Beginning PHP and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition (Beginning: From Novice to Professional) (Paperback)

~ Emilian Balanescu (Author), (Author)
Key Phrases: grid builder, order processor, tshirtshop database, Demo Product Catalog, Windows Internet Explorer, Page Tools (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Beginning PHP and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition covers every step of the design and building process involved in creating powerful, extendable e–commerce web sites. Based around a real–world example involving a web site selling t–shirts, you’ll learn how to create and manage a product catalog, build and integrate a shopping cart, and process customer accounts and PayPal/credit card transactions.

With the e–commerce framework in place, authors Emilian Balanescu and Cristian Darie show you how to integrate advanced features sure to set your web site apart from the competition. You’ll learn how to expand your catalog using Amazon Web Services, optimize the web site for the search engines, and take advantage of Ajax to build an even more user–friendly shopping cart.

Other highlights:

• The authors show you how to build a complex, extendable e–commerce web site using sound development practices.
• This second edition has been updated to take advantage of a more flexible templating system, and new chapters cover Ajax integration and search engine optimization.
• The text goes beyond basic product and customer management, showing you how to integrate product reviews, process payments using both credit cards and PayPal, and expand your web site catalog using third–party services such as Amazons affiliate program.

What you’ll learn

• Build an extensible e–commerce web site using sound development techniques.
• Increase sales through proven techniques such as cross–selling, upselling, and enhancing customer service offerings.
• Expand your product and service offerings by integrating with reseller programs such as Amazon Affiliates via XML web services.
• Take advantage of search engine optimization techniques to make your web site more easy to find.

Who is this book for?

This book was written for individuals seeking to build e–commerce web sites using the PHP language and MySQL database.

About the Apress Beginning Series

The Beginning series from Apress is the right choice to get the information you need to land that crucial entry–level job. These books will teach you a standard and important technology from the ground up because they are explicitly designed to take you from “novice to professional.” You’ll start your journey by seeing what you need to know—but without needless theory and filler. You’ll build your skill set by learning how to put together real–world projects step by step. So whether your goal is your next career challenge or a new learning opportunity, the Beginning series from Apress will take you there—it is your trusted guide through unfamiliar territory!

About the Author

Emilian Balanescu is a programmer experienced in many technologies, such as PHP, Java, .NET, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MS SQL Server. He currently works as a Wireless Network Administrator at accessNET International S.A. Romania, a company that provides fixed wireless access services operating a point-to-multipoint digital radio communication network with national coverage. You can reach Emilian at www.emilianbalanescu.ro.

Cristian Darie is a software engineer with experience in a wide range of modern technologies, and the author of numerous books, including his popular ASP.NET C# E-Commerce tutorial, his AJAX and PHP tutorial, and his SEO tutorial for PHP developers. Cristian is studying distributed application architectures for his PhD, and is getting involved with various commercial and research projects. When not planning to buy Google, he enjoys his bit of social life. If you want to say "Hi," you can reach Cristian through his personal website, http://www.cristiandarie.ro.

Product Details

• Paperback: 707 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 2 edition (February 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590598644
• ISBN-13: 978-1590598641
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #92,223 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #26 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Business & Culture > E-Commerce
  #29 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Databases > Specific Databases > MySQL & mSQL
  #30 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Web Development > Programming > PHP

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very good book for ecommerce, but definitely not a beginner's book, August 18, 2008

By	Rangel A. Spasov - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The book offers great insight for building the basis of a professional, scalable ecommerce system. The code is well explained, but only if you already have decent knowledge of PHP. My only complaint is the book's structure. For example, usually a chapter begins by fully creating all the database stored procedures and the data tier, then goes to the business tier, and finally explains the presentation stuff (the book uses the Smarty template engine). In my opinion it would be better if it was organized by functionality rather that application layers. It makes the book less logical and requires a little bit of getting used to.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Challenging but worth the effort, April 23, 2009

By	Z. Werner - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have recently completed reading this book in its entirety. First, here's what I liked about this book. This book is a wonderful presentation of how to build an e-commerce site from start to finish. It touches on nearly all the major considerations you are faced with when developing an e-commerce site and the author uses sound coding practices throughout the book. The major topics readers will be interested in are creating shopping carts, search functionality, content management system, and the ordering system. I especially appreciated how SEO was integrated into this book and how AJAX was used to enhance some features. Another important aspect was its coverage of the many ways to accept online payments which are presented throughout the book. When I e-mailed Cristian a question regarding this book he replied promptly.

Here's what I disliked about this book. This book is not a beginning PHP book and it's not a beginning MySQL book like the title might suggest. It is a beginning e-commerce book and readers are expected to be familiar with both PHP and MySQL. It is also assumed that you are familiar with OOP and the smarty templating engine. For people not familiar with smarty this might be a little intimidating. Smarty is actually fairly straight forward but you might need to visit www.smarty.net for a crash course. Help is given to set up your working environment and the authors do get you started down the right path with smarty.

I certainly did not like the writing style of this book. Most chapters start out with objectives quickly followed by numerous pages of code. This section of code is followed by a paragraph, entitled what just happened, which loosely describes what the code does but not how the code works. This same process is repeated until the end of the chapter. All of the code is commented well but it's up to you the reader to understand what's going on. I would have preferred if a little more time was spent describing the concepts being used. I get the feeling the authors were trying to cram this book into 700 pages out of fear of having a 1000 plus page book. Personally I wouldn't have minded if it were that long. On the flip side this did force me to really focus and understand what I was reading and not just "follow along".

Lastly, I did not like that this book did not also cover macs. There are only a handful of changes that need to be made to make this work on a mac however if you are not familiar with developing PHP sites on a mac you could easily get hung up on one of these simple problems.

Considering my dislikes you might be surprised that I didn't rate this book lower, but a walked away having learned so much I had to give this book at least four stars. This book is challenging but well worth every page.

As for critics that claimed this book is "impossible" or that "the code doesn't work" or that "the author won't respond" don't believe it. This book is challenging but as long as you stay focused and follow the book closely there should be no problems and yes the author did respond to my questions.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It is not for HTML beginners, February 3, 2009

By	T. Titeev "Timurid" (Orlando, FL / CCCP) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I can't really criticize a lot on this book. I am only on chapter 3 starting 4 today. This book requires some sort of programming knowledge, which suited me. So if you haven't developed any websites I wouldn't suggest it.

Mr. Darie makes you use smarty templates and yahoo table builder, which kind of upset me because I was hoping to see everything made from scratch without 3rd party engines and such.

Bottom line. This book needs a lot of dedication and time. It does teach you a lot of stuff, assuming you know the basics of programming.

Highly recommend for experienced programmers.