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Secure SSL Certificates

Of course you’ll need a company to host your Website, but if you decide to process credit card orders, you’ll need a host that can provide a secure server. In many cases the hosting company will provide you with a secure server for free, but in other cases you may have to pay up to $10 per month on top of your normal hosting charges for the secure service.

If you want to use your own domain name as a secure server rather than your hosting company's domain name and certificate, you’ll need to purchase your own certificate from either Thawte or Verisign, which will cost between $125 and $350 a year. EquiFax is another secure certificate issuer - they can issue a certificate for your site for only $99.

So how does a secure certificate work? A secure server is a Web server application that ensures secure information transfer between a Web server and a Web browser. The encryption is done with a protocol called SSL (Secure Socket Layer). When you connect to a secure server with your browser, the server and the browser use Secure Socket Layer to tell each other how to encrypt the information - then they can securely exchange the data. For example, encryption will allow you to send credit card information to a secure server without anyone being able to identify what kind of information it is.

So, the first task that a secure server completes is the encryption of your information. However, it also does a whole lot more. The most important task a secure server performs is to identify itself to the browser, which it achieves presenting a digital certificate to those browsers who request a secure connection. The certificate works for a secure server the same way as a driver's license works for you, except that it's much more difficult to fake.

All of the above happens absolutely transparently for the person who's browsing the site. Their browser just tells them that the secure connection was established and then shows the page. The most important thing from an Internet merchant's perspective, is that this gives your customer more confidence, and convinces them that their order information will be transferred to you safely and securely.

Shopping Cart Software

Once you have a secure server up and running, you’ll need a shopping cart, which will display the order forms, store orders, and calculate costs. In addition to ensuring that your shopping cart will work with your Real-Time gateway (if you decide to process credit card orders in Real-Time), you should look for several other prime features:

• ease of installation and quick execution

• customizability so that the pages that are generated by the shopping cart look just like your site

• ability to calculate shipping costs and sales tax

• has all the features that you'll need for the foreseeable future. Otherwise you'll need to change platforms before you know it!

• PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) support if you decide to carry out deferred processing through your own software

Consider invesitagting these carts:

• PerlShop

• ShopSite

• PDG Cart

• The Exchange Project

• Cart-It

• QuickStore

Some of the shopping carts listed above are free, while others might cost up to several hundred dollars. Just make sure you match your needs and technical abilities with the software you buy. CGI Resources is home to a number of Perl-written shopping cart scripts that you can easily implement on your site. Simply do a search on their main page for "shopping carts" and you’ll be presented with a number of scripts.

Next week will see the publication of the final section in the series. Stay tuned!