# needs to install a shopping cart for rental equipement



## pierjean (Dec 2, 2006)

HI. I am helping a family member to start her business and I have made my own webpage from scratch with Hostmonster.com.
www.angelwings-rentalsforbaby-lasvegas.com

This is not my first website but I am not an expert with all the new technology that goes with a commercial website.. I created my first one in 1997 for my brother's restaurant so I could learn about computers and web....
and it is still ranked first on page one with google on "Las vegas french restaurants"(Pamplemousserestaurant,com) .  That make me proud for such an achievement from a total beginner! This site is still ahead of the fancy ones from multimillions dollars restaurants in vegas!!! le Cirque, Andre, Robuchom, effeil tower etc etc!  I guess I must have done something right, I did not touch it since beside updating files.this is a very simple site. not fancy but efficient.

I am not doing this for money - although being retired with little income) but I love learning to keep alzaimer at bay and to help friends and family.
I promessed to make this baby rental running before halloween!
I am totally new to shopping cart and cannot find anywhere on how to start
I spend hours trying to find the way and finally though about asking you guys

Where should I do next to install a shopping cart? 
do I need to create a database? (I am totally ignorant on how to do that) 
Hosmonter offers my SQL,php pear package, php my admin,postresql..
and a whole bunch of tools with little explanation.

This is totally unknown to me If i evr need this???

If someone could give me a guidance on what I need to install and how to proceed even in the big lines, !... that would be a tremendous help!

I have uploaded Agora shoppingcart files into my web files but there is no explanation on how to use them. for secure credit card transaction Agora accepts Authorizenet.com,intellipay.com,itansact.com and linkpoint.com. None of them answer my question for help as I am suppose to know what to do.! they all claim it is easy but I still do not know where to start..

Thanks for any hint!


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## leroys1000 (Aug 16, 2007)

Sorry I can't help with that,but do have a suggestion.
You might try the joomla content management system
and add virtuemart as the shopping cart.
simple installation and plenty of extensions available
to do most anything.
You already have PHP and mysql,so you would
just need to set the data base name and access
and the installation will setup tables and data.
It has a learning curve,but not too bad.
http://www.joomla.org/
http://virtuemart.net/
I suggest joomla 1.5 as the templates you use will also
be used in virtuemart.


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## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

I'd be a whole lot more concerned with filling in that huge "Insurance and Liability" gap than I would finding a web shopping cart.

I also think the actual web page doesn't look very professional. As a comparison, here's the competition's page.
http://www.babiesaway.com/index.html

The animations, marquis text, and very long pages don't give a great first impression.


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## pierjean (Dec 2, 2006)

Thank you guys for your advices and sincere critics.it is the only way to improve! I agree about the animations not looking professional.. That is what my sister in law (Owner) wanted despite my advices... (she actually wanted much more but I conviced her to let go some of it .. I will improve the pages along the way as we cannot afford a Pro doing it. About liability she said it is needed of a liability insurance but she will not be installing the car seats. The parents will in order to limit the liability. Defects on products are covered by the manufacture. She is buying evrything new and good quality. 

I am also trying Joomla. for some reason I could not log in after registration but I wll try again.... Thanks for your support


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## leroys1000 (Aug 16, 2007)

You don't have to have an account at the joomla
website to download it,but it helps to be able
to login to the forums.


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## MRdNk (Apr 7, 2007)

Don't know a lot about shopping carts, something I need to look into myself actually.

However, if you want to learn more about PHP and MySQL, I would suggest a good start, and a good way at keeping alzaimers at bay, would be to check out the w3schools pages (http://www.w3schools.com).

I have to agree with DoubleHelix on the look of the webpage, doesn't scan well - and I honestly wouldn't feel comfortable putting in my card details to this site, if you take a look at the w3schools website take a look at the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) section. If you use Firefox I highly recommend downloading Firebug - which is a brilliant web development Add-On, allowing you to change the html and css and instantly see the effect on the web page.

There's always plenty of help available on here for all these things, I can help a bit if you want to create a DB and want to write some PHP.
Or help you understand the concepts behind them.


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## pierjean (Dec 2, 2006)

I will follow your advices Thanks! 

I did not even know I had to create a database in order to have automatic forms working. (reservations form etc..) CGI scripts are not my thing neither...
I realise I put myself in a much bigger job than I previously thought. W3schools seems to be exactly what I need to start learning more about all this. 

