Posted by Gleep on 12/21/06 02:07

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 22:27:40 GMT, Bacchus <zoraster@REMOVETHISoperamail.com> wrote:

>I have been creating web sites for two to three years now and have
>become fairly proficient at coding.
>
>however got a request today from a prospective client.
>his request is a little over my head and I'm not even sure if it's
>possible.
>
>he sells some products online and wants to set up distributorships.
>what he wants is to allow people to sign up to become distributors off
>his web site.
>
>setting up a form for signing up would be easy enough, however, he
>wants them to be able to click on a button and have a web site which
>is a duplicate of his created for the new distributor. Also naturally,
>all shopping cart information, e-mails, contact forms would then be
>forwarded to the new distributor and not to the main site.
>
>he is hoping to have them set up as a subdomain under his account.
>so if his web site is http://www.maindistributor.com, the new
>distributor's web site would be something like this
> http://www.maindistributor.com/~johnthenewguy
>
>personally I don't think that's a good idea, because I would just
>backspace over the extension and checked the distributor's web site.
>
>If you know of a way to do this or a better way, I am prepared to hire
>you as a consultant and/or work with you as a partner on this project.
>thanks


As a developer, sometimes it's best to turn down a client when they want something odd ball. I see
that the guy wants absolute control over the purchasing of items and have all the distributors do
the work and advertising ect.. I don't know if the main site is set up or not, but you could use
OS Commerce and heavily customize it, but be warned some of those classes in OSC can be very
complex.

I've built shopping cart system and had to do accommodate very screwy requirements. In those cases
it's probably best to build one from scratch. I would approach the distributor thing this way.
Build out the main shopping cart site but in addition to that there would be an Administration
section for setting up new distributors and within that you'd be able to control data what
distributor sold what to who and what is the commission and there would be back end stuff where they
can see they sales fee and payment methods ect..

I can see that owner will probably want settings for different distribution levels and prices.
Distributor A may have a different set of products from distributor B and different price structure,
shipping levels, commission rates and so on it can turn into a mess of confusion. And there would
be reports, you'd have to have allot of security

Also in the distributor admin section there would be forms to fill out where headers, about, contact
info, images , and css and email lists all would have to be custom for each distributor. All this is
custom stuff you'd have to write, you can't buy a package and expect it to work. When someone
visits a certain distributor site web page it a custom look for each distributor.

On the front side lets say someone arrives on the site by www.mainsite.com/JohnDistrubtor using
mod_rewrite and session/cookie capture; I would set control variables. The visitor variable and
another variable what distributor was selected. The site owner will obviously want to know how many
visitors are looking at what distributor and you'd have to track that. The customer would be
shopping normally but everything he does is tracked for JohnDistrubtor. When you start breaking it
all down, you have to know up front all the information that will be required. Then there is a
possibilty where a distributor decided to make sub distrubotr futher complicating the thing.

Not entirely sure but I think there are some ecommerce packages that offer affiliate tracking, but
mostly likely you'll end up customizing it anyway. That's why I said it's sometime best to just
develop it from scratch.

I developed a site that sold ringtones/images of birds and animals. The site failed miserably,
didn't make any money at all. When people placed orders, I had to track the sales in a bizarre
way. Because the site was licensing all the products form others. When orders where placed I had
to track the SMS fees, the short code fees. (By the way the phone companies are raping companies
with short codes fees) They charge like .45 cents a call, plus there are short code rental fees
and fees and more fees. It's extremely hard to make money with ringtone sites. But after that I
had to track ordered items because the site owners had to pay license fees to product providers.
And here's the kicker I had to split those revenues again because some of the licensors split a
portion of their fees to various charities. Then on top of that there was another split between the
site owner and the company I worked for developed the thing. Believe me it was an accounting
nightmare. If we actually sold a ringtone for $2.99 we'd end of making 4 or 5 cents. Almost
forgot we also buy some expensive java software (EnterFlex) that modified the ringone format on the
fly depending on what type of cell phone the client had. The project was a complete disaster and
everyone was pissed at the end.

My point being, be really care full about dealing with clients that want to do something a bit
weird, because you (the developer) can be stuck in a nightmare project from hell, that will never go
away, you'll constantly have to update and fix the thing and probably end up costing you time and
money.

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