Today at 2:31pm, Ash said:
Are there any good open source account manager/shopping cart projects out
there? I just need a program that can register a new user, remember him next
time (after a log in) and remember their order from last time. I'll need to
keep track of their billing address, but not credit card info. I'll need to
keep track of their past orders. Also, the ability to edit their user info
and add a new order. Also keep a few user defined fields. Php/mysql is fine.
I hate to re-invent the wheel, so any "build it yourself" replies will be
burned with ritualistic fire.
There are arguments for and against building it yourself, just like any
other method. But don't dismiss it so quickly:
- There are a lot of wheels out there, but that doesn't guarantee you'll
find one that fits your needs.
- Anyone else's wheel isn't going to be immediately intuitive to you, so
there will be a learning curve.
- Modifying other people's code is even less fun than it sounds like it
would be.
- Any ready-made solution will almost always either be missing
features you want or need, or have a whole lot of stuff you won't ever
use, and usually both of those apply. The first means you'd have to extend
it after you figure out how they've put it all together, the second means
it is a lot more complex than you want and you may need to try and hack
stuff back out (not as easy as it sounds) without breaking everything.
In my experience, if you don't find something that is nearly exactly what
you're looking for, and you're willing to do it their way, then the time
it takes to learn how to use it, customize it, learn how it's built,
modify it, and test and debug it ends up being a lot longer than what it
would have taken to do it yourself. When you do it yourself, you always
know exactly how it is put together. You usually don't add features you
don't want, nor leave stuff out that you need. So it will do exactly what
you want, no more, no less, and if you need to modify it, you know exactly
how and where to do that. If you're trying to integrate this system into
an existing site or application, you're almost surely better with a do it
yourself solution. Even taking popular and widely used software packages
and trying to make them fit in with the rest of your project can be really
a pain unless you're 100% willing to do it their way. Whatever time you
think it will take you to customize or modify a package to suit your
needs, multiply that time estimate by at least 4 when you compare it to
the time you'd likely spend building it yourself. If you can build one in
a week, but think you'd spend two days or more modifiying package X to
work for you, go with the custom solution every time, cause it will end up
being quicker/cheaper, both in the short run, and in the long run when you
need to make more modifications down the road.
Mac
--
Mac Newbold MNE - Mac Newbold Enterprises, LLC
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.macnewbold.com/
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