Project Detail

Description

Overview:
This project is for building a simple system allowing pre-registered account clients to login in and browse / search the products and create and track orders.

No management screens are required as the system will synchronise its data with the clients existing commercial back office software using XML documents of a pre-defined format via the back office softwares ecommerce module which is intended for this sort of usage.

This project does NOT suit the adapting of open source shops as the database schema will be defined by the back office softwares XML schemas and the functionality needs keeping clean and simple.

This needs a good PHP programmer who is particular in their coding practice and always produces simple, clean bug free code. You must also be capable of usable and clean interface design.



Technical summary:
We require a system programming for an existing web site allowing:

1. The scheduled import of stock/product information from the back office system to the web MySQL database. The back office system has a built in ecommerce feature to export stock data as XML over FTP to the web server so we just need the routines to parse this xml data into the MySQL database and the initial creation of the MySQL database according to the pre-defined xml schema.

2. The scheduled export of orders from the web MySQL database to XML documents of a pre-defined schema into a folder ready for the back office system to FTP down and import.

3. The scheduled import of order tracking information from the back office system to the web MySQL database. The back office system has a built in ecommerce feature to export order tracking data as XML over FTP to the web server so we just need the routines to parse this xml data into the MySQL database and the initial creation of the database according to the pre-defined xml schema.

4. A client login screen

5. A system to allow the logged in client to browse by category or search the product database and click to see product detail

6. A very simple shopping cart to allow the addition of items to the cart and then the submission of an order to the database (which is then exported as per 2 above). No payment mechanism is needed as these are all orders on account

7. A system to allow the logged in client to list their historic orders with order tracking information available on an order detail page

8. The screen design of the system needs to be kept simple and clean for ease of use and compatible with the client printing information on the screens on A4

I will set up the project with web and mysql space on our development servers. I will also supply all the relevant sample XML documents from the back office system (as I cannot provide direct access to the system) along with their systems XML API documentation.



Design requirements:
Simple clean design retaining the look of the existing site through the use of it existing banner and footer which are existing PHP includes (must hide in Css for print media)
Other than the above it can just be a clean form layout on grey background. Ease of use is paramount.
No graphics or graphical design required.



Programming requirements:
- Must be written in PHP5 using MySQL5 database
- Must be well commented
- Must be programmed using PHP5s OO abilities and sensibly thought out / structure
- Must be programmed with proper error handling using PHP5 error handling mechanisms
- Must be developed on our development servers so we can monitor progress and be sure of compatibility with our hosting environment
- Must be written using fully validate (via W3C validator) XHTML 1.0 Strict with all style in separate CSS
- Must be written and checked to work in IE6, IE7, Firefox 2, Firefox 3 and Safari
- Use of AJAX is encourage where it can improve ease of use but no bloated Javascript libraries please (protoype.js is ok but nothing more)
- Preferably written using Table-less XHTML but can use tables where it makes life significantly easier
- Where third party or your own scripts/libraries/components are used they must be provided with full source and licensed in such as way that allows us to use and modify them freely for commercial use without having to release our IPR
- We retain fill IPR of the final project



Budget: 250 to 500 USD