[lug] [OT] Need E-Commerce Help

[Michael Deck]

The Boulder Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery needs some 
help in setting up an e-commerce site.

The Chapter is a local generalist group whose mission is to promote the 
exchange of information and ideas to increase the effectiveness of the 
Boulder area computing community. We are a non-profit, educational 501(c)3 
organization that serves the Boulder, Denver and northern Colorado Front 
Range area.

Twice a year, the Chapter offers a Professional Development Seminar. While 
our regular meetings are free and open to the public, we charge a small fee 
in the $75-90 range to cover the expenses of our all-day PDS. In the 
past,  registrants have mailed checks to us for registrations.

Our last seminar, in October, revealed a reliability issue with this system 
-- the PO delayed the delivery of some 20 checks by two weeks, causing us 
incredible hassles with overbooking. We also believe that we could spend 
our scarce volunteer resources better and serve our colleagues better if we 
didn't have to deal with the checks.

We would like to accept credit cards and *not* checks for our next seminar 
and are seeking some advice and assistance. We currently have a web site 
running on a Linux (RH5.2) Apache server at www.cleansoft.net/acm. It has a 
simple servlet application which we use to add members to our mailing list. 
I believe that servlet could easily be enhanced to capture credit card info 
if we acquired a secure server license.

But what then? The more I look at merchant accounts, clearing houses, etc. 
the more confused I become. I'd really like to chat with someone who has 
set up a very simple e-commerce system who could either give me some tips 
on how to set up the system, or who could set up and manage the system for 
us on your secure server. We could pay a small fee for setting up and/or 
hosting the site -- we're not rich but we're willing to invest if it better 
serves our users. At the very least, you'd get a nice lunch out of it :)

So -- any takers? Please follow-up off-list and we can chat a bit. I know 
there are folks on this list that have done this, since I've bought your 
products online. We sure could use a little help.

Thanks,
   Mike Deck
   Past Chair, Past Treasurer, Membership Chair, Webmaster
   Boulder Chapter ACM



============================================================
Michael Deck  **  deckm at cleansoft.com        **   Assessment
Cleanroom Software Engineering, Inc.         **    Training
Quality Improvement -- Cost Reduction        ** Consultation
tel. 303-494-3152  fax. 303-494-3026         **        Tools
http://www.cleansoft.com                     **  Development
ftp://ftp.cleansoft.com/docs                 **     Research