PHP for shopping carts?

aaron_karp

Since I've started learning and developing with PHP, it's come to my attention that I can build a shopping cart for my clients now. I was wondering, however, if there are any implications of using PHP instead of ASP for this type of task? I generally see more ASP e-commerce sites than PHP ones (in fact, I see very few PHP shopping sites at all). Is there any reason for this? Does it have something to do with the public license?

nozom

I build all of my shopping carts in php, works great. It's just a language not a product as such so there shouldn't be any problems.

ta,
hugh

aaron_karp

Thanks. That's reassuring. Since you seem to really know what you're talking about, do you think you could give me some advice on how to start allowing credit card transactions for customers? I can build the shopping carts myself, but I know that I need some 3rd party to communicate with the banks and credit card companies. To be honest, I don't really know how this works.

What service do you use? How easy is it to set up, and how does it integrate with the checkout form? I assume you just use hidden fields to pass the order information by email to the client, but how does the credit card info get to the bank?

Thanks
-Aaron

nozom

I've always used the worldpay system http://www.worldpay.com.

They seem reasonably priced and reliable. + I’ve only had good experiences with their customer services when i was starting out.

I'm sure there are better but they often require more financial risk to set up.

hope that helps,
Hugh