MiniVend
MiniVend is a full-featured electronic catalog system (commonly
known as a shopping cart) with fast and easy online ordering. It is designed
to provide an interface complete with SSL security and full database
support. It is as powerful as commercial systems costing thousands
of dollars.
MiniVend is freely-redistributable under the GNU General Public License
-- you can download it via FTP.
There is now a
frequently-asked
question (FAQ) list for MiniVend.
If you want to see what can be done with MiniVend, see some of the
sites that use it.
MiniVend 2.02 Features
- Users maintain a "shopping cart" for ordered items
- Multiple independent or shared catalogs allow one server to
run many storefronts or a "mall"
- Multiple shopping carts allow buy-sell operations or classified
add exchanges
- SSL support means secure and practical credit card ordering
- PGP support for secure off-site mailing of orders
- Catalogs can be of almost unlimited size with excellent performance
- Multi-server mode for very high capacity on systems with sufficient memory
- Forked searches for consistent response time in single-server mode
- Cookie support allows browsers to leave catalog and come back without
losing session state
- Complete addressable database support with virtually unlimited rows and columns
- mSQL support
- Many, many, other features
Powerful search capability
- Fast binary search
- One-click scan and search -- build a whole search in
a single HREF
- Complete Glimpse interface
- Range searching, numeric and alphanumeric
- Independent field search selection and return
- Search any file, build results from any database
Complete control of appearance
- Full frames support
- Catalog pages automatically selected -- either built "on the fly" from
the database or pre-made for popular items
- Embedded Perl and conditional HTML allow complex and flexible catalog
pages to be completely built from the database
- Full client-side imagemap support, including frame targets and form submits
Flexible Ordering Process
Multi-level order screens with configurable field verification
Shipping calculation, mixed modes, with UPS table lookup
Sales tax calculation, with fully independent non-taxable item and taxed shipping
Fully-configurable discounts with coupons or across-the-board
discounts
Fully-configurable quantity pricing
Back end order entry capability, including mSQL
