Tutorial 3: E-Commerce Project

PROJECT'S INTRODUCTION 

You’ve landed to the most interesting page. Here, you’ll create a professional website for ABC Global Consulting and will learn a lot of techniques for your own projects. The project is divided into two categories:

DYNAMIC

Dynamic web pages are generated at the time of access by a user or change as a result of interaction with the user. These pages can give the website owner the ability to simply update and add new content to the site. For example, news and events could be posted to the site through a simple browser interface. Dynamic features of a site are only limited by imagination. Some examples of dynamic website features could be: content management system, e-commerce system, bulletin / discussion boards, intranet or extranet facilities, ability for clients or users to upload documents, ability for administrators or users to create content or add information to a site. In this part of the book, you’ll create an e-commerce system and couple of more interfaces with the help of PHP and MySQL database:

Contact Form - This page is meant to interact with the site visitors. A form will be provided to the visitors of the website to add their comments and feedback. This form will use PHP and MySQL to store the comments in a database table. Besides, it will receive contact details such as e-mail address and other relevant information.

Newsletter Subscription - Using a form site visitors would enter their e-mail address to subscribe to company’s newsletters. This form will appear in the footer of every website page. A process will be created with the help of PHP and MySQL to interact with site visitors. 

Admin Interface – As just mentioned, you’ll create an e-commerce prototype application that will comprise admin and members sections. The admin section will be accessible only to the site administrators who will use this interface to manage tasks such as products and orders management. 

Members Interface - This module will allow end users to become site members and will allow them to view and purchase products from the website. 

STATIC

A static web page is a page that is delivered to the user exactly as stored. An obvious example of a static page is an old style HTML document which can only be changed by uploading a new or updated version. Every time a static file is viewed, the file contents that are sent to the browser are the same for everyone who access that file. In this project the you’ll be taught to create the following static pages:

Index.php - This is the Home page of our website. Everyone who visits the website will be greeted by this page.

Header_Admin.php - This page will contain static HTML and PHP code to display company name, logo, sign-in link, and main navigation menu for site administrators.

Header_Member.php – Just like header_admin.php file, this file will show similar content with a specific navigation menu for site members, which is different from the admin navigation menu.

Footer.php – The content in this file will display company and contact information on every website page. Additionally, it will display a newsletter subscription form that will allow visitors to subscribe to company’s newsletters.

STATIC VS DYNAMIC WEB PAGES

When you create a normal web page with HTML and CSS, all the content is fixed by the webmaster. Everyone who visits the page sees the same content—it's static.

By contrast, the content of a dynamic web page frequently changes. For example, the Products page in our project would displays three most recent products (marked as featured products) from the database. When a new item is added to the database, the PHP code in the page automatically displays it. Whenever this page is called, the content changes to display a list of newly added featured products. The code in the page controls the content depending on the request it receives from the browser.

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