Order form help please :)

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Hi guys, wondering if anyone is in a position to help me out with a slight problem I have.

Basicly, I'm setting up a web site which requires some order forms. The web site is based on selling kits for home made guitar effects pedals as there are no sites in the UK which do this yet, but the american based sites are making a fortune from it.

To try and maximise sales, I don't want to sell just one standard kit of each pedel, but make each kit customisable by the customer. Things that would be customisable would be things like the colour of the LED when it is switched on, the colour of the knobs for the controls, etc. What I would like, is an order form with drop down menus with the various colours that people can select.

I've tried searching google but without any luck. That is probably due to my lack of knowledge to websire coding.

Thanks in advance if you can help

Steve

 

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There are lots of "shopping carts" available on the 'net.

Where is this going to be hosted? The answer to this will determine quite a bit. Things like: OS? HTTP server? How is CGI handled? What sort of database behind the cart? Security? Handling Credit/Debit/Charge cards? How managed?

Harry.

 

Thanks for the reply.

The website is www.guitar-fx.co.uk but isn't online yet. Until I have a fair few orders, I'm going to be doing the payments using the paypal shopping cart button so people pay through paypal. I think I may have the form sorted out, but it's left me another problem. How am I going to know what options the buyer has choosen for his pedal? I know nothing of web design, and I'm trying to learn as I go along, but it's proving a bit difficult

 

Um - I have to say that doing a web-site that will be collecting money when you have no experience is fraught with difficulties. Such sites are a magnet for fraudsters.

How you know the options chosen will depend on the facilities offered by the hosting site, the facilities offered by paypal, and whether this is all writtten in HTML etc.

I'm not sure of the exact paypal system you are using, but the one I saw briefly claimed to have facilities to handle extra data.

Harry.

 

This *looks* as if you are using 1and1. What additional software are you using from them?

Harry.

 

In order to create a working site you will need to understand a multitude of technologies.

First you will need the standard client or browser stuff, HTML, Javascript, CSS.

You will need a hosting provider, not all hosts are the same, they tend to specialise in renting server space with certain technology stacks eg LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl) or .Net(Windows, IIS, SQLServer, .Net/ASP) or Java.

You will need active content on the server to handle processing the form submission, this can be done with CGI/Perl/C/C++,Java/JSP,.Net,Coldfusion,PHP,VB/ASP etc. You could try to obtain an exisitng eCommerce engine and just customize the look and feel.

You will also need to ensure you have various security features set up like SSL, password encryption, good error handling, secure comms etc.

I would reccomend getting an expert in if you are accepting credit card payments online and have no experience, alternatively consider a phone based site until the business takes off.

 

I'm not using any additional software from them. Just a standard web hosting package. Can't remember the size of web space and traffic that I'm allowed, but it's costing £35 every 6 months.

I started researching about making a form using PHP, but then also noticed that I can choose the options that I want in drop down menu boxes on the paypal site with the 'add to paypal basket' button, and they write all the code out for me. So I'm going to be using that option, then maybe if the site takes off enough, then invest in someone to redo the site taking credit/debit cards directly.

Thanks for your help guys with this that was supposed to take a few hours has now turned into a few days! Well, at least I've been leaning some HTML