I have a good Christian friend, his name is Brian. He goes to the same church I go to. He recently started a Christian bookstore out of the front of his home to provide some additional income to help support his family.

This past Sunday, we were talking and he mentioned that he would like to create a website for his bookstore. He currently has postings on ebay, but he's not really getting much business that way, and he thinks a website would help.

He mentioned that he could get one set up through his place of work, but they were saying it would cost him something like $800!

Anyway, I told him I knew a great online community of Christian programmers, who might like to help!

Anyone interested? He's a great guy, been through a lot, could use some help with this.

Maybe a CCN project? See what kind of cool website can be put together for him in a short time. I know some of you are pretty good web programmers (I'm NOT!)

I told him I'd get back to him this Sunday (May 7)

Does he have a webhost lined up, and if so, what are the tech.'s it supports?
PHP and MySQL installed would be nice...

Also, does he just want to use it for "advertising" and such, or does he want to sell merchandise from it? That will make a big difference in who can be of service, because e-commerce websites are alot harder to make than an info page. :-p

What does everyone else think about doing this as the next project? It shouldn't take that long anyway.

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quit posting on CCN? nope. I havn't been driven off yet.

[This message has been edited by crazyishone (edited May 02, 2006).]

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2Co 7:10 For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.

[VoHW] (Help needed) [Blog] - Truedisciple (mp3)

quote:

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Originally posted by crazyishone:
I think this is a perfect opportunity for the "community project".

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quote:

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Originally posted by crazyishone:
Does he have a webhost lined up, and if so, what are the tech.'s it supports?
PHP and MySQL installed would be nice...

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No I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a website or hosting at all. I believe that's part of the problem, finding one on a tight budget. Maybe a good one can be recommended or at least sufficient to start with?

quote:

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Originally posted by crazyishone:
Also, does he just want to use it for "advertising" and such, or does he want to sell merchandise from it? That will make a big difference in who can be of service, because e-commerce websites are alot harder to make than an info page. :-p

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I don't think it has to be a full blown e-commerce site.
But I'm pretty sure he would like to post items for sale on the site.
maybe picture, description, quantity box, and buy button? Maybe something like a 'shopping cart' on it?

He's used ebay before, I guess he could link to ebay for the items. Use paypal for the purchasing too.

quote:

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Originally posted by crazyishone:
What does everyone else think about doing this as the next project? It shouldn't take that long anyway.

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I know I don't have a lot of the info to what he's expecting for his, but if you guys are interested in doing it, I will give him any initial questions you might need him to answer and maybe let him know roughly what you think is possible and what's not.

I'll see him again this Sunday, and could let him know and also get his email for you and give him the url for CCN

[This message has been edited by coolj (edited May 02, 2006).]

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Originally posted by jari:
Hey I hope you find people from here who can help! I just wanted to make a note that there is existing open source implementations of online shops so remember to check those out.
Some options (which I know nothing about):
CubeCart
OS Commerce
Zen Cart

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It'd still be up to the rest of the community to build the website. (unless your willing to settle for my skillz, lol)

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"I want to know how God thinks- everything else is a detail..."-Albert Einstein

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Omnia Vos Estis Cordatis

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Originally posted by pabloaiz:
You can start out for less than $50. I believe the host Im using (my friend's paying), is about $15-30 for about a year and it includes PHP and MySQL, AFAIK. Paypal can help set up an e-commerce system, so that should be a snap. $800 is WAY over-rated. I have a friend who owns a server and he sets up websites, including e-commerce. He'll probbaly give me a discount like he usually does, so PM me if you're interested.

It'd still be up to the rest of the community to build the website. (unless your willing to settle for my skillz, lol)

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"Be nice to the nerds because later on, you'll be working for them" - Bill Gates

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"I want to know how God thinks- everything else is a detail..."-Albert Einstein

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"Be nice to the nerds because later on, you'll be working for them" - Bill Gates

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Originally posted by firemaker103:
Just emailed him.
Go lyonzy! He hasn't been around lately, so we'll see. He's great, everything that you would have to pay for, for free.
Now that I think about it, he could set-up OSCommerce for you anyway. Heck, he can design you're whole site!
Anyway, we'll see...

