How do I create a "shopping cart" in my Website

[James R. Bauman]

I want to add a "shopping cart" feature to our Website (www.bridgingpeople.org), to sell merchandise as fundraising for our not-for-profit organization. We would like the look/features to be similar to Amazon.com, but of course much less product content and no need to tell visitors what they purchased on their previous visits. The minimum content would be a list of merchandise for sale, with description and price, the ability for visitors to click on "Add to Shopping Cart," and software that would keep track of which items were selected and tally them up when the visitor is finished selecting items to purchase and wants to check out.

I've checked a couple of books on Website development and don't see anything on how to do add a shopping cart feature to a Website. Can anyone help me, please? Many thanks in advance.

Bob Bauman

[Digitalosophy]

sure, you will need the following:

a database : I would recomment mySQL, or ms Access
a server side script: I would reccoment php, or asp
a server that supports one of the top ^^^^^^^^

it's really pretty simple using Access and asp, but def not the best way to go. php is much faster and more powerful. do you have any experience with any of these?

[James R. Bauman]

Sorry, I have no experience with either Access or php -- don't even know what a php is. I was (perhaps very naively...) hoping that there may be some way to simply download another Website's shopping cart software and then change each of the product descriptions and the headers and and the addresses that take the order to the third-party handler of the payment by credit card. Is there any way to do something like this??? Thanks very much for your interest and for your help.

Bob Bauman

[Digitalosophy]

yea the good ones you have to pay for but here are some free ones. your probably better off going with cgi scripts

http://www.nopdesign.com/freecart/
http://www.commerce-cgi.com/download.htm

the first one seems better. scrol down to the middle of the page to se a wrokign example and to download it

[James R. Bauman]

Thanks very much; I'll give the freebies a try first. Appreciate very much your time and info and help.

Bob Bauman

[Digitalosophy]

no prob