Processing the incoming URL within our registry object
index.php
.htaccess file
Configuration file
What about e-commerce?
An e-commerce registry?
Summary
Products and Categories
What we need
Product information
Category information
Structuring content within our framework
Pages
Content
Versioning
Building products, categories, and content functionality into our framework
Database
Content
Content types
Content versions
Products
Categories
Pages within our framework
Model
View
Controller
Products
Model
View
Controller
Categories
Model
View
Controller
Some thoughts
Product and category images
Routing products and categories
Featured products
Embedding products
Summary
Product Variations and User Uploads
Giving users choice
Simple variants
How could this work?
Combinations of variants
How will this work?
High-level overview
Database structure
Template switching
Templates
A look back at simple variants
Giving users control
How to customize a product?
Uploads
Custom text
Maintaining uploads
Security considerations
Database changes
Extending our products table
Template switching
Shopping basket preparation
Stock control
Product variations
Product customizations
Basket templates
Product subtotals
Summary
Enhancing the User Experience
Juniper Theatricals
The importance of user experience
Search
Finding products
Search box
Controlling searches with the products controller
Search results
Improving searches
Filtering products
Product attributes
Filter options
Processing filter requests
Displaying filtered products
Improving product filtering
Providing wish lists
Creating the structure
Saving wishes
Wish-list controller
Add to wish list
Viewing a wish list
Controller changes
Wish-list view
Purchases
Gift purchases
Self purchases
Improving the wish list
Recommendations
Related products
Controlling the related products
Viewing the related products
E-mail recommendations
Help! It's out of stock!
Detecting stock levels
Changing our controller
Out of stock: a new template bit
Tell me when it is back in stock please!
Stock alerts database table
More controller changes
It is back!
Giving power to customers
Product ratings
Saving a rating
Viewing ratings
Product reviews
Processing reviews/comments
Displaying reviews/comments
Combining the two?
Any other experience improvements to consider?
Summary
The Shopping Basket
Shopping baskets
Our basket
Per-page basket
Considerations for our shopping basket
Creating a basket
When to build a user's basket
Basket database
Basket contents
Viewing the basket
checkBasket method
The controller
Adding products
An addProduct method
The controller
A note on etiquette
Adding customizable products
Changing our basket database
Viewing the basket
Changing the model
The controller
Adding product variants
A new database table
Model changes
The controller
Editing quantities
From visitor to a user
The transferToUser function
Performing the transfer
Cleaning the basket
Expired contents
Displaying the basket on every page
Functionality
Summary
The Checkout and Order Process
Some examples
Amazon
Limitations
Useful features
eBay
Interesting points of note
Play.com
Interesting points of note
The process
The basket
Voucher codes
Shipping method
An overview
Authentication
Why should we authenticate the user at this stage?
Login
Register
Do nothing
Delivery address
Payment method
Offline payment method
Off-site payment method
On-site payment method
Confirmation
Payment details
Payment made
Order processed
Other points of note
Summary
Shipping and Tax
Shipping
Shipping methods
Shipping costs
Product-based shipping costs
Weight-based shipping costs
To think about: location-based shipping costs
Shipping rules
Free shipping
Capped shipping
Tracking
Integrating shipping costs into the basket
Shipping methods and a default
Calculating shipping costs based on products
Calculating shipping costs based on product weights
Considering shipping rules, and adjusting prices accordingly
Tax
Separately calculating tax values
To think about: location-based tax costs
A look at our basket now
Summary
Discounts, Vouchers, and Referrals
Discount codes
Discount codes data
Discount codes database
Discount codes functionality
Reducing the number of codes available
Purchasable voucher codes
Existing functionality
Discount codes
Product variations
Required additional functionality
Referrals
Database changes
New table: referrers
Changes
Functionality
Checkout process consideration
Summary
Checkout
Order process review
Authentication
Delivery address
Payment method
Confirmation
Storing orders in the database
Orders table
Order statuses
Order items
Order item attributes
Payment methods
Summary
Taking Payment for Orders
Taking payment
Our payment system
Taking payment online
PayPal
The payment button
Processing payment to update the order
Direct with a credit/debit card
Storing card details
Not storing card details
Other payment gateways
Payment gateway tips
Taking payment offline
Summary
User Account Features
User account area
Changing details
Changing password
Changing default delivery address