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That would so cool if he's able to do that! I won't be able to get a hold of Brian before Sunday, so there's no rush in deciding what can be done. No matter what, thanks for contacting lyonzy about this.

oh i forgot to add... i'll help!
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In the stock market, you must buy high and sell low...Wait! That's not right!
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Yes, I can be intelligent at times!!

[This message has been edited by buddboy (edited May 03, 2006).]

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Originally posted by buddboy:
um... you can buy a domain name at yahoo.com for 3 bucks a year, and then there's great webhosting at 100webhost.com for free with only one ad, and PHP and MySQL included... it also has FrontPage Extensions... 3 free email addresses... the only problem witht the 3 free email addresses is you can't send from them... lol... your page only has one banner ad! lol...

oh i forgot to add... i'll help!

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thanks buddboy! the only problem I think Brian would have with the banner ad is not knowing what ad might appear. This could be bad if the ad is something not appropriate or for a company selling the same thing.

I glad to see you guys are willing to help, I'll talk with Brian on Sunday.

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In the stock market, you must buy high and sell low...Wait! That's not right!
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Yes, I can be intelligent at times!!

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Originally posted by buddboy:
the ad is always the same thing: an advertisement for the hosting site. all it does is tell about the site that you are hosting from: 100Webhost... so that's the only objection? cool... lol.. j/k...

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Thanks for the info! I don't see why having a banner ad for the hosting site would be a problem. I'll talk with Brian this Sunday about it.
Thanks again!!

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In the stock market, you must buy high and sell low...Wait! That's not right!
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Yes, I can be intelligent at times!!

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Originally posted by buddboy:
it's Sunday... what'd he say?

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He has internet access, so I let him know that if he's interested, then to drop in and post! So hopefully we'll hear from him. I think he stays pretty busy with kids and all, so I'm not sure when he'll be able to respond.

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In the stock market, you must buy high and sell low...Wait! That's not right!
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Yes, I can be intelligent at times!!

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Taken from the osCommerce site:
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osCommerce is an Open Source based online shop e-commerce solution that is available for free under the GNU General Public License. It features a rich set of out-of-the-box online shopping cart functionality that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, fees, or limitations involved.

osCommerce has attracted the largest community for an e-commerce solution that consists of over 96,700 store owners and developers worldwide with add-ons being contributed on a daily basis. To date there are over 3,300 add-ons available that have been created by the community to extend the features of an osCommerce online store.

osCommerce combines Open Source solutions to provide a free and open e-commerce platform, which includes the powerful PHP web scripting language and the fast MySQL database server. With no special requirements, osCommerce is able to run on any PHP 4.1+ enabled web server running on Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows environments.

With over 6 years of operation, osCommerce has built a showcase of over 9,000 online shops that have been voluntarily added to the live shops section, and powers many thousands of more online shops worldwide.

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In the stock market, you must buy high and sell low...Wait! That's not right!
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Yes, I can be intelligent at times!!

There was a lively discussion about osCommerce vs. various other cart solutions, which, if anyone is looking into getting into e-commerce development, may be interesting. The only e-commerce package I've used before is Miva Merchant 4, which you probably could not pay me to go back to. It's sort of customizable, but with definite and weird and annoying limits which require you to buy various 3rd-party modules to get around (I didn't bother, as I didn't have a large budget to work with). Miva 5 is supposedly a lot better, but that's not what my webhost was using, so I was stuck.

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it's pronounced "tonics"

btw - does anyone know much about Drupal - http://drupal.org/ . It looks pretty cool too, especially for a multipurpose website blogs and stuff, I'm sure it would be overkill for this project though...

anyway, thanks again!

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In the stock market, you must buy high and sell low...Wait! That's not right!
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Yes, I can be intelligent at times!!