Commerce

2017: The year of encryption
January 2017
Starting this month, Chrome users are going to start seeing a lot more sites flagged as insecure. Google is firmly on the technologist side of the encryption war, and it wants to make encryption something regular people care about. Why?
Not using encryption is like sending everything you visit/everything you do, scrawled upon postcards, with stops in all sorts of places, passing by people you would not want seeing everything.
Cryptography: the foundation of e-commerce
Money is the very definition of motivation for many criminals. At least in the movies... In real life, there are plenty of criminals looking for ways to drain money out of bank accounts, buy stuff on other people's credit cards, intercept bank transfers, and more.

Ask Freelock: What e-commerce platform would you recommend?
Shan asks,
Bitcoin: the future of e-commerce?
I've long been a Bitcoin skeptic, not necessarily seeing the point of it. While I've kept passing tabs on its progress, I did not think it was viable, or worth much beyond pure speculative game play, a forum for making bets that today are up quite a lot.
PCI Compliance: the risks of doing e-commerce
It goes something like this:
(Client): I want to add a shopping cart to my site. I heard that xyz cart is free, can you add that for me?
(Developer): Sure! That looks easy.

I wanna change my website
Before doing any changes to your web site, the first thing to figure out are your goals. As a web development shop, we focus on building web sites that create measurable value for our customers, aligned with their goals.
Some common goals:
Ask Freelock: Is there a good alternative to Quickbooks?
Will asks:
> I ... have been thinking about alternatives to QuickBooks. I sent these links to my bookkeeper but she has not used any of these. Do you recommend any of them, or is a “custom open source” option viable for me at this point?
Ask Freelock: integrating e-commerce into your site
Marc asks:
The hidden costs of e-commerce sites
Mavis asks,
I have already spent thousands of dollars on my [Zen Cart] website. What would be your advice for [a company] who wants to transfer their site to a new host but not redesign it?
Recurring payments with Ubercart and Drupal
Damon Cortesi ( @dacort ) over at Untitled Startup recently wrote up a summary of recurring payment services provided for startups.
Migrating to Drupal: Zen Cart to Ubercart
Well, we finally put the foot down with some of our clients who are clinging to their aging Zen Cart sites this past month, and convinced several to pack their bags for the bigger and brighter lights of Ubercart.