i'm in the process of redesigning my website. well, to be honest, that's been an ongoing process for the last 4 years, lol.

i've recently changed hosts (1and1.com, which has existed in europe and britian for a while, is opening up hosting services in the US and canada, and are offering 3 years of free hosting until sometime in january. includes pop3 mailboxes and all that. sounds too good to be true, but they didn't ask for my credit card number, so i figured they couldn't sneak in any charges without notifying me first).
anyway, i've been using mals-ecoomerce for a shopping cart. it's free, and i've liked it well enough. the only thing i DON'T like is that it doesn't connect to a database, and doesn't recognize when one of a kind items have been sold, so there's the risk that more than one person might buy a OOAK item before i have a chance to remove it from the cart. (i work part time outside the home, so i'm not always right on top of my email or website). i've scoured the web looking for a free, or at least very inexpensive script that i could use to add this feature to mal's. there used to be a freebie that did this, but it used .asp which i couldn't use because i'm on a unix server. i need something in perl, preferably, since i've got enough 'seat of my pants' experience with perl that i can figure out how to configure existing scripts.
i'd also be willing to switch to a different cart if it was inexpensive. we're pretty broke right now (just had a HUGE unexpected bill, and we need to move at the end of december, so money is very tight).
i'd also be interested in hearing opinions regarding other carts that include this feature, even if they're not so cheap. i figure i might end up having to just use auctions for my one of a kind items until i can afford to spend several hundred bucks on a cart that does exactly what i want. lol.
btw, my server has mySQL availability. so the database is there, would just need to be configured.

TIA mamas
lissa

If you want to integrate inventory control and still use Mal's cart, ideally, there are TWO database interractions that you must consider. As it is now, your shopper views a static catalog page. You would no longer be able to use static pages if you wish to only show the products that are available, or to show the quantity available. You would need to use pages created from a database if you want the shopper to know an item's availability BEFORE adding-to-cart. A script to read and show existing quantities.

I *think* maybe Option-Cart can do this for you - I know that it creates the pages from a DB, though I'm not sure if it takes quantity-on-hand into account.

You *could* forego that step if you don't mind having the shopper know AFTER check-out. This is rather sloppy though as Mal's would go ahead and show total of everything put in the cart. Only after check-out, would the data from Mal's hit your back-end where the quantity would be verified and then a follow-up emailed to the customer. At the same time, here your back-end script would deduct what the shopper has just purchased from the quantity-on-hand, so that it is updated for the next person checking out.

That's still not much better than you verifying it manually and emailing a note to the shopper immediately, though. Ideally, you do want the DB catalog front-end too, so that the newly adjusted quantities are taken into account during presentation of the catalog (to prevent shopper from even getting it into their cart)

There is a PHP/MySQL free cart called OSCommerce that does all of this. We are integrating full support for a version of this one into some of our plans. In Perl, there is Extropia's Webstore, though it requires much more raw customization. i.e. OSCommerce has user-friendly admin interface, Webstore is bare bones.

http://oscommerce.com
http://extropia.com - click on "Technology"; look for WebStore under "Commerce Apps"

thanks so much :-)
these are just the kinds of answers i was looking for.

the whole database driven catalog page thing makes perfect sense. i'm going to go do google searches on OSCommerce and and Webstore. i don't have any real exprience with PHP or mySQL, but i'm not afraid to muck around in the code and teach myself some stuff. :g: i DO have some experience in configuring Perl scripts, so that's not overwhelmingly scary either. lol.

thanks again. i was getting really frustrated after spending days searching google and finding that the free or inexpensive stuff didn't do what i need, and the stuff that does what i need was WAY out of my price range.

lissa

i've spent the last couple of days installing and configuring the cart from oscommerce :D
i still need to link to it from my main site, add products and fix a few things that aren't quite the way i want them, but i think it's going to make an excellent instock store.

it's at www.wildcrafts.net/catalog if you wanna see.

thanks sooooooooooooooooooo much for the recommendation.

lissa