E-Commerce Site

[cstickman]

I have a general question. My buddy and I have an idea for a website. I do have some programming knowledge (HTML & Javascript). I was wondering what language do I want to learn to be able to do an E-commerce site similiar to amazon.com. We want different vendors to sell on our site a certain product and to have a rating system for the vendors and a message board about the different items. We would also like to have payment processing at the site and for each vendor to be able to log in and transfer there money to their accounts. I understand having the Secured site portion and Merchant accounts setup. That is not a problem for us. So what language or group of languages would I have to learn in addition to HTML and Javascript? Someone said PHP and MySQL would do the trick, but would that be able to do all that I am requesting or would I have to learn another language for the billing end of it. Any advice on how to get started with this project would be greatly appreciated. This project we understand will not be up overnight. I want to take my time and learn the language and make a demo site first to see how it will all work. We have lots of time this will be more of a hobby for us then to make money. If it takes us a year to deploy the demo version that is fine with us. We are planning on running the web servers ourself using Apache on either an XP system or a Linux System as I know both operating systems. We would be getting a T1 line installed for it and using Cisco Routers and two DNS servers for the project. Thanks in advance for your help and input.

[afmook]

I'm new to php/mysql but from what I understand that should suit your purposes fine. The problem (if any) is just how to set up the payment processing. I've never done that part of it and I wouldn't honestly know where to look for that.

MySQL and php really should cover what you need. I wouldn't even use javascript unless you use it for simple form checking.

[jamestmfbong]

The payment processing works like this:
you basically submit a form with the correct input names.
<form name=http://www.yourmerchangeservices.com/receivePayments.cgi>
<input type=hidden name=member_ID value="your unique ID #">
<input type=hidden name=total_cost value="value generated from php">
</form>
you just have to match the name accordingly when you want to receive the payments.

and for the programming language, you should stick with PHP because PHP is today's web standard. It'll be the quickest way to make get your shopping mall or whatever up and running.

How many of you are working? How is your budget status? You know that a T-1 line will cost you at least $500++/month with at least a 2 year contract? That's about $15000 for the whole contract term. How fast can you make it the software? Do you have the motivation to keep up? Seems like you will need a networking technition, a web programmer, GUI artist as a bare minimum. And all three of you are going to have to communicate a lot and motivated, otherwise the project will fall apart and you will be left with a 2 year contract with Verizon or whatever ISP. It may be wiser to request professional consultation on this matter, if you are willing to get the T-1 line. I've seen friends who'd start up all motivated in the beginning, and fall apart in the end. End up with a really bad credit score. Anyway, good luck.

[cstickman]

Thank you both for your input. After discussing it with my buddy we decided to stay small at first and we found a hosting company that will host the site for us. We think this is a better way to go and see how the site does first before spending our money on the servers. I did pick up two books from the library and I am trying to read them, but with my demanding job it is hard to find time for it. I pretty much now have how I want the site laid out and how it will all come together. Thanks again for your input!