Project

The term project is to add enhancements to your on-line store. This is your opportunity to be creative!  

  1. Enhancement ideas

  2. Instructions for turning in project

  3. Project grading

1. Enhancement Ideas

Make sure that your bookstore has the basic features found in the sample site before you add enhancements. The value of enhancements is significantly discounted if the store's basic functionality is missing.

Also, check that all user supplied inputs are cleaned so that apostrophes do not cause exceptions or expose your site to SQL injection. Text can be easily cleaned using the str_replace function and regular expressions.

Tip: Before starting to work on enhancements that could cause existing code to malfunction I suggest that you make a backup copy of the file. For instance, SearchBrowse.php could be copied to SearchBrowse02.php.

Possible enhancements ideas include, but are not restricted to, the following:

  • Upgrade the graphical appearance of your store (i.e. XML Music).

  • Write the user's email address to a cookie and use it to automatically fill in the email box on subsequent visits (i.e. XML Music).

  • Provide validation text next to the textboxes on checkout01 and checkout02, rather than validating the text on the following page (i.e. XML Music).

  • Add category item counts to the browse menu (i.e. XML Music).

  • Truncate product descriptions on whole words rather than on a fixed number of characters (i.e. XML Music).

  • Send an HTML email confirmation rather than a plain text confirmation (i.e. XML Music).

  • Display images more elegantly. Options include using CSS drop shadows, JavaScript Lightbox, Graybox, Highslide or more sophisticated features like zoom (Amazon).

  • Add a shopping cart status box that tells the user how many items are in the shopping cart (i.e. XML Music).

  • Improve efficiency by displaying authors using the GROUP_CONCAT() mySQL function rather than executing a separate SQL statement to retrieve author names (see assignment 5).

  • When a search or browse returns only one item, display the productPage.php rather than the searchResponse.php page. (i.e. Amazon.com search for "0596005601")

  • Add a listing of "visited pages" so the user can easily get back to previously viewed items (i.e. Amazon.com, XML Music).

  • Add a list of best selling items (see Amazon.com, XML Music)

  • Add recommendations to the product page: "Customers who bought this item also bought..." (see Amazon.com, XML Music)

  • Add a verification image (CAPTCHA) to the login page (Checkout01.php) and/or the product recommendations. Verification images make it difficult for spam robots to submit forms. (Image Verification example)

  • Add "Customer Reviews" to the product page. (see Amazon.com, XML Music)

  • Add a database driven "Wish List" (see Amazon.com)

  • Use server-side caching to improve performance. PHP caching example (source). Demonstration of php caching time savings.

  • Sort searches by relevance. For instance, a keyword located in a book's title is more relevant than one in its description. Searched fields should include title, description, categories and authors. It should also handle multi-word queries. This article explains a relatively simple approach to relevance-base search. Here is a bookstore sample that searches by relevance, assigning 40 points for a match in author, 30 points for title, 20 points for category, 10 points for description within first 100 characters and 5 points for description past 100 characters. It uses preg_split to parse the search phrase into an array of individual words and a foreach loop to dynamically build the query. The "relevance" score is adjusted so that the first item has a relevance of 100.

  • Use AJAX anywhere.

  • Validate city-state-zip code combinations by looking them up in a zip code database (source). You may access a mySQL zipcode database containing 43,070 city/state/zipcodes on Yorktown as follows:

    • database: zipcodes;
    • tablename: zipcodes;
    • username: zipreader, password: spinach;
    • field names: zip, latitude, longitude, city, state, zip, county. 
    • Test SQL: SELECT zip , latitude , longitude , city , state , county FROM zipcodes LIMIT 0 , 30.
    • Samples: CityZipValidate.php, XML Music

  • Determine item availability by checking the inventory level in the database. Write an appropriate availability message on the product_page, depending upon inventory levels. Reduce inventory levels each time a item is ordered.

  • Create administration pages that allow store employees to add/delete products in the database and/or update customer information. Here is a handy snippet of code for uploading and resizing images with PHP . This code requires that the NETWORK user has write permissions on the folder. Ask Dr. Sandvig to modify your folder permissions on Yorktown.

  • Recommend items to customers based upon their previous purchases.

  • For other ideas look at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other sophisticated shopping sites.

Include a list of your enhancements in your "About this store" section so that I don't miss any when grading your assignment.

2. Instructions for turning in Project

The project is due at the date and time shown on the course schedule.  Late projects will be subject to a penalty of one letter grade per 24 hours (so don't be late!). 

Send your store's URL to:

  1. Professor Sandvig at csandvig@wwu.edu
  2. cc a copy to yourself

3. Project Grading

The project grade is based upon the basic store created in assignments 7, 8 and 9, plus any enhancements that you have added. The basic store that you have completed by the end of assignment 9 will earn a grade of approximately a B. Enhancements are a way for your to further improve your grade.

The grading of the final project is very detailed and includes looking at your source code to make sure that you have coded efficiently and neatly. Specifically I will be checking to make sure that you have used server side includes for all code that is reused, that your browse menu is dynamically generated, and that you code is original (your own work).

Project grades will be posted on the class web site.