Thread: Do you know how to work with an online payment system?

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A friend of mine needs somebody who has an expertise with online payment systems. He bought the website www.i-MatchBooks.com from someone. The payment currently utilises Paypal, but the system is set up in a complex manner. He is a non-programmer and is seeking somebody who will be able to ammend the site to allow the following:

(1) Set up ordering system that uses MySQL (or similar) and manages all uploads with client login and order tracking. We need easy ammendment of prices. There is currently a file called prices.txt which is supposed to update the pricing (see below), but it doesn't work!

Also when the person goes through to Paypal, the prices of some of the products are slightly different. Despite extensive testing, I can't decipher where the bug is.

(2) Many users don't have a Paypal account and it can be an arduous procedure to set one up if you are a newbie. Would like a Worldpay or similar payment to be provided as an option, as well as the Paypal, or, if not possible, ditch the Paypal altogether.

Here's what we had in mind (unless somebody can suggest a better set-up): we'd like to pay someone to program a handy little tool. It would be web-based control panel to change the price on a product so we don't have to access the server...we could simply go to:

www.i-matchbooks.com/cgi-bin/prices.cgi (just an example)

Type in the product number we want to call it, and the new price, and it would change the price file for us. I would imagine this would cost around $120 - $160 to make (about 3-4 hours), but I could be wrong.

To give you an idea of how the site currently operates, here's an email from the guy who constructed the current payment system:

"Most custom orders you receive, shouldn't fill out the normal online order unless they still want to use one of the online templates, but either way they have to go through the ordering process. As I mentioned earlier, the only things you HAVE to fill out in the Online Design Studio is the quantity field, and the zip code. Visit any of the product pages and hit Order Online to begin an order (this is just for teaching you). As soon as you have done this, the template page should come up. Well look at the very top of the browser where it shows the website address and you should see something like this:

www.i-matchbooks.com/cgi-....cgi?BK-22

The last few digits depending on which product you came from. This is how the script tells what prices to charge. There is a simple text file on the server called prices.txt, and it should be in the www/cgi-bin/forms/ directory. Go ahead and download this file to your computer just to look at. Each line will look something like:

MG-41||98.00||94.00||90.00||87.00||84.00

This is the prices the script pulls for the order. The || marks denote a new quantity. I think the first column is 1 case, the second column is 2 cases, third column 4 cases, fifth column 10 cases, and sixth column 20 cases. These are just the price breaks for ordering multiple cases of that product. The very last product on the list is TT-00 (which isn't a real product). This is the dummy product I would always use for custom orders. If you ever need to place a custom order, figure out the total (or use what you quoted the customer) per case, and you can change the TT-00 pricing. Then, I simply link the customer to:

www.i-matchbooks.com/cgi-....cgi?TT-00

(the same as above but the product I.D. being TT-00). The script then still calculates the appropriate artwork fees, shipping, and tax".

If you are up to improving the payment system of the site, then please email na@NOJUNKMAILnazam.com (removing the NOJUNKMAIL) or ring 020 7419 0174 anytime.

Thank you for having taken the time to read all this, but I wanted to provide as much detail as possible so we waste neither your nor our time