php shopping carts

cyjetsu

I am new to php, in fact just about to start studying it. Mainly right now I am interested in developing shopping carts and forums and using and modifying existing ones. I have come across some shopping carts you can buy such as:
http://www.x-cart.com/
and
http://www.viart.com/
Are these worth buying? Or are they just WYSIWYG editors that are the equivalent of dreamweaver and frontpage for html. And you can hand-code php just as well or even better without these software packages.

I have heard lots of demand for x-cart, so would I have to buy xcart software to use xcart on client sites, or can I just use open-source scripts that are x-cart?

NogDog

For an open source solution, you might want to take a look at Zen Cart.

cyjetsu

I will start learning my own but it will take me some time before I learn it enough to build one security proof enough not to be full of holes that give access to customers credit info to unwanted persons which will result in me getting sued.

So I shall look at the open source ones. I have heard zencart and oscommerce are almost identical. But they seem most popular so I will look at them.

But I have noticed many companies use x-cart. Would I be able to modify and use xcart with clients without buying xcart software?

NogDog

X-Cart's license is per site (domain), so you would need to purchase it for each web site on which you want to use it.

blackhorse

zen cart was start by programmers who left os commerce team, I think. They are close. But I like zen cart better. More sites use zen cart or os comerce than particular commercial shopping cart I think. Without particular reasons to buy certain commecial shopping cart, why just try zen cart first?

what do you mean by worrying "that give access to customers credit info to unwanted persons which will result in me getting sued." do you mean that your shopping cart system are going to handle and save "credit card" information itself? No, you should not do that.

A lot of issues you need to think about. the script, the server, hosting, and database the law etc. Not just buy x-cart or use zencart can settle down these concerns. You would need a big budget, and a good tech team to make a system meet the security standard and pass the evaluation to manage the credit card transaction yourself. This is mostly for big companies.

For most small to middle size online shoppin business even you have done everything you can to make your shopping cart safe, you still should use 3rd party payment gateway service to handle credit card payments. zencart, oscommerce etc. they would offer built in interface to popular 3rd party payment gateway service in their system.

cyjetsu

Thanks for the info, I will check out zen cart first since it seems to be quite popular among open source community. I know next to nothing about carts and the process. I presume the php cart system simply acts as a transfer bridge, where credit data gets sent to the php system and immediately sent somewhere else. But someone could still infiltrate the system to make it also send data somewhere else.

The carts would be for clients, not myself as I am starting a design business, when I say business it is really just me not a whole tech team. So I understand I have a lot of work ahead of me. I would only be starting with developing sites+carts for small ecommerce shops, from home businesses to very small companies, then in the future when I work on bigger ecommerce projects I would need to expand my team or outsource some of the work.

I have found many tutorials on developing php carts but I cant find much about things like law and non technical issues. So any additional information you can give me that dosn't pop up in tutorials but is essential knowledge let me know. Not asking anyone to do my research for me, just give me a couple of pointers in the right direction that might help a begginer avoid common errors(especially ones that could result in me getting sued)

blackhorse

well, the law is different depends on you are in usa, canada or Europe. on top of all the other security approaches you would take, when you use the 3rd party payment gateway, you can send the shopping items, quantity, and address information from your cart to the 3rd party payment gateway interface, and only when client on the 3rd party payment gateway interface, then they would input credit card number there. this way, your shopping cart system never handle the credit card number.

3rd party payment gateway would also has the interface to accept you send the credit card information from your cart to their interface through https (3rd party payment gateway would have the interface pages you could install, and the good payment gateway services would check it out before they allow you to use it.) and zen cart would have these interface already built in.