Effortless E-Commerce with PHP and MySQL

3: First Site: Structure and Design

The first e-commerce site being developed in this book, Knowledge is Power, will provide content to paid subscribers. It will have these primary features:

• Straightforward use of HTML, PHP, and MySQL

• User accounts

• Ability for administrators to add HTML and PDF content

• PayPal for processing payments

This will be a relatively standard e-commerce example, applicable to most small- to medium-size businesses. By comparison, the more complex project, developed in Part Three, “Selling Physical Products,” of the book, will use HTML, PHP, and MySQL in more advanced ways, won’t require user accounts, will sell products that get shipped later (that is, the customer will not be billed immediately), and will integrate ...