# Making A Website For Placing Orders, Etc



## OrbitzXT (Oct 5, 2010)

I work for an electrical contracting business who are trying to become a little more 21st century and computerized. At the moment, when electricians need to order parts they're doing so in a variety of ways. Some will call the office, others will email, some send faxes. Originally, we thought to create an Excel spreadsheet with with a drop down list of the various parts to create an order form which they would email.

It was pointed out to me that this seemed pretty dumb and/or confusing and that building a simple website might be a better idea. It does sound better now that I think about it, but I have little to no experience building websites. I reinstalled Windows on a few slow PCs and suddenly I'm the Jesus Christ of technology around here and got this project thrown onto me. I don't mind the challenge though since I knew I could rely on the interwebz and TPU's wonderful crew for assistance.

So to the beginning of my questions. Really the only functionality I need at the moment is an order form for the electricians to fill out that gets sent back here to the office. It would be nice if I could create some sort of database at the same time to keep track of when and what was ordered and by who. Those are really all I need right now.

I haven't a clue how to begin this, and eagerly await any responses to this thread. Thank you for any and all assistance you can offer


----------



## digibucc (Oct 5, 2010)

basic php/mysql ...   use phpmyadmin to set up a table, set up a script to read and write html form data to the mysql database using php

i know that's not a walk through, but I can guarantee using those terms you can google plenty of tutorials that explain php/mysql.

I learned how to do it, by doing the exact same thing.  that also means it's not a part of my memory - i just know how to find it if i have to.


----------



## Dent1 (Oct 5, 2010)

Pay for a domain name, you can buy a cheap .info domain name from $4 per year. You can redirect the domain name to a free web hosting company like 000webhost.com. I really wouldnt recommend hosting it yourself as you'll be responsible for the reliability.

As far as the database, if you are not an expert with with MSQL, use a open source content management system like Drupal or Joomla there should be plenty of scripts which will process order forms, payment systems and send out automated email notifications.


----------



## OrbitzXT (Oct 5, 2010)

I talked to one of my bosses who gave me a clearer understanding of what they want this website for. In Lotus Approach they have a database of about 5000 items they've ordered over the last 15 years. The average job doesn't use anywhere near all that, they just keep it in the database. At the moment, a foreman will communicate with the "Expeditor" in the office to tell him what items they need. That expeditor then goes into this database searching for the items to find a MCC Number. MCC is the company name and it's an arbitrary number they've assigned to each item, but that number is used for other databases.

All they really want this website to do, is to have a breakdown of the different categories and sizes of the various parts. For example, you can choose between Fasteners, Condulets, Wire, Boxes, etc. Lets say you choose Condulets, the next step would be to choose the size. After that, quantity. Then they want this emailed to the office, and would like it to have the MCC Number associated with the item included, to save time here at the office.

Also, I believe they said they bought miladcontracting.com sometime ago, but never did anything with it. The site says its under construction if you go to it. So how exactly should I get started given this new information? The task doesn't seem terribly difficult...for someone who knows what they're doing.


----------



## Bundy (Oct 5, 2010)

Like what Dent said, find a web hosting company or talk to your ISP. For a fee, you can then get an online banking account, shopping cart etc., and hopefully instructions on how to set it up.


----------



## OrbitzXT (Oct 5, 2010)

Bundy said:


> Like what Dent said, find a web hosting company or talk to your ISP. For a fee, you can then get an online banking account, shopping cart etc., and hopefully instructions on how to set it up.



Well when I say parts are being ordered, I mean an order is being sent from the foreman to our office. Our office then goes and actually places the order. So there's no money transactions with what I'm trying to do here.


----------



## Dent1 (Oct 5, 2010)

OrbitzXT said:


> Well when I say parts are being ordered, I mean an order is being sent from the foreman to our office. Our office then goes and actually places the order. So there's no money transactions with what I'm trying to do here.



That can still be done. There are scripts within Drupal that will send notifications via email of the order. Or you can create a account with less permissions so that staff in the office can view the orders from the front end whilst you have permissions to delete/edit the data via the backend of the database


----------



## OrbitzXT (Oct 6, 2010)

I find this all pretty confusing >.< But I guess that's expected considering I'm just starting this website project today. In times like this I think of the movie 'What About Bob?' and Baby Steps. First step would be to get the website with it's domain name up and running. Then I can start thinking about what actually goes on the website. I guess I'll check out Drupal, I've seen that mentioned a few times in this thread now. 

When I get into work tomorrow morning I'll talk to a few people and find out what the deal is with our domain name. How do they even work? If we "own" miladcontracting.com as some people in our office think we do, what is the next step there? Finding a web hosting site to make use of the domain name?


----------



## Dent1 (Oct 6, 2010)

If the company genuinely owns miladcontracting.com then you need to establish which domain registrar company it's been registered with. Then you need to obtain the password/username. When miladcontracting.com was bought it might have been bought with extras like webspace, email accounts etc, useful to know before you start developing the site.


----------



## Disparia (Oct 6, 2010)

Haven't used or even heard of Approach before today. But from a quick search, seems like it uses a dBASE format database. At the very least it'll be easy to get data exported from it - there's a dBase ODBC driver in Windows.

I do this kind of thing day in and day out... perhaps trade coding work for a outdoor rated breaker box, breakers, conduit, gang boxes, and outlets?  I wish I could offer that seriously, don't know I would have the time for a full solution. Keep posting, and I'll try to help. Just keep me in mind for some discounted electrical supply


----------



## OrbitzXT (Oct 6, 2010)

I spoke to one of the bosses this morning, turns out we do own the domain miladcontracting.com with Yahoo Business. I got the log in info from him this morning. I have a couple of tasks I need to get out of the way then I can begin playing with this website that I have no clue how to construct =)


----------



## caleb (Oct 6, 2010)

5000 items normalized isn't really something i'd shoot with a database system.

And by the task you have and considering the 





> I haven't a clue how to begin this, and eagerly await any responses to this thread. Thank you for any and all assistance you can offer


 I'd go with strict HTML/JS so you get the hang of making simple webpages that have some functionality by javascript. This way you won't become overwhelmed by the stuff that comes with database and server side scripting.


----------

