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T3hPreacher

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 7, 2008
61
1
Right now I'm helping a gentleman with a home improvement business get his website up and running. He had an idea to create a page with tutorial videos available for download, for a fee. I was wondering if I could implement this with iWeb. His vision was a per-minute rate, but I don't think this is possible... I imagine it'd be better to charge per video.

Either way, would there be a way to get this going through iWeb? I'm afraid I'm not much of a web designer, but he's a friend and I want to help him if I can.
 

mufflon

macrumors 6502
Sep 15, 2006
264
2
the short answer is "no", iweb does not offer any kind of backend solution which a store relies on - iweb could probably offer you the means for a decent design, but implementating without knowing how the e-commerce engine works is probably too much work for no real benefit.

I would advise you to search for an open source e-commect solution such as oscommerce or equivalent, get a server with php and mysql - plenty of hosting oportunities but they will cost, so might be an idea to check with your client how far he wants to go - 1$ / day should cover basic webhosting quite easily, but if he's not keen on that then I don't think this project will pan out.

Once you have a server with php and mysql running it will often be quite easy to handle the rest (wholy dependant on which e-commerce solution you pick I guess).
 

tominated

macrumors 68000
Jul 7, 2006
1,723
0
Queensland, Australia
per minute rates is basically impossible afaik, but you could easily mke a pay-per-download system with e-junkie. plus, with e-junkie, you can use it in iweb and you don't need to know how to set anything like a shopping cart up. it all does it for you.
 

ChrisA

macrumors G5
Jan 5, 2006
12,541
1,653
Redondo Beach, California
Right now I'm helping a gentleman with a home improvement business get his website up and running. He had an idea to create a page with tutorial videos available for download, for a fee.

I think he is setting himself up for failure. Far better to have the video available for free. Use the videos to show the world that this guy knows what he is doing (by sounding like he does on camera) also this gives people a reason to look at his web site. If the content is very good then other sites will link to his free videos and his site will move up on Google search results.

Ok, if he already has a well known name and there is a demand for these videos the way to do it with iWeb is to host the videos on a commercial site that is already set up with a back end to accept credit cards and your iWeb site only has a link to to commercial site. Lots of companies that will host your video for you, for a fee.

In the end he is better off making this available to a wider audience for free
 

krazykiefer

macrumors newbie
Mar 18, 2008
7
0
iWeb Facade with e-commerce backend

Is it possible to have the facade with blogs, vlogs etc. done in iWeb with a site on back-end done with shopping cart or other e-commerce solutions?

Most of us can do the blog/vlog postings and easy update maintenance stuff using iWeb.

That way a designer/developer would only be needed for the major stuff....
 

SrWebDeveloper

macrumors 68000
Dec 7, 2007
1,871
3
Alexandria, VA, USA
To clarify, iWeb does not handle programming or database stuff on the server, which is called the back end. It's fine to add links to third party e-commerce sites that do or embed them in iframes via iWeb HTML, but that's all considered front end. But it's the path you must take, and the only path, if you want to involve iWeb in the equation.

What you called "facades" is similar to the front end examples I listed above, but there is no back end for iWeb as far as your needs and the context of this conversation. Meaning, you don't have access to the back end, so developers don't either.

You need to switch to a different webhost with PHP/MySQL support if you wish to maintain the data and code on your own, single, server.

-jim
 

aaron mcilvain

macrumors newbie
Apr 11, 2009
1
0
moontoast.com

Although this is not the solution for an online iweb store front, i think your friend has an idea better suited for moontoast.com. Just started up last month and has a clever web hub for the professional consultant ichat to client for a per min fee. Works well if ya got the audience, and perhaps his iweb site could be used to promote his presence at moontoast. ideas grows, ideas grows, ideas grows...
 
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