General Question about Shopping Cart

[woodie1976]

First of all, I am so glad I found this forum! From looking around, I'm guessing that I am the most unexperienced one here :D

Anyway, I am building a website for our business and we will only accept paypal and money orders. I already have the Paypal shopping cart, so that's not a big deal. All I want now is either a simple shopping cart or order form, which I can have send to my email when a customer fills it out. This way, I can set items aside while waiting for the money order to arrive. I have been looking all over, and I am wondering how I can have the cart or completed order form sent to my email when they click the submit button.

Any ideas?

(Thanks in advance) :)

[PeOfEo]

What server side language are you using? Or what do you intend to use?

[woodie1976]

This is how inexperienced I am... LOL

I don't know where to start. I have thr form made with Frontpage 2002. I dont' know how to get it so when you click on submit, it will email me the results. We have tested it with our home website, and when I click on submit, it comes up with a new page "Page cannot be displayed" and we receive no email. I dont' know what you're asking, but I am using HTML and Javascript. I don't know anything about Perl or CGI - I tried to learn, but it seems so complicated.

[PeOfEo]

Well, you want to put this code into the submit button so that when the user click submit on the shoping cart it emails to you so you can go and see how much cash you just made. Correct? Front page is annyoing first of all because none of its email stuff works, like the cod eis missing because it acts like you are going to connect to someones cgi.bin. Anyways you are going to want to use a server side language, your choices are PHP Perl/CGI ASP ASP.NET and JSP. How are you editing the paypal shopping cart?

[woodie1976]

I got the Paypal shopping cart code from site - i haven't messed with any of it, so the only way we have of knowing is by checking our paypal to see what someone bought. Is there a form or something that i can use in general (shopping cart) that will make someone submit an order to be emailed to me first, then i can confirm the order (make sure items are in stock), then allow them to pay for it through paypal? I don't know where to begin - we've been working on this for the past week, an i'm frustrated!!! :) What other program would you suggest that would be easier than frontpage? I am VERY open to any help!!! :confused:
Thanks!

[Damien]

I would suggest using OSCommerce, it's an OpenSource programme in PHP. Forget about FrontPage, this is a complete site ready to use. It has a Back End which will control stock, also it connects direct to your PayPal account, all you have to do is type in your e-mail address.

The whole store is configureable from the destop, First read the docs at the OSCommerce site, then download version 2.2 (it's the easiest to setup).

You will need one MySQL database and PHP support from your hosting provider.

The bottom line here is that it is a shop ready to go, you should learn some PHP if you want to get the most out of it, but it's a very professional programme and worth putting in the effert to study it.

[woodie1976]

OK....I will try to explain what we're running into.

We just want something simple. We would be happy with either an order form which is emailed to us, or a simple shopping cart which the full cart results can be emailed to us. I don't know if i have to use a service or not, but when we try to submit the order, the "webbot" thing comes up, and it doesn't work. I have no clue what that is. I just tried to use HotDog and the form worked great, I thought, but nothing was sent to us :confused: I don't know what i am doing wrong

[PeOfEo]

I would think paypal would have email confirmation as an option already, its pretty crappy if they dont. I would look at dream weaver. I just got a copy and it is nice. Well who is your host first of all. I dont use paypal so I dont know if you can edit it direct or what is going on. The paypal shoping cart takes you to a thanks page when you click buy or whatever right? Just make it so when that page loads an email notic is sent. You will need to be able to edit the tank you page though and figure out what server side language you can use, if its paypal hosted you need to use what they used. If its on your host or your own server find out what your host supports. I doubt that it will be asp or asp.net. Its probably php or cgi so you are going to have to figure out how to make this work with whatever it is. Im am an asp.net guy, I dont know php or perl, so you would have to figure out how to do it from some of the other people on this forum

[woodie1976]

We haven't decided on where to buy the domain from yet. Any suggestions on that right away too? :) I don't really know much about the type of languages to use - is one easier than the other? I know I'm asking alot of questions here, but like I said, I'm starting with nothing and not knowing what I'm doing really. I thought I was doing great and all - I build my own webpage on angelfire, and I guess I didn't figure this would be all that different. Which it wasn't - until I got to the order form and shopping cart LOL

[woodie1976]

well....after searching and reading, I finally went to www.bravenet.com and am using their form handler. I'm not crazy about the way it emails, but for now, its better than nothing. I also have Dreamweaver 6.1 full program, and am finding out that it seems to be really easy, but there isn't as many options in it as far as text styles go :(

Thank you for the help - if you have any more ideas...dont' be shy LOL :D