PHP 5 e-commerce Development- P4 potx

Table of Contents
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Sitemap and webmaster tools 299
Off-site SEO 300
Customer retention 300
Newsletters 301
Social features 301
Coupons and voucher codes 301
Summary 302
Appendix A: Interacting with Web Services 303
Google products 303
Adding the feed to the Google merchant center 304
Setting an update schedule 304
Creating the feed 304
Product feed controller 305
Other useful link 306
Alternative—Google Base Data API 306
Others 306
Google Analytics 306
Signing up 307
Tracking e-commerce 307
Add transaction 307
Add item 308
Track transaction 308
Further reading 309
Other services 309
Amazon 309
eBay 309
More to come 310
Summary 310
Appendix B: Downloadable Products 311

Extending products 311
Extending the payment and administration areas 312
Access database 312
Providing access 313
Rescinding access 314
Centralized download area 315
What else is needed? 315
Summary 316
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010
953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724
Table of Contents
[ xi ]
Appendix C: Cookbook 317
Authentication reminders 317
Help! I forgot my password! 317
Generate the reset key, update the user record, and e-mail the customer 318
Reset the password 318
Help! I forgot my username! 319
E-mailing customers 319
Integrating Campaign Monitor 320
Integrating reCAPTCHA 320
On the registration page 321
When processing the registration 321
Tweeting about happy customers 321
Other uses 322
Summary 323
Index 325
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010
953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010

953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724
Preface
The popularity of online shopping has increased dramatically over the past few
years. There are plenty of options available if you not are planning to build your own
e-commerce solution, but sometimes it's better to use your own solutions. It may be
easy to nd an e-commerce system but when it comes to extending it or using it, you
might come across a lot of difculties.
This book will show you how to create your own PHP framework that can
be extended and used with ease, particularly for e-commerce sites. Using this
framework you will be able to display and manage products, customize products,
create wish lists, make recommendations to customers based on previous purchases,
send e-mail notications when certain products are in stock, rate the products online,
and much more.
This book helps you build a Model-View-Controller style framework, which is then
used to put together an e-commerce application. The framework contains template
management, database management, and user authentication management. With
core functionality in place, e-commerce-focused features are gradually added to the
framework including products, categories, customizable products with different
variations and customer input, wish lists, recommendations, the shopping basket,
and a complete order process.
At the end of the book, you will have an e-commerce architecture that will take you
from viewing or searching for products and adding them to your basket, through
the checkout process and making payment for your order to your order being
dispatched. Focus is placed on exibility, so that the framework can be extended as
the needs of a particular store change, as illustrated by one of the appendices, which
goes through the process of modifying the store to sell downloadable products, as
well as physical ones.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010
953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724
Preface

[ 2 ]
Supplementary information, such as how to market and promote an online
store, in addition to taking regular backups and performing maintenance is also
covered, ensuring you have every chance of success with your own e-commerce
framework-backed store.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, PHP e-commerce, looks into the growing need and use of e-commerce,
including various popular online retailers, and discusses what we are going to do
throughout the book, and why.
Chapter 2, Planning our Framework, introduces you to several key architectural
patterns, including MVC, Registry, and Singleton, as we develop the structure and
core functionality for our framework including template management, database
management, and user authentication.
Chapter 3, Products and Categories, takes a step further and demonstrates how to
display and categorize products within our framework for our customers.
Chapter 4, Product Variations and User Uploads, moves on to enhancing the standard
product listings with customizable products, product variations, and allowing
customers to upload les with their orders.
Chapter 5, Enhancing the User Experience, discusses tips and tricks to enhance user
experience by looking at search, product ltering, providing wish lists, sending
e-mail notications, and other useful enhancements for our customers.
Chapter 6, The Shopping Basket, demonstrates how to structure, build, and manage
the shopping basket supporting both standard and customized products.
Chapter 7, The Checkout and Order Process, looks at the checkout and order process
implemented by some of the popular e-stores and their pros and cons, to chalk out
the process for our own framework.
Chapter 8, Shipping and Taxes, focuses on calculating shipping costs based on
different methods, integrating third-party shipping APIs, sending shipping and
tracking notications on orders, and integrating tax costs into our system.
Chapter 9, Discounts, Vouchers, and Referrals, aims at extending our framework to

encourage new customers and orders by promoting our store through discount
codes, purchasable vouchers, and referral discounts.
Chapter 10, Checkout, ties everything together, as most of our checkout functionality
is already in place, and extends our order process to leave our customers with a
conrmed order, ready for their payment.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010
953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724