Blogs
Secure SMTP and osCommerce Shopping Cart.
Sun, 08/09/2009 - 14:08 | 
strikehawk
Recently, our development team had a discussion about the current mailer class in osCommerce, CRE Loaded Cart. The mailer class has been around for quite some time, now. What it does not include in the SMTP functions are the abilities to send message directly over TLS or SSL for encryption. This aspect of secure ecommerce is crucial! Customer data, middle 6 digits of credit cards, sign ups, order confirmations are all sent in plain text/html for any hacker to view if they are curretnly sniffing your network traffic. The EOS project has began an agressive effort to include secure esmtp into their oscommerce deriviative. I recommend that current osCommerce stores consider monitoring the project to go into production mode or hire a programmer to secure the php mailer class.
Another issue if your host has built PHP as a DSO module is that email is sent as nobody@serverhostname.domain.com and when a remote host completes a sender call-back verification, email user nobody@ will be denied. So it's important to utilize smtp email, but enhance it for securities sake!
Sucessful osCommerce eCommerce website shows that you can make it, too!
Sun, 08/02/2009 - 12:55 | strikehawk
I just had a chance to read Lessons-Learned-Holland-based-Retailer-Targets-Cutting-Edge-of-Fashion and the lessons they learned in opening their osCommerce shopping cart. Never over extend your ability to meet market demand for your products. Again, NEVER over extend your abilities. Drop shipping is nice on the outside, but when you go to order from the supplier and the item(s) are already gone, you anger your customers!
Are you good with yard selling? Consider purchasing and reselling everything you can find around your neighborhood. Make your significant other assist you with cleaning and repairing. Then, offer store pickup module and sell sell sell. The key to local marketing is using data manager to publicize your geo-location (Your spot on the map). StrikeHawk eCommerce Inc. makes a great WebMasters Tool that will RSS feed your articles, inventory and display sales information within google analytics. Ask them to convert it to osCommerce for you.