Website creation is so much advanced than when I started my first website by myself in 1997, in order to help my brother's restaurant business but mostly to learn about computers. I did not know anything, and even less about how to upload to the internet and my english was very limited I thought at the time that I should start to learn not to become an old smuck! (You have to go with the flow right?) I did not use automatic programs at the time (they were rare thing and I could not afford them) It took me 3 months with 6 hours a night outside my job to create it and start our own online restaurant reservations (the fist one in Las Vegas at the time). I pulled all my hair out many times. Everything that looked good on MS Words windows 95 (my only program) where completely scatered on the internet like collecting stamps in a tornado..and I found out that different browsers were displaying totally different looks.What a mess! I had to learn about frames to glue everything together..I did not know about the refresh button so imagine my frustration when my changes did not show online!. I was getting nuts. no one to help! but I never gave up. being first on page one in google at the time was not a big thing since, websites were not plenty but I am surprised that it is still holding!

I must admit, I never followed up with web creation since then- for being too busy on other things at work. Being now retired will give me more time to learn again and I have A LOT to catch up from basic...! (sorry for the long story!)

Again Thanks a million times! You guys are the greatest! :up:
Pierre Jean


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## MRdNk (Apr 7, 2007)

No problem. I created my first sites around the same time as you, in about 1997. Left it for a good long while, but used Excel a lot in several jobs, and Uni - including writing Macros, which gave me the opportunity to learn to program. 

Now I'm back turning these programming concepts into PHP (a server-side language), and I've done quite a lot of database work - learning DB concepts at Uni and other places, so now I'm back learning to make Web Applications. The good thing to look into is a programming concept called OOP - Object Oriented Programming; think of it as a blueprint of anything you can consider an object, as in everything! So a customer is an object, products you sell are objects, etc. It also means you get to reuse code without writing the same code over and over again. Also reduces errors, and you can build in security measures etc. 

Once you start to understand PHP, MySQL, HTML and CSS, take a look at JavaScript which is a browser-side programming language, but means you can do loads of cool things, I'm getting into a JavaScript framework called MooTools (MooTools.net) which looks amazing.


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## pierjean (Dec 2, 2006)

Thanks MRdNK, you are boosting my morale! 
I understand I will not be able to do all that in few days but the reward will be to succeed into doing it even if it is not for money.... (who knows? having a low retirement income I may decide someday to do it as a freelance job if I am getting good at it !!!
All the names you mentionned are a new language to me but *the WORST thing that can happen to someone is not doing anything*. Retirement is not the end, it is the beginning, and I refuse to become bored.!
I can see you working night too. My grand child (2 years old) does not leave me in peace during the day so I woke up at 2.00 AM to learn peacefully during the night ((4.20 AM in vegas right now). Then in few years he will think I am a cool grandpa if I can teach him one thing or two on this subject! I did taught my younger son how to count in his mind from age 3.. He is now doctor in Finance & professor at Omaha Univerisity and he is using Excell a lot! I beleive in learning - anything - is never too late and always good. It is like NEVER EVER giveup!....Nothing is impossible.


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## MRdNk (Apr 7, 2007)

Good on you. Hope I have the same philosophy when I retire. 

A good way to learn is to read forums like these, see how others solve their issues, and learn from them. I've enhanced my Excel skills and learnt a lot about OOP from these forums.


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## pierjean (Dec 2, 2006)

I think my home does looks better... still working on it...but critics are always appreciated Thank you again.
(animations will go in time...not easy!).
http://www.angelwings-rentalsforbaby-lasvegas.com/index.htm


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## MRdNk (Apr 7, 2007)

Already looking much better.


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## MRdNk (Apr 7, 2007)

Looks like the Domain host: HostMonster.com - 'whois' your current hosting provider offers a shopping cart feature called: Agora Shopping Cart - have a look at the features in your control panel, it might be fairly easy from there.


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## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

That does look significantly better. I still can't stress the liability insurance enough. The equipment is new only the first time it's used. And even with a manufacturer's warranty, the person who hands out the stuff can still be sued. I wouldn't mess around with this.


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## MRdNk (Apr 7, 2007)

I second that, Liability Insurance is a very important thing, I used to work in Procurement, and it's something we always checked that our contractors had, and that it was up-to-date.


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## softyram (Sep 17, 2008)

cube cart is best for open source shopping cart tool in PHP...
this is use ful for you...


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