Step 2: Combine existing site with oscommerce

[JoeS]

I'm very new to web programming and I've been fumbling along with the help of you and other resources to the point where I really need some advice to put it all together now.

 

I constructed a site in two modules, the actual web site which I sell membership to enter (I'm not selling merchandise), and now the pay gateway.

 

Please let me have your opinions on how I can do the following.

 

I would like the customer to make his/her purchase without logging in or creating an account. I prefer they create their accounts after they enter. I think it would be easier this way to keep my now two databases from tripping over each other? Then after purchase using Paypal Pro they're redirected to my existing registration form on my web site to create their username/password. I've read some posts on a few contributions that provide the means for purchasing without authentication, but I also read that they do store info.

 

As it stands now on my site, seperate from oscommerce, once the user logs in they are redirected to the secure pages by using sessions. I also already have a MySQL database that stores the user info.

 

A few of the problems as I see them are:

 

- oscommerce already has a customer table, and so does mine. Which should I use? Regardless of which I use I'll need to make changes to it. But then will it still work??...

 

- Another biggie is how can I pass the user session from the gateway to the site without rewriting my whole site? Currently the session is stored in a foreign key in my database.

 

 

Oscommerce is way overkill for what I need I think since I'm only selling memberships via Paypal, but I will say from my experience with it over the past day or two I think it's some cool software. B)

 

 

Anyway, I just wonder how everyone else does this sort of thing, putting their sites together. I'm just looking for some ideas. (SOS) lol...

 

Thanks