Beginning PHP 5 E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional is an ideal reference for intermediate PHP 5 and MySQL developers, and programmers familiar with web development technologies.
This book covers every step of the design and build process, and provides rich examples that will enable you to build high-quality, extendable e-commerce websites. Take a peek at an actual book example!
Furthermore, this book covers site building in three phases. Phase one results in a live website, with an attractive interface and fully searchable product catalog. Next, phase two explains adding facilities to increase sales through cross-selling, upselling, and enhancing customer service. Finally, phase three seeks to reduce costs through automated order processing and integrating with other systems via XML Web services.
Now that you’ve convinced the client that you can create a cool web site to complement his or her activity, it’s time to stop celebrating and start thinking about how to put into practice all the promises you’ve made. As usual, when you lay down on paper the technical requirements you must meet, everything starts to seem a bit more complicated than initially anticipated. To ensure this project’s success, you need to come up with a smart way to implement what you have signed the contract for. You want to develop the project smoothly and quickly, but the ultimate goal is to make sure the client is satisfied with your work. Consequently, you should aim to provide your site’s increasing number of visitors with a positive web experience by creating a pleasant, functional, and responsive web site.
The requirements are high, but this is normal for an e-commerce site today. To maximize the chances of success, we’ll analyze and anticipate as many of the technical requirements as possible, and implement solutions in a way that supports changes and additions with minimal effort.
This chapter lays down the foundations for the future TShirtShop web site. We will talk about the technologies and tools you’ll use, and even more importantly, how you’ll use them.
Your goals for this chapter are to
- Analyze the project from a technical point of view
- Analyze and choose an architecture for your application
- Decide which technologies, programming languages, and tools to use
- Discuss naming and coding conventions
- Create the basic structure of the web site and set up the database
