Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to take a look at ecommerce. Typically, the process of creating, configuring, and managing ecommerce, including setting up merchant accounts, and so on, can be complicated with lots of room for error and frustration.

For example, I had friends who worked at an unnamed Internet hosting company, where the idea was to help small businesses establish a website and have ecommerce running. They used an unnamed open source ecommerce system and an unnamed CMS system (not Drupal) to work with these clients, and there were a lot of headaches—some of which could be traced to ecommerce.

As with other Google tools, Google checkout has its limitations, but it’s a nice place to start. And it can be a really satisfying place to start, because you can do so much without hassle, or at least with reduced risk of hassle.

We’ll also take a look at some other options as alternatives to Google Checkout, which still may be appropriate for a beginner.