Shopping Cart?

[nyway]

Good Afternoon-
First day on Click&Pledge and I'm hopeful somebody can save me some time. I've been poring over the documentation for hours and I've been unable to find what I thought would be simple. FaaS is certainly the way to go for us, but I'm confused as to the "basket" portion. I was hoping C&P was similar to other options like PayPal and Google that allow you to add a variety of things to your cart, view your cart at any time, and check out at any time. I see the advanced forms, but that leaves a rather obtrusive shopping list on the right side. I was hoping for a singular cart icon that listed the total number of items in the cart and allowed you to click it to see the contents and, if desired, check out at that time. Unless I'm missing something obvious, I have not been able to locate the similar functionality in C&P. Could someone point me in the right direction.
Many Thanks.

[CnP.Support]

good day @NYWay,

Forms as a Service is a wrapper around our API allowing you to create forms and post it to our servers for processing.

With Google & PayPal the transaction is done on their server and the end user will leave your site and go to Google or PayPal for final payment. Our examples show you how FaaS forms work:

- http://clickandpledge.com/Platforms/...ment/API/FaaS/

If you look at the examples you will see how some of them work.

The FaaS forms are quite easy and fast.

Let me know if you have any specific questions that I can answer.

[nyway]

Thanks! I've been all over those examples, but I really was looking for a standard shopping cart system with "add to cart" and "view cart". It's ok if the answer is that it doesn't exist in C&P yet. I was just looking for the answer so I could stop looking. The delivered "basket" will probably suffice (especially if it has to!), but I was looking for the standard shopping cart features you find commonplace these days.

[CnP.Support]

Good day @NYWay,

What are trying to do cannot be done with FaaS forms- FaaS allows for HTML forms to be posted in a single post and no basket is provided.

If you want to use a shopping cart have you considered using our integrated shopping carts? That may help you.

[nyway]

So, I wrote my own little javascript/php shopping cart to collect all the transactional data that I want to post to my C&P page. The user is logged in and I know all demographic data and the total amount due. Can I just send all that data in post variables so that the form fields are pre-populated when the C&P page displays? What I'm trying to do is avoid setting up an SSL, as that's something I've never done and don't know how to do it. So, it would be easier to send all the data to C&P and have the form pre-populate with all the necessary data and let C&P handle the security.
Thanks again.

[CnP.Support]

Good day!

There is no way to avoid the SSL since PCI mandates any personal information can only be collected using a secure form.

SSL needs to be set up on your server. Are you hosting your own site or is it hosted elsewhere?

[nyway]

Our site is on hostmonster. I was under the impression that if using the C&P pages, be it simple or advanced, that the securing of the session was taken care of. I'm not sure we would have signed on had we known that it wasn't. SSL is pricey and difficult to set up. Probably would have gone a different route had we known that. Is there a detailed tutorial on setting up SSL on a shared hosting environment?

[CnP.Support]

Good day @NYWay,

You don't need SSL if you use our forms. Our forms are easy and all security and SSL is provided.

Based on your post I am under the impression that you are creating FaaS forms which are customized forms being hosted on your site. These forms are not hosted on our servers and as such they need to be secure.

SSL is not expensive at all and may take 5 minutes to set up and you only need them if you are hosting the forms on your site.

Here is a link to where you can buy 256 bit SSL keys for $10/year: https://www.servertastic.com/rapidssl/

Again let me emphasize that you do NOT Need SSL if you use our forms, meaning the Classic, Catalog or the floating basket. You only SSL if you are designing your own forms and want to use the FaaS processor.

Let me know if I can be of more assistance.

[nyway]

Many thanks for the clarification. I started with FaaS as I thought it was the best option for us. Recently, I've been looking more at building the transactions in my own shopping cart within my website and then posting the total due and all user demographics (name, address, etc) to a simple form hosted on the C&P servers. That was my last question - can I pre-populate the form fields with post variables on a C&P hosted form?

One other question on SSL, should we opt for the FaaS route - my web host (hostmonster) says that in addition to purchasing an SSL certificate, I have to have a dedicated IP address which they charge $60 annually for. In your experience, does that sound like something most web hosting providers do?

Thanks again.

[CnP.Support]

Good day!

To set up SSL you don't necessarily need a dedicated IP but to setup shared IP is a bit more complex and a hosting company does not do that. So in short all hosting companies require a dedicated IP since the SSL has to point to an SSL key which is site specific.

I have seen people use the following site and the price is quite reasonable: http://www.hostgator.com/shared - the business plan provides SSL and dedicated IP for ~$10/month. You may want to research it.

As for the process you are trying to do:

We don't allow personal information to be collected in an insecure site and then posted to us. I don't think anyone does that since it violates several security protocols. Even if you look at the likes of PayPal, the basket information is posted to PayPal and then the user logs in using the PayPal's page and all transaction is done on PayPal's site, including collection of PII (Personal Identifiable Information).

Hope I have answered your question. Let me know if you wish more help.

[nyway]

Thanks for your patience and support. I'll continue to look into SSL as an option. As the user has already provided all of the information in the billing form, it doesn't make sense to ask them to enter it again. Actually, I was asking because we can pre-populate the PayPal form. That's what we're doing now, we just don't care for PayPal from an accounting standpoint. But, I can fill in the PayPal form with post variables. The default action for PayPal is to ask you to log in, but underneath that, you have the option to "pay with credit card". If you expand that, the billing form opens up and it is pre-populated with the data that we send to it. That's why I was asking if it could be done here. Understood about the security issue, though. Another reason we're moving away from PP.