1.1. Creating your own CMS. Introduction.
In this part of our course, we will focus on building our own CMS for an online store. But before we begin, you should read the introduction to understand whether you actually need to write your own CMS or simply use something like Drupal with the convenient Commerce module (and lots of ready-made modules). In the introduction, we will cover:
- The logic behind how an online store works
- When we should build our own CMS instead of using existing ones
- Benefits of building your own CMS
- Descriptions of other ready-made CMS solutions for online stores
Online store: why do you need one?
Most people have already encountered online shopping. The internet is full of websites selling all kinds of products:
- Stores like Amazon, Ozon
- Auctions like eBay
- Coupon sites like Biglion, Groupon
- Subscription-based websites
An online store is a very popular way to take your business to the next level.
eBay
For example, eBay has around 84 million active users and generates $1,900 in sales per second. This means 84 million people are buying and selling from the comfort of their homes. eBay is not a standard auction site—it has many social network features: user profiles, private messaging, ratings, popularity, and individual user stores.
Amazon
Amazon’s annual revenue in 2013 was $74 billion. Amazon is the most popular online store in the world.
BaseCamp
It’s not just physical products that are sold—monthly subscriptions for services are also common. For example, BaseCamp sells premium accounts that allow more projects and extended functionality.
Why use e-commerce?
The popularity of e-commerce is constantly growing. Many prefer shopping from home or while spending long hours at the computer at work. As more people are satisfied with their online shopping experience, they attract even more customers. Sellers continuously improve their online stores, tailoring them to customer needs, which leads to just as much satisfaction as in-person shopping.
Why use PHP?
PHP is a very popular programming language, and it’s the one we’ll use to build the backbone of our CMS. Many developers prefer newer languages like Ruby and its Ruby on Rails framework, but we’ll go with the tried-and-true PHP and MySQL combo. Programming in PHP may not be the fastest or most efficient in terms of server resources, but it’s relatively simple and has a lot of ready-made solutions, libraries, and best practices.
When to use existing solutions?
There are already many ready-made e-commerce solutions available, and you should use them when:
- You’re facing tight deadlines
- You have multiple developers working on the project, each with their own style. Using a unified CMS with its own coding standards helps streamline the development process
- The client has a preference for a specific CMS
- A ready-made solution is a perfect fit for your requirements