[UPHPU] Account manager/shopping cart

[Mac Newbold]

Today at 2:31pm, Ash said:

> Are there any good open source account manager/shopping cart projects out 
> there? I just need a program that can register a new user, remember him next 
> time (after a log in) and remember their order from last time. I'll need to 
> keep track of their billing address, but not credit card info. I'll need to 
> keep track of their past orders. Also, the ability to edit their user info 
> and add a new order. Also keep a few user defined fields. Php/mysql is fine.
>
> I hate to re-invent the wheel, so any "build it yourself" replies will be 
> burned with ritualistic fire.

There are arguments for and against building it yourself, just like any 
other method. But don't dismiss it so quickly:

- There are a lot of wheels out there, but that doesn't guarantee you'll 
find one that fits your needs.

- Anyone else's wheel isn't going to be immediately intuitive to you, so 
there will be a learning curve.

- Modifying other people's code is even less fun than it sounds like it 
would be.

- Any ready-made solution will almost always either be missing 
features you want or need, or have a whole lot of stuff you won't ever 
use, and usually both of those apply. The first means you'd have to extend 
it after you figure out how they've put it all together, the second means 
it is a lot more complex than you want and you may need to try and hack 
stuff back out (not as easy as it sounds) without breaking everything.

In my experience, if you don't find something that is nearly exactly what 
you're looking for, and you're willing to do it their way, then the time 
it takes to learn how to use it, customize it, learn how it's built, 
modify it, and test and debug it ends up being a lot longer than what it 
would have taken to do it yourself. When you do it yourself, you always 
know exactly how it is put together. You usually don't add features you 
don't want, nor leave stuff out that you need. So it will do exactly what 
you want, no more, no less, and if you need to modify it, you know exactly 
how and where to do that. If you're trying to integrate this system into 
an existing site or application, you're almost surely better with a do it 
yourself solution. Even taking popular and widely used software packages 
and trying to make them fit in with the rest of your project can be really 
a pain unless you're 100% willing to do it their way. Whatever time you 
think it will take you to customize or modify a package to suit your 
needs, multiply that time estimate by at least 4 when you compare it to 
the time you'd likely spend building it yourself. If you can build one in 
a week, but think you'd spend two days or more modifiying package X to 
work for you, go with the custom solution every time, cause it will end up 
being quicker/cheaper, both in the short run, and in the long run when you 
need to make more modifications down the road.

Mac

--
Mac Newbold		MNE - Mac Newbold Enterprises, LLC
mac at macnewbold.com	http://www.macnewbold.com/