Building E-Commerce Web Sites with PHP and MySQL walks a reader through setting up an e-commerce Web site. Everything is covered icluding: designing the visual interface, creating the database, generating an online catalog, managing the shopping cart, handling the order and the payment process, and fulfilling the order. Because of the nature of the topic, security and best practices are emphasized repeatedly along the way. The book uses two e-commerce site examples so that the reader gets the best possible grasp of the e-commerce model. One example is based on selling physical products that require shipping and delayed payment. The other example features a site that sells non-physical products that are purchased and delivered instantly; two different payment gateways are demonstrated (PayPal and an alternative).