[MKDoc-dev] Status of ECommerce module

[Charlie Garrison]

Good morning,

On 26/9/04 at 9:06 PM +0100, Bruno Postle <bruno at webarchitects.co.uk> wrote:

>The current system works like this:

I got a feel for how it works when trying the 1.6 code. I liked the
simplicity, but that is also a drawback.

>Each product is a separate MKDoc document, so you can add images,
>text, links etc..  This integrates quite nicely with other MKDoc
>functionality such as the newsletter and audience preferences.

I haven't looked in the site search functionality to know whether this is
already possible. But I would want to be able to create a browsable and
searchable product catalog. Can the existing search funtion be limited to a
certain branch of the document hiearchy? Can the search results be customized
to display certain components from the found pages (eg. price component)?

>Each price component has a unique stock id which is used in the
>shopping cart cookie and for linking directly to the stock database
>- In the existing implementation, the stock database is a plain text
>file stored on the server queried via a simple cgi script.

I didn't see this. Should that stock script and a sample database have been
included in the 1.6 package?

>So the functionality is complete, but basic.  As far as the user is
>concerned, everything is present - Stock quantities are listed,
>the cart is easily visible and manipulated and products have
>persistent and descriptive URIs.

I thought the shopping cart was implemented pretty well.

>What is missing is: searching based on price range, integration with
>other stock control systems and payment gateways (plus probably lots
>of other stuff).

I can see MKDoc having different ecommerce systems. Something similar to what
is used now could be used for small shops (eg <50 products) and something more
advanced could also be available. Or there could be one comprehensive
solution, and it would offer pre-made configurations for standard setups.

I'm sure we'll have more conversations about this as time goes by.


Charlie

-- 
   Charlie Garrison  <garrison at zeta.org.au>
   PO Box 141, Windsor, NSW 2756, Australia