PHP Vendor

I was wondering if there was a system in existence or being worked on for simple web-baised purchaces. I was thinking about making one, but I dunno if it's been done/worth the effort/ or is anyone is intrested. Granted there are nifty sites out there that manage multitudes of stores, but with the recent advances of LSL I think having a "turn-key" system for web-baised purchaces for "mom and pop" stores to have thier own catalogue running off thier own php site would be extra nifty. There are a lot of sites out there that could host a low-traffic site for free. Plus, with the promise of fire-fox intergration a vendor could be any prim that can load a webpage.


My idea would be like this:

There would be two main parts-- The webpage and the in-world server. Ideally all a user would have to do would be to input the url of the php script on thier server as well as well as some security info. Then all the user would have to do is drag and drop items into the server to have the inventory updated on the web. Maybe even have an open-source interactive catalogue front-end script with plug-in capabilities. To purchace an item user would have to type in thier name which would be checked in a name 2 key database (which,I must confess I haven't looked at yet). For Firefox or websites launched from within SL intergration a simple &key=blah-blahblah variable could be added to side step this part.

The delivery would be kinda tricky. The server could send an item to the buyer akin to SL Boutique's "wallet" that takes money from the buyer and gives it to the seller. The "COD package" tells the in-game server to send the item to the buyer. The package could also track how much money was actually spent and also warn the user is they are in away or busy modes before telling the server to send the item. Buyers may not go for this because the COD package could theoretically take all thier money. It also gives SL two chances to screw up the exchange and since you can't verify that they actually received either item. :/

I would be nice if Linden Labs had a try before you buy option here. That way you could send the item and if they choose not to pay for it, they don't get to keep it.

I want to try to avoid setting up "accounts" or having people have to deposit money before making purchaces. Or having to go through a middle man. The idea here would be to allow people to be autonomous without having to code everything themselves. And to integrate SL into the web and people's own web designs.

I guess the main killer here would be the delivery system. No way to tell if anything actually gets delivered and no way to pay for something unless you are logged into SL and standing infront of a prim owned by another user or scripted to take your money. It's kinda frustrating, SL has a lot of promise... but also limitations.

But What o you guys think? Is this a viable idea? Do you think other people would be interested? I decided to get some info before I try starting another project and putting a lot of effort into it.

It would be far more useful when/if LL implements a in-game web browser. There's nothing more immersion-breaking and potentially annoying than having to minimize SL and open a browser, just to buy an item to use back in SL again. I've used both SL Boutique and SLExchange... but I don't think I've ever used them while I was actually LOGGED IN to SL.

while not intended for any sort of use there is the new F1 browser, which uses mozilla (or firefox cant tell i have both installed... need to clean out the computer) simple change of an ini file and you can point it to basicly any webpage you please, even advanced things like flash can be done with this limited test by dragging you plugins folder to the right place

its not offical
its not stable for anything more than basic html in the big picture (works fine for me, but for you i dunno)

but for the most part i can run just about everything in it and its quite nice

when all this inworld browser stuff came up i was quite content with html in a window, on a prim sounds like a nightmare, far as add SPAM any type of security (joe blow walks up and snipes you) but thats just me, theres others that say "why do i want this tiny window, its useless" but for me and my 21 inch monitor that tiny window is well more than 800x600 and quite suitable for most pages

There are a few people that are using the browser ini change... but I don't think I'd program anything specific for that userbase just yet. Besides that, there's no LSL support for that yet, which would make the two things completely seperate.

LOL, it takes me a while to code things, so I figured by the time I got the web-only store part finished, I'd be able to work on in-game firefox vendors. Or maybe this is too optimistic? The first step would be to make a web-only vendor. When firefox is fully intergrated (and I get a feeling that this will be soon as it seems like the online help is just a "preview" of firefox intergration that seems to be completed in its most basic form) I'd work on optimizing the scripts to work in-game as well as web-only.

The biggest problems I see are the actual web-2-game transactions (no try before you buy, verification of delivery, or linden "paypal." and security, which I admit I know little about.

The idea of plugins kinda excite me, because if you do all your transactions through the same sytem you could theoretically plot supply-demand type curves via PHP to better price your product and a lot of optional economic type things.. as well as have pre-programmed "sales" and what not.