Hi Pugdog,
I think you and the rest of the guys are doing a great job managing a e-commerce addin/on for links SQL, and im sure it would be mush easier to do in the new Links SQL.
I have worked with many shopping carts, and designed many sites around them, although i cannot really say i have designed an actual shopping cart in perl / php etc.
What i am saying is that there are thousands of shopping carts available and none of them actually do EVERYTHING.
I meet customers every week wanting to enable e-commerce on their site and finding the best product for them is a mamouth task.
I will be more than happy to help you guys impliment ideas and needs / features for a cart.
I have listed what i can think of below.
Main Cart: The ability to add items (obvious). Each item should be able to have the following.
1, Name.
2, Picture/s.
3, Description.
4, Price,
5, as many custom tags as possible, ie. colour, size, weight, height, dimensions, all these should be able to carry price overides. ie small = 1.99 medium = 2.99 and so on.
6, how many items in stock.
7, how long to get stock if out of stock.
8, SKU number (barcode).
9, Product ID.
10, Customisable Display area for each product "html code" ie. for giving a list of sizes and relevent dimensions in a table.
11, Option for customised image buttons for ordering, more info etc.
12, Ability to run Customer & Merchant catalogue side by side with % discount given for merchants / Wholesalers.
If i think of any more for this area i will let you know.
Ordering: 1, Taxation: Ability to have cart display tax for states(US), export, Country, etc.
2, Multiple Shipping options and price include for each ie local, express, world. A Table for administrator to add shipping to areas to be calculated automatically (This is majorly overlooked in a lot of carts).
3, Ability to have secure section of cart on a different server/URL.
4. Shipping by item, multiple items, weight, dimensions.
5, payment by own secure server, cheque, telephone order.
6, I've listed as many payment companies as i can think of. I have a lot of the hooks for these somewhere if you would like them.
Anacom
Authorize.Net, E-Commerce Exchange and QuickCommerce
Bank of America eStores
Cambist
Cardservice International and Clear Commerce
CubeCard
eft.com
eProcessingNetwork (Controlled Devices)
eWAY
gochargeit.com
GORealtime E-Commerce Transaction Processing
InternetSecure
iTransact
PaymentProcessor.net
PayPal
SECPay
signio.com
WorldPay
Order Retrieval: It,s nice to have a windows interface for management aswell as web based, and i know someone who may be willing to help create something for admin manangement in windows that will upload, download order and product information, and include options for printing address labels, receipts etc.
Other handy features are, coupon / gift certificate, and affiliate modules.
I'm tired now and going to bed It's 6AM, I will post more if you like? Like someone said earlier it's better to include everything you need form the start than adding it later as this makes things messy.
I hope I havn't wandered of the path with this, plesae kick me into line if i am.
Hope this is of help.
Regards
MDJ1
http://www.isee-multimedia.co.uk