Shopping Carts

[Crimson]

I am not much of a web designer but i have a client I did poster for. I know print and that stuff is fine. He had someone design him a very basic Static website. I enjoy flash and the interactivity of it. I want to do his website and make it look better. Inexperience has me a little behind. I have made some cool stuff in flash to impress my client. He wanted to have a spot to take credit cards and payment over the web. We have talked him into a paypal account so we don't have to shoulder the responsibility of that. However, He also would like to do a shopping cart. Will that work through paypal. I had original hoped to make the site available in Flash to improve on his generic Static site. The shopping cart is a curve ball for me. Any suggestions?

[ecsyle]

Paypal has shopping cart functionality. You could also use something more fully featured like "oscommerce".

Off topic, but, why do you think flash would imrove his generic static site?

Edit:
Here is some info about paypal-
https://www.paypal.com/en_US/pdf/integration_guide.pdf
Shopping cart- https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/sc-intro-outside

A site I made a long time ago uses a paypal shopping cart-
http://www.stainlesstrays.com/
All PHP & MySQL- very old code. I shoud probably think about upgrading them soon.

[Patrick Shannon]

I suppose it all depends on what the Flash is used for.

Flash starter/flick through pages, worthless. An index page with Flash but with instant site accessibility? That's okay to me.

Oooooh, I just made my 1000th post.

[Ryan8720]

Flash doesn't really make a site non-static (dynamic). Sure it may be a moving movie, but unless are programming some sort of interface in actionscript, it's still static. And if the client wants a shopping cart then I don't see the point of switching to Flash. Unless it just an intro or something, but those are rather pointless.

Just do a search for shopping cart software on google and you will get all kinds of them. They vary in price depending on what you need. That is probably your best bet.

[Patrick Shannon]

I wasn't really insinuating it would (make it dynamic), but a way to make a static site more interesting (if used right).

Of course, making a dynamic Flash movie is a little bit over my head personally, and although I've never seen it done (that doesn't mean it hasn't happened), Ryan is correct, you're better off using the good ol' fashioned way for e-commerce.

[morea]

http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6618&highlight=cart

http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3830&highlight=cart

http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3330&highlight=cart

http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2542&highlight=cart

http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8452&highlight=cart

[ecsyle]

Ahh, good ole search feature :)

I don't think flash adds much to a site. Most of the time, it just intefers with the presentation of information. Or it is just masturbatory excess.
I am not bitter, I swear.

Sometimes though it does looks cool.

I keep hearing really nice things about oscommerce. My only gripe with it so far is that it requires register_globals to be enabled (WTF!!).

[Crimson]

I'm kind of with Patrick of adding some animation and interactivity to the static site. Nothing real over the top and probably could be done in Dreamweaver. Just more comfortable in flash and think it is a fun program to get into and want to learn it better. Besides, isn't that why Adobe bought Macromedia - to acquire flash and dominate any competition. I guess the intelligent thing would be to make it work in Flash and html. Need to learn Dreamweaver to be a better global designer.

[Ryan8720]

Need to learn Dreamweaver to be a better global designer.
No, need to learn HTML and CSS to be a better global designer. ;)

[uncle carbunkle]

need to get a sitar, some japanese drummers and a reggae band in a dancehall to have global rhythm.

sorry folks, it's all i got.