Wednesday, August 15, 2012

CyberCart Pro Internet Commerce System 3.04 Installation Guide

The CyberCart Pro Internet Commerce System is a set of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts and Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) pages that enables the sale of goods through the World Wide Web.    Also referred to as a “shopping cart” script, as the experience is much like going shopping in a grocery store.  Customers browse through web pages with items for sale, and when they find something they wish to purchase, they indicate the quantity they would like, and push a button to add the item to their “shopping cart.”  One of the main functions of the script is to keep track of the items the customers adds to their shopping cart.  The script allows the customer to continue to browse through different web pages, adding items until they are ready to “check out.”

CyberCart will then total up their order, collect billing and shipping information, calculate shipping costs, calculate taxes and provide an invoice-like form for final approval.  On approval, both the merchant and the customer are sent (by email) a copy of the order.  The order is also stored on the server where the merchant can retrieve the order details through a secure web administration page.  An optional module also allows real-time credit card processing through Online Analysis’ SocketLink Internet Transaction Gateway.

CyberCart is a form-based system, meaning that the item catalog pages are written using standard HTML forms.  On submittal, a CGI script processes the forms.  This is in contrast to a cgi-based system, where the actual web pages are also generated from a database.  There are benefits and drawbacks to both types of scripts, but the form-based system was chosen for CyberCart to allow maximum flexibility of the web catalog pages.  A database module will soon be available that will allow database generation of CyberCart pages.

To maintain a customer’s session identification, CyberCart does use a “cookie.”  A cookie is a small file created by the web browser that is stored on the customer’s computer.  This means that customers must be using a “cookie capable” browser (such as Netscape 2.0 or Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0 or greater) and not have cookies disabled.  Some people are concerned that cookies can be used nefariously to obtain and store personal or sensitive information.  The only thing stored in the cookie issued by CyberCart is a unique session identification number - no personal or user information is recorded.

CyberCart is designed for use by Internet Service Providers or web design consultants with an intermediate to advanced level of understand of both HTML and CGI scripts.    CyberCart  is written in Perl 5.003, but with the exception of the search function, will run on Perl 4.036.   Programming experience is not required, although it never hurts.

Free Download CyberCart  Pro Internet Commerce System 3.04

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