Book Image

Building Online Stores with osCommerce: Professional Edition

By : David Mercer
Book Image

Building Online Stores with osCommerce: Professional Edition

By: David Mercer

Overview of this book

<p>The book can be read from front to back, but each chapter is self contained so the reader can skip chapters to read those that they are interested in. Each chapter will move from basic to advanced where applicable and also relate what the administrator (reader) is doing to how this affects what the client sees on the site.</p> <p>So, for example, the customization chapter will start off with a discussion on the concept of design and how to relate this to your business. Once the reader has a clear idea of what they need to do, we look at some really simple changes such as modifying the site's language, before moving to some advanced modifications which may involve some PHP programming. At the same time the discussion will demonstrate how the changes made affect the site.</p> <p>Throughout the book, much consideration is given to the "right" way to doing things. Readers will have the great advantage that they begin, from the very start, doing things properly. This will save them a lot of time and effort in the years to come as they build on and modify their site. Utilizing best practices and sound methodologies is a great asset for beginners and experienced users alike.</p> <p>At all times, the coverage given in this book pays homage to the fact that, ultimately, the reader has a business goal in mind. To this end, the material never gets bogged down in technical issues or long discourses, but rather focuses on what is practically important for the online business and then moves on. To complement this, there are plenty of suggestions and hints as to how and where to look for further information.</p>
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Building Online Stores with osCommerce: Professional Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Foreword
Introduction
Index

The Main Players


As discussed, there are quite a few different methods for controlling a web application's security. No matter how you decide to go about it, though, there are certain elements that will probably make an appearance. This is mainly because certain ways of doing things are better than others, and as such, these have evolved into industry standards more or less. This section aims to give you a brief outline of everything you will be using and how it works, before we begin with the actual task of implementing a well-secured site.

SSL

Without g etting bogged down in too much detail, the basic outline of how SSL works can be summed up as follows:

In order for SSL to work, the server sends a public key and its certificate over to the browser, which performs some validation of the certificate before using the server's public key to encrypt its own key. Now, the server is the only machine that can decrypt this message, which contains a key from the browser. The server can then use the...