Do I need a database for this and/or PHP?

Question

If I have a client who wants people to pay for a song on their website before they download it, do I make passwords for people to purchase to have access to an item to be issued out to download that item? What do I do!?!?!??!?!?!?! (this is not a school Q this is for my work, so tell me EVERYTHING! And please don’t make it too complicated.)

Thanks!

Answer 1

Yes, use PHP and MySQL for the database. The DB has the typical table for usernames, passwords (stored encrypted in the DB by SHA or MD5 algorithms), roles if necessary. You'll probably also have a users table with their full names, addresses, credit card numbers (encrypted), etc. The primary key of this table will be a foreign key in the login table...

When someone logs in, you can set a variable in the session to "true" or "yes" to indicate that they are logged in. If you use roles, then save this in the session too and check the role to make sure they have access etc.

For this PHP and MySQL stuff, get PHP and MySQL for Dummies. It is very clear and easy to understand.

and if you're gonna have them pay by credit card, then you'll need to investigate a credit card validation and charging web service and make the appropriate remote procedure calls for that software, which is something that is entirely dependent on which service you use and something you have to investigate.

Answer 2

I would recommend an ecommerce solution. Secondly, I would make sure that whatever ecommerce / shopping cart system you choose should support encrypted and randomly changing URLs (so that the links to the songs on the file system can't be hacked). This is not a question which can effectively be answered here in brevity. This is a process, not task-oriented, question. You do NOT want to do this with static HTML and linked music files.