getting viewer info

[leomarc07]

if i want to get info from a viewer how do i do that. i am building a site for a ed foundaton. how do i get credit card info if they want to make a donation

[wildsue]

Hello!

I never did that before, but I can give you at least some fingertips:
you need to have a secure connection (https)
your foundation could work with Verisign or a similar firm (rather expensive..)
you could look out for somebody selling ready-made-paying-systems
the easiest way would be to give a postal check account number on your site.

Hope you will get more answers! Good luck!

Susanne

[TORCH511]

An easy way to get money, if you do not want to go through the expense of setting up a secure connection is to do so through a company like paypal, and I would strongly suggest paypal since they are well known, and many people already have a paypal account so it makes it even easier.

Otherwise you must purchase a security certifigate from a company like Verisign. You will have to have the encryption key placed on the server, which generally means a call to your web host. will will also have to either purchase some sort of shopping cart/checkout script, or program your own. You would also have so set up some sort of online merchant account so that you may transact credit card transactions with the shopping card systems. Most of the companies that sell the shopping cart scripts have instructions on all of that.

And I am not trying to be mean but if you are even asking this question, the programming such a system, while really not that hard, is beyond you. Don't feel bad. You are talking about providing security. Creating a web form, and it's corresponding handler that would take the information and send it to a merchant for processing is straightforward, but then you get into validation of the information, additional security issues, payment confirmation and tracking...

Unless you have a lot of $$$ to play with (you could hire and expert to do this for you if you did) I would really leann towards the pay pal method. I do know how it's done and I STILL have used the paypal method. I belong to a club and we now take membership applications online and we set it up with paypal. When we looked at the cost of doing it ourselves it was a no-braininer and not one member has complained.