Hello all,

I'm hoping there is a kind soul out there who is willing to point me in the right direction for my project. I am a photograhper and am currently building my first real website. My image galleries are built using Photoshop CS while the rest of the pages are built and edited with Dreamweaver MX. What I would like to do is add a bit of shopping cart functionality to the galleries. Nothing major, no payment or anything (yet). Just enough for clients to be able to view the gallery and select images they would like printed and possibly size. I have user authentication with dynamic redirect working nicely now that I've discovered OLEDB and the next logical step is unattended user account creation. If the clients selections could show up in my email or even just within the Access DB I'm using that would be ideal. The setup is ASP VB with an Access 2000 DB running on IIS 6.0. Thanks in advance.

David

What database are you using? Access, SQL?

What language ASP, PHP?

Simon

DWMX 2004 | ASP | VBScript

The setup is ASP VB with an Access 2000 DB running on IIS 6.0.

hi
i have done something similier as below - hope it helps

Each time a user enters the site they are given a unique id using the 'sessionID' function, this then stays with the user by putting it into a session.

When a user views an image and wants to add it to cart, there is a small form, in this form is some hidden fields with info on the image - ID, name, price.

They click an add to cart button and it then goes to the cart view page.

Cart View Page

when the page loads it gathers the info sent from the previous page and adds to a database (customercartDB) - the session id, product id, price and so on.

Further down the page i have set up a recordset which grabs the unique id of the user, queries it against the database and returns the results.

This will then show the items that have been added to cart by the user.

you can then put this data into a form which can then be sent by email or whatever

Not perfect but will hopefully give you some ideas

cheers

Simon

DWMX 2004 | ASP | VBScript

Simon,

Thanks much for the response. This sounds like what I am aiming to do. Do you happen to know if there is an easy way to integrate this type of thing with the templates used in photoshop for the web gallery creation. I realize that the files would have to be renamed with an html extension before processing with photoshop but that can be done in batch. This would mainly be used for events where a large number of photos are taken and many visitors would be viewing and selecting the ones they would like in print. Thanks again.

David

Hi david,

The photos on my site are all stored in an access database, which is controlled by an admin section, which enables you to add pictures to the database online. The pictures are all created in somethiing like photoshop and then uploaded via the admin section.

Your way sounds like you are creating the html pages directly from photoshop? How are you giving the pictures their ID? are you doing it manually for each image? this way could become very time consuming.

Doing it from access would also give your site a bit more accesability - enable users to search for pictures, private viewing areas where a password is required and so on.

Regards

Simon

DWMX 2004 | ASP | VBScript

Simon,

This does sound like a much better way to put things together. Quite a bit more room to grow and add other features. The thing I liked about the Photoshop Web Gallery was the ease of creation and clean look that it provided. Just select the images I want in the gallery, pick my customized template and away it goes, resizing and putting everything in place. Would it be possible to post a link to your site so I can see the output this kind of setup gives? I'm still learning quite about this whole dynamic process, is there a way to batch add the files to a database (i.e. select a folder of files and have them auto inserted into the DB? Thanks for all your help.

David

This is a link to a work in progress site for a customer - it uses a slightly different cart method but you will see that the picture galleries work quite well.

www.davegreenphotography.com

This site is completely run from an access database. Take a look at the wedding section and go to the samples link at the bottom of the write up - i think the customer has put some images in there.

Another thing that you will see is that the prices are all dependent on the section that is chosen and again are all controlled via an admin and in a database.

Not sure about the batch upload - this is something i am currently investigating.

cheers

Simon

DWMX 2004 | ASP | VBScript