Question
Shopping Cart Suggestions?
I am completing my new website
theArtisansGroup.com. At
first I developed it for a non-integrated PayPal cart (where the
cart is hosted on PayPal) but now I'm thinking I need something
integrated directly into my site.
I would love to just choose some easy-to-config shopping cart solution but I have two problems:
1. The site is already designed, and I really like the design. In particular I like the way the images are displayed, with two alternative images below the main image. The site sells hand-made jewelry so it's so important to offer multiple closeup views of the same product. In fact I'm even thinking of adding an fourth image. I don't think I've seen any shopping carts that let me offer 3 or 4 additional views of a product.
2. This is the real kicker. I don't maintain the content. Each participating artist is responsible for uploading his/her own content and images. I wrote a listing service using PHP and Flash and it is seamless and simple. It resizes and files images and puts content into the MySQL DB. I've never used a shopping cart but it seems like they are built around a "system admin" type of paradigm which wouldn't work for my artists.
Is there some shopping cart solution or DW extension out there that can work within my framework? Should I develop my own? If so, where should I begin? Maybe there's a book out there, or some tutorials? I'm particularly worried about security for obvious reasons.
Thanks very much to the gurus on this one. My site can't go live until I figure this one out.
-jheske
I would love to just choose some easy-to-config shopping cart solution but I have two problems:
1. The site is already designed, and I really like the design. In particular I like the way the images are displayed, with two alternative images below the main image. The site sells hand-made jewelry so it's so important to offer multiple closeup views of the same product. In fact I'm even thinking of adding an fourth image. I don't think I've seen any shopping carts that let me offer 3 or 4 additional views of a product.
2. This is the real kicker. I don't maintain the content. Each participating artist is responsible for uploading his/her own content and images. I wrote a listing service using PHP and Flash and it is seamless and simple. It resizes and files images and puts content into the MySQL DB. I've never used a shopping cart but it seems like they are built around a "system admin" type of paradigm which wouldn't work for my artists.
Is there some shopping cart solution or DW extension out there that can work within my framework? Should I develop my own? If so, where should I begin? Maybe there's a book out there, or some tutorials? I'm particularly worried about security for obvious reasons.
Thanks very much to the gurus on this one. My site can't go live until I figure this one out.
-jheske
