Using multiple forms and Database servers for photo ordering in Dreamweaver cc 2015

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Nancy

<My intent is that when the viewer clicks whatever option and submits, that information is first stored on the server, and then presented back to the viewer listed and totaled in a neat page when the go to check out link is clicked. This checkout page, when the viewer press submit, sends an email to them and to me with their complete order.>

That's called a shopping cart.  You need a PCI compliant shopping cart to securely gather sensitive CC data, encrypt it and transmit data to your payment gateway.   Email is not secure.

Start with your merchant bank.  Find out which payment processor you can use with your account.  Then find a 3rd party shopping cart that works with your payment processor -- i.e. Authorize.net, Virtual Merchant, First Data, PayPal, etc...

As an example, ASecureCart works with most major payment processors.  And they have a free 30 day trial.

https://www.asecurecart.net/main/default.aspx

Nancy

1. The pop-up browser: This can be handled as a modal. It would be a hidden div block that becomes visible and positioned over the rest of the page when you click the photo. The div would contain the complete form. Just google jquery modal for many examples.
2. If you want the visitor to keep returning to the same page of images after they have made a purchase selection, then the processing of each selection can be handled by back end code that is contained in the top of the page
3. The back end code would either populate the database with the item selection, or populate a temporary file--perhaps in XML format. You may not want to populate the database with item orders that are not completed. Back-end programming is generally done with PHP. This is a programming language and is more complex to learn and use than HTML.
4. A PHP script can do several things in sequence: store the item selection data, display the accumulated selection data to the user along with the original page of images, email the complete order when finished, and display a thank you message.
5. You say that you are going to process the orders from the emails and not use an "ecommerce site." You must understand that having people send you their credit card details is against the law and could land you in serious trouble. Storing credit card data in your database requires serious expert-level comprehension of how to protect data. Please see https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/