Viewing orders
Listing orders
Query
Viewing an order
Order model
Cancelling an order
Order model additions
Controller code
Expansion
Summary
Administration
Dashboard
Products and categories
Products
Creating a product
Editing a product
Categories
Creating a category
Editing a category
Deleting a category
Orders and customers
Orders
Updating an order
Dispatch note
Refunds
Customers area
Listing customers
A customer's orders
Miscellaneous
Shipping
Creating a shipping method
Voucher codes
Creating a voucher code
Summary
Deploying, Security, and Maintenance
Deploying
Hosting accounts and domain names
Hosting providers
Domain name registrars
Manual deployment
Setting up the database
Uploading our store
Settings
Automated deployment
Security
Server security
Software
Securing the site with a firewall
Passwords
SSL/TLS
CAPTCHA
Maintenance
Backing up and restoring
Using cPanel
Using the command line (SSH)
Summary
Marketing, SEO, and Customer Retention
Marketing sites and stores powered by our framework (and other sites for that matter)
Online advertising
Buying advertising space
Pay-per-click advertisements
Advertisement networks provided by search engines
Newsletter advertising
A word of warning: search engine penalization
Newsletters
Marketing materials
Affiliate marketing
Social marketing
Viral marketing
Twitter
RSS with FeedBurner
Search engine optimization
On-site SEO
Headings
Links
Up-to-date content
Meta tags
Sitemap and webmaster tools
Off-site SEO
Customer retention
Newsletters
Social features
Coupons and voucher codes
Summary
Interacting with Web Services
Google products
Adding the feed to the Google merchant center
Setting an update schedule
Creating the feed
Product feed controller
Other useful link
Alternative—Google Base Data API
Others
Google Analytics
Signing up
Tracking e-commerce
Add transaction
Add item
Track transaction
Further reading
Other services
Amazon
eBay.com
More to come
Summary
Downloadable Products
Extending products
Extending the payment and administration areas
Access database
Providing access
Rescinding access
Centralized download area
What else is needed?
Summary
Cookbook
Authentication reminders
Help! I forgot my password!
Generate the reset key, update the user record, and e-mail the customer
Reset the password
Help! I forgot my username!
E-mailing customers
Integrating Campaign Monitor
Integrating reCAPTCHA
On the registration page
When processing the registration
Tweeting about happy customers
Other uses
Summary
Index
Nội dung
Planning our Framework [ 58 ] .htaccess file We have our index.php le set up to process the incoming request and send it to the relevant controller. However, URLs which have the format of index. php?page=some/page/on/our/site or index.php?page=products/view/some- product are not as attractive or memorable as those with just some/page/on/our/ site or products/view/some-product. With the Apache module mod_rewrite we can get our site to rewrite the more friendly URLs into the less friendly ones for our framework to understand. ErrorDocument 404 /index.php DirectoryIndex index.php <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?page=$1 [L,QSA] </IfModule> This .htaccess le instructs the web server (Apache) to use index.php as the index le within a directory. It also instructs Apache that if the mod_rewrite module is enabled, the requests that are not for valid les or directories should be rewritten to the main index.php le. However, anything that occurs after the directory containing the .htaccess le, should be appended to the page $_GET variable. For example, oursite.com/pagea would be rewritten to oursite.com/index. php?page=pagea. Configuration file We also need a conguration le, to store our database connection settings. Most other settings will be stored in the database. However, the actual connection details cannot be stored within it, as we need to know the details before we connect to the database; otherwise, we cannot connect. <?php $configs = array(); $configs['db_host_ecomframe'] = 'localhost'; $configs['db_user_ecomframe'] = 'root'; $configs['db_pass_ecomframe'] = ''; $configs['db_name_ecomframe'] = 'phpecommerce'; ?> This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Chapter 2 [ 59 ] The simplest way to store the settings is within an array in a conguration le, with the keys of the array relating to what the value is used for. The sufx of ecomframe is used to allow us to store multiple database connection details within the same array. What about e-commerce? Looking at frameworks is important; however, we haven't really covered anything specic to e-commerce yet. So where does e-commerce t into this? Most of our e-commerce functionality ts into this by adding models and controllers that perform the relevant e-commerce tasks we require, such as managing products, handling the order processing and checkout process, and so on. An e-commerce registry? One thing that we could consider is an e-commerce registry. We could perhaps have our shopping basket as a registry, containing a collection of products. This