On Mon, 11 Sep 2000, Steve Young wrote: > i'd like to set up a web site to sell the surge protectors my company makes, > what all is involved in setting up a site for online buying? Pretty general question, so I'll give you a pretty general answer, and I'll probably forget something. Build your content. Build your website, I use php and mysql for this sort of stuff. Where you go next depends on how you do it. If you use a web hosting site, they may bundle a storefront and secure server. I'd look into using them in that case. If you host your own server, you'll need to get someone to process credit cards for you. People use various solutions, some like Cybercash, some like others. This aspect of a commerce driven site is in my opinion the biggest pain. There's some low cost companies out there, but we've been burned with really clueless design and poor service. We're switching over to skipjack.com, which we get through the merchant account with our bank. They've been generally helpful and seem unusually clueful. Depending on how much you like the pages and service you get with your credit card processing solution (whether their pages integrate acceptably with yours, and you get the information you need back from them and back to the customer) you'll decide whether you need to run a secure web server. Using a secure server adds to your flexibility, but requires a bit more preparation and management than apache alone, and simply running a store front does NOT necessarily mean you need a secure server. That ought to give an idea, though not necessarily a good one. Generally, this is a pretty big project, and should be treated that way. Good Luck, -burk -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Linux File Managers: http://www.pobox.com/~burk/linuxfile.html
Keep in touch with http://mandrakeforum.com: Subscribe the "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" mailing list.
