Pay-Per-View, anybody?

[protolith]

Hi there!

So I just completed my associates in multimedia and everybody thinks I'm a web guru since I was able to make a few simple websites. I have enough HTML know-how to appreciate CSS, and I even spent a little time as a content monkey via a Dot Net Nuke structure.

My problem is that I have a client that wants me to build him a website that will allow users to "Pay for a movie and download it."

I'm usually a fairly decent researcher, but if anybody could point me in the right direction, I would be really grateful. Is this something that will require a structure like Dot Net Nuke, ASP, or what? If it helps, they're on a simple DotEasy account.

Hopefully, I can muddle through this and get back to making pretty pictures! ^__^

[bathurst_guy]

lol

You need to think more about the process of how to do it. Using something like PayPal or Google Checkout would be an easy solution.

Home Page > Select Movie > Preview? > Payment Gateway > Return to Movie download (make this page require a session cookie that is set upon payment so that they can't just hotlink back)

Some other things to consider:

What if I buy a movie but the download fails and I have left the website? I need an account to log back into and I need a set amount of time to allow me to initiate the download again, otherwise I'm an unhappy customer.

Bandwidth & hosting costs for the website, movies are big!

I would use PHP & MySQL but that's just because I'm comfortable with them.

Just letting you know, this is going to be a massive involved website. Be prepared. And quote for it!

[protolith]

Yeah, that's kinda what I figured. These guys are all into hunting, and they have some hunting videos that they want to sell over their site. I'm nervous about just setting up their paypal, and now they want me to make the videos available for download. I'm wondering what part of "I make 3d houses and embed them in Flash," translates to "I can do e-commerce."

So back to paypal, huh? I knew this wasn't going to be easy.

[potterd64]

Sounds like you will have a lot of work ahead of you, especially if you are unfamiliar with web development. Also consider that once they have this, they will want more and more.

It may be better for them to hire a more experienced web developer from the get go, so if you want an out to draw pretty pictures you could tell them that.