would make it simple for each page to access the shopping basket and return the number of items contained within. For the framework we are going to create in this book, we are not going to use this method. However, it may be something you wish to think about with your own framework. After saying that, you may be wondering how we are going to provide access to the basket to all areas of the framework. The answer is with some call backs. At certain key points of execution within the framework, certain functions will be called. Inside this, we provide code to interact with the shopping basket. Exactly where these callback functions are, and when they are called, is a discussion for another chapter. This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Planning our Framework [ 60 ] Summary In this chapter, we created a sound start to our framework which will be extended with e-commerce functionality during the rest of this book. We specically covered: Various software architectural and design patterns, looking into best practices for implementing certain aspects of our framework Developing a directory structure for our framework Creating a registry to store core objects How we will use the MVC pattern to structure and operate our framework Routing page requests around our framework and an overview of routers Creating our single point of contact for accessing the framework, as well as an htaccess and conguration le Next we move onto storing, displaying, and managing products and their categories, some true e-commerce functionality! • • • • • • This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Products and Categories With a basic structure to our framework in place, we can now start to think about the e-commerce aspects to it. In this chapter you will learn: How to structure content within the framework, including: Page structure Product structure Categories structure How to access and display products and categories with models and controllers How to design views to interact with our framework As we discussed in Chapter 1, PHP e-commerce, Juniper Theatricals requires a framework to power their website as well as the e-commerce features, so page management is a must. What we need Before we start building products and categories into our framework, let's think about what information we need, both to display to our customers and for the use of the store administrator. To provide our customers with sufcient product information, we need to inform them of the name of the product, a detailed description of the product, and the price of the product. We may also wish to show them a photograph of the product and a number of additional images related to the product. Additionally, we may wish to make them aware of the weight and the cost of shipping, number of items we have in stock, as well as any categories the product is contained within. From an administration perspective, we need a reference number, or ID number, and we may need a Stock Keeping Unit reference. We may also require a search engine friendly name, which is used within the URL to view the product. • ° ° ° • • This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Products and Categories [ 62 ] Product information Taking into account what we have just discussed, at a minimum we need to store the following information: Data Description ID A reference number for the framework to reference the product Name The name of the product Search Engine Friendly Name A search engine friendly name for the product to be displayed in URLs. Description A detailed description of the product SKU A stock keeping reference (usually supplier's reference, or for integration with stock keeping systems) Price The cost of the product Stock The number of these products which are currently in stock Primary image An image of the product Additional images A number of additional images which are displayed as thumbnails and then toggled into the place of the main page Shipping costs and information will be discussed in Chapter 8, Shipping and Taxes, so we don't need to take those aspects into consideration just yet. Category information We need to be able to contain our products within categories, so what information would we need to collect for our categories? Data Description ID A reference number for the framework to reference the category Name The name of the category Description A detailed description of the category Search Engine Friendly Name A search engine friendly name for the category, to be used for display within URLs. This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 . array. What about e-commerce? Looking at frameworks is important; however, we haven't really covered anything specic to e-commerce yet. So where does e-commerce t into this? Most of our e-commerce. /index .php DirectoryIndex index .php <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index .php? page=$1. ''; $configs['db_name_ecomframe'] = 'phpecommerce'; ?> This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Chapter 2 [ 59 ] The simplest