Accepting Credit Cards Online

[Collegekid19]

Hi I was wondering if someone could give me an idea of how to do the following:
1) Accept major credit cards on my website. (I have a merchant account already). I basically need a low cost shopping cart feature.
2) I want to offer 1 day, 1 week, and monthly memberships.
3) Provide a user name and password to a customer in order for that customer to access a restricted area of my site.
4) make this whole process safe and secure.

What are some low cost options for me to do this?
I know this sounds like just another porn site, but its actually for a sports site. I need to know what steps I need to take to get this project up and running. Also I am using dreamweaver to design my site... How do I create password protected sites that are safe and secure (for my content that the customer pays for).

[bathurst_guy]

I would use the following:
*PHP
*MySQL
*SSL or possibly PayPal if I didn't have the money for security

[Collegekid19]

could you explain further what you mean by affording security? and approx how much would it cost?

[bathurst_guy]

Well an SSL can be free, but they range around AU$800 - AU$1800 a year from Verisign.
Plus - I'm guessing that the server you are going to be running off isn't yours, so therefore you will need to pay extra money to have a server that is constantly updated and monitored.
Frankly, I would just set up my website with PHP & MySQL, and let PayPal deal will all the money side of it, then I wouldn't have to worry about that. PayPal would just take their %

[JayM]

I would suggest http://www.zencart.com for what you request.

[Collegekid19]

My Host does not support ASP script is that a problem if I want to run Zen cart? They do however support PHP and my mySQL.

[JayM]

ZenCart is written in PHP, not ASP, so you're OK.

[Collegekid19]

Whats the story on Joomla? someone reccomended it to me.