Hi Folks,

I'm hopefully looking for a little direction or pointers on an e-commerce scenario I need to setup. Basically, the situation is kind of like a stock photo site where a user can buy credits for downloads. They set the amount they want to buy, almost like making a donation. So I am thinking I would probably need to use a combination of the e-commerce module with

Any Price Products:
http://www.silverstripe.org/ecommerceanypriceproduct-module/

Member Profiles
http://silverstripe.org/member-profiles-module/

Members Only Pages
http://silverstripe.org/membersonlypages-module/

And then somehow setup a way to track/show user credits. I am just kind of theorizing all this right now, but am I headed in the right direction? I don't really need a shopping cart even, just a way for someone to buy and maintain credits. Would anyone have any pointers or basic outline how they might set this up using SilverStripe?

Thanks

Hi Pix,

we have done something similar already. https://www.fashionbids.com/ is a platform made with SilverStripe and our E-Commerce Module SilverCart where a user buys credits and is then able to place a bet on an article and has a chance according to his number of bets to win the article The price for one bet is 1/100th of the article price and thus, by placing 100 bets, he actually buys the article.

Developing the credit system and keeping track of the purchases and orders needs thorough planning and coding, because you have to keep track of all actions, like a history.

You may want to start by writing down the detailed requirements of your application. Then you have to identify the candidates for classes and the relations between them. Then you code the classes and implement the functionality / business logic. Nothing fancy here, object oriented analysis 101 and the ideal SilverStripe approach. The way SilverStripe works greatly encourages this procedure.

If you have read the book, building the job site takes only a few hours for a skilled developer. So I am not sure if using the modules you mentioned here is really much of an advantage in time and effort. You will know if you compare the classes / functionality of the modules with your plan. I am in now way propagating to code everything from scratch, but this decision is always necessary when evaluating the re-use of code that has been developed by others.

Cheers
Ramon

Hi Ramon,

Thank you very much for the reply, that is very good information to think about. Your system sounds very close to what I need to develop. I am glad to see a working example and know that it can be done with SilverStripe. I kind of thought it could, it's definitely the most flexible CMS I have ever run across. But you are right, I really need to read the book, I know enough to build my basic site but this is obviously much more complicated. That will be my first step.

p.s. "Fashionbids" is really COOL, I bet that would do great here in the U.S. Great job with that, very nice site!

Thanks again!

Even though I'd advise posting in the eCommerce section, my 2 cents would be to implement a method of

a)a product called "credits" that people have to pay for with a normal payment provider
b)a new payment provider called "site credits" that decrements the value populated upon a successful purchase of (a)