Hello everyone, I just have a simple question.

Let's say, a video store sells movies online. So in order to purchase a movie, you enter your info(name, address, credit card). I would like to learn how to do that (and i know it's not that hard), but I need you guys to guide me in the right direction.

First, where does the form usually get submitted? Someone told me to an e-mail address, but then I dont think this is the most secure way. Someone else told me there is software that can allow you to manage your orders in a safe/secure way.
So, what is the way you guys would do it?

Second, since this has to do with credit card transactions, and i know SSL is used ... how do i go about getting this for a site? Do I have to purchase the service/software?

Thanks a lot for all your guys/gals help

-Henry

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Alright letme take you throught it...

First, any respectable establishment would not use email to communicate credit card information, it's way too dangerous.

Normally, the form validation is done on the server who has the web page. The server send the page to the browser with information on how to construct it, depending on the browser version.

Next, the informations that are entered in the form are sent back to the server which then validate them for their content using a programming technic called "regular expressions". You can find this programming technic anywhere now, javascript, java, PHP, ASP, CGI and many other programming language.

The information validated are then checked in a database to see if they already exist. Other information, like credit card information, are verified in two points. 1st: using the Lunn algorithm and
2nd: the central credit office.

As for security, depending on the transactionnal server you want to use, each have a good to excellent security coding system. IIS from Microsoft (The web server on which you'd install your e-com web site)come with the Kerberos encryption system which is very good.

You could also use Appache web server. very solide and most of all...free. It can be installed on a Windows 2000 platform easily or you can find it for free, pre installed on a linux distribution like Red Hat 7.0 and up.

Here are some URL you could go to get more informations. Let me finish by saying that e-commerce is not just something you "wing". Try getting as much information as possible before risking it. With all those hackers "wannabe" on the net, it's very easy to punch holes in a business web solution if not properly set-up.

http://sourceforge.net/
http://www.learnasp.com/learn/index.asp
http://www.easyphp.org/
http://www.webwizguide.info/

I hope this message helped you a bit.

Good luck

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I would to also like to point out that
you would also need a merchant credit card account just like you have a credit card to charge purchases with you need an account to accept credit card transactions with.

Most banks offer merchant accounts with either visa or mastercard. However there are sites that offer credit card services and can take care of that part of the site for you here are few examples:

ibill.com
ccbill.com
2checkout.com

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