Terry Posted March 30, 2011 Share Posted March 30, 2011 Hi Larry, I have a few questions about this particular title. I am currently in the middle of building a new CMS and shopping cart with built-in forum and other goodies to run my sites with. I came across a link to this book today during my research time and have some questions about it. I have a business paypal account and the new software I am building I would like to use it first with the basic version of paypal then later paypal pro. Does your book go into using and implementing the basic version of paypal or is it strictly paypal pro? I understand the advantages of pro but I would like to really understand implementation of both because in some situations, sites, I would only need the basic and on other sites the pro so a well rounded tutorial on both would be something I would be interested in and wondered which you primarily focus on and if you go into both at all or just pro. Paypal made some changes to their system over the last few months, changing how they accept calls I guess with a Ajax implementation. I don't really understand it or looked into it, just something I have heard and briefly read about. Do you go into these changes on your site anywhere to supplement what you have written in the book? The last time I implemented paypal into a site I used a webform that sent the data through the URL with price etc... I read some on your old forum and I guess this is not the way to do it anymore. I spoke with a developer a month or so ago and he said that he uses CURL to pass info, do you go into this at all with your book? There was some talk in the old forum about htaccess rewrites, I looked at the overview on amazon.com and in the index it shows 2 pages for htaccessfile but examples given in the forum were to me to be a bit advanced for only 2 pages. How much detail do you go to in the book about rewrites in htaccess? My host currently only offers 5.2.X version of PHP, on my testing environment I use vertrigo which is easiest implementation of LAMP, actually AMP, and only one I ever got htaccess to work with on my windows xp/7 computers, I have installed php 5.2.7 and mysql 5 something community version. I just recently learned how to install pear into it and it is more identical to my webhost account than ever. With this setup would I have any problems using the examples in your book or would I need to do some research of my own to figure out difference between PHP 5.3 and 5.2? Why Paypal does not provide a ready made API we can download and implement into our sites I do not know, the examples I ever find are from 2005 or so that do not work with the newest version of their system. I understand the arguement about too many ways or using paypal and so many 3rd party software etc etc... But there are only certain ways you can actually process orders and pass info back and forth between the various flavors of Paypal. Why can't they just come up with something that works and then developers can take it and customize to their needs instead of having us hunt and learn and figure it all out on our own with their 500 versions of documentation written in 2004 or whatever, drives me crazy. Something like your book is what I am in strong need of that goes into actually making process transactions work but I need to do it with both version basic and pro, first basic though. I am sure arguements to only use pro but if that were only option they wouldn't offer the basic version... Paypal coding drives me nuts and has me pulling my hair out. Greatfully I am not at that stage in my project yet but it is coming up fast. Thank you for you time and the amount of effort you go through to teach us up and comers how to use all this technology the correct way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry Posted March 30, 2011 Author Share Posted March 30, 2011 I don't know where to put this question so am adding it here. I contacted my host and they are using 5.2.9 of PHP because the servers they have upgraded to php 5.3.x have all experienced a performance hit. They said that it is not a major decrease but that it intensifies on shared hosting which my sites are on, they went into further comment on it stating that cPanel also recommends staying at 5.2 due to the performance issue. Have you experienced this issue and if so how much of a degradation have you experienced using 5.3.x over the 5.2.X version? My host didn't give me percentages just said it was noticeable. - T Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Posted March 30, 2011 Share Posted March 30, 2011 I have a few questions about this particular title. I am currently in the middle of building a new CMS and shopping cart with built-in forum and other goodies to run my sites with. I came across a link to this book today during my research time and have some questions about it. First, thanks for the interest in the book! I have a business paypal account and the new software I am building I would like to use it first with the basic version of paypal then later paypal pro. Does your book go into using and implementing the basic version of paypal or is it strictly paypal pro? I understand the advantages of pro but I would like to really understand implementation of both because in some situations, sites, I would only need the basic and on other sites the pro so a well rounded tutorial on both would be something I would be interested in and wondered which you primarily focus on and if you go into both at all or just pro. The book uses the basic version of PayPal for one example and then Authorize.net for the other. The Authorize.net system is equivalent to PayPal Pro. So, in short you get to see both approaches. Paypal made some changes to their system over the last few months, changing how they accept calls I guess with a Ajax implementation. I don't really understand it or looked into it, just something I have heard and briefly read about. Do you go into these changes on your site anywhere to supplement what you have written in the book? As far as I know, this isn't an issue with what's in the book, but I always add additional issues and thoughts on my Web site in support of the book. The last time I implemented paypal into a site I used a webform that sent the data through the URL with price etc... I read some on your old forum and I guess this is not the way to do it anymore. I spoke with a developer a month or so ago and he said that he uses CURL to pass info, do you go into this at all with your book? No, the PayPal example in the book is a fixed-price item. But, yes, you don't want to pass the price to PayPal. There was some talk in the old forum about htaccess rewrites, I looked at the overview on amazon.com and in the index it shows 2 pages for htaccessfile but examples given in the forum were to me to be a bit advanced for only 2 pages. How much detail do you go to in the book about rewrites in htaccess? I think it's well more than 2 pages. From some of the debugging help I've provided in the forums, it seems that I could have gone through that section in greater detail, but everything is explained well, I believe. You can also go without the htaccess stuff, too. My host currently only offers 5.2.X version of PHP, on my testing environment I use vertrigo which is easiest implementation of LAMP, actually AMP, and only one I ever got htaccess to work with on my windows xp/7 computers, I have installed php 5.2.7 and mysql 5 something community version. I just recently learned how to install pear into it and it is more identical to my webhost account than ever. With this setup would I have any problems using the examples in your book or would I need to do some research of my own to figure out difference between PHP 5.3 and 5.2? No, you should be just fine. Thank you for you time and the amount of effort you go through to teach us up and comers how to use all this technology the correct way. You're quite welcome. Thanks again for the interest! I contacted my host and they are using 5.2.9 of PHP because the servers they have upgraded to php 5.3.x have all experienced a performance hit. They said that it is not a major decrease but that it intensifies on shared hosting which my sites are on, they went into further comment on it stating that cPanel also recommends staying at 5.2 due to the performance issue. Have you experienced this issue and if so how much of a degradation have you experienced using 5.3.x over the 5.2.X version? I have not and I have not heard this from my host, but a lot of factors go into performance issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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