it. I'm talking about the knowledge to install plugin xxxxx to achieve your required functionality. I'm talking about knowledge of inner workings of Magento and how to add custom functionality.

Went off track a little there, but companies who sell the Magento experience (E.g. it's great, it can be anything etc.) need to have the knowedlege to support it and train clients on how to use the complicated admin area.