Do-It-Yourself Ecommerce

You need a shopping cart for your online ecommerce business, but you have to decide if you need an ASP based cart or PHP based. You may have heard there are shopping carts based on Perl and CGI, but they are rapidly becoming obsolete.

First, some basics. ASP (Active Server Pages) and PHP (I’ve no idea) are server-side scripting languages. In this case they control the flow between your website, the shopping cart and the database that stores all your product and customer information. ASP is a Microsoft language and PHP is an open source language. This means that Windows servers can run either ASP or PHP, but Microsoft being Microsoft, ASP won’t work on Linux servers.

It’s the same age-old decision that’s been going on for years – Windows vs. Linux - being carried over to ASP vs. PHP. (more info on Windows vs. Linux servers)

I recommend keeping your online business in one family. If you are already using a Windows server go with an ASP shopping cart. If you are on a Linux server then go with a PHP cart.

If you don’t even have a web site yet then my same recommendations for servers will apply here as well…

In my experience, Windows is the way to go if you have (or anticipate having) a medium to large, central business with one main web site. Microsoft software integrates well, they provide technical support and there are loads of ASP.NET programmers that can configure the software if you need it. That usually means using Microsoft FrontPage as your web design software, a Windows server, and an ASP based shopping cart tied in with a Microsoft SQL database.

Let me add that older shopping carts use ASP, newer ones use ASP.NET Although the generic term is still ASP, you want ASP.NET

Microsoft, while known for sometimes having security risks, also has a whole army of people working on plugging holes and providing security updates at no extra charge. So if you are planning on selling a large variety of physical products then I think ASP is the way to go, even though PHP will work on a Windows server.

If, on the other hand, you have a smaller operation with fewer products, or sell more in the way of digital download products, then I would recommend a Linux bases server running a PHP shopping cart tied into a MySQL database.

In both cases be aware that you will probably need someone to maintain the software. Not necessarily to add or change the products you’re selling but to keep abreast of security problems and upgrades. Remember, the security of your shopping cart and most importantly, your customer data, should be your highest priority.

There are also third-party shopping carts, companies whose business is hosting and maintaining your shopping cart for a monthly or annual fee, but I’ll cover that in a later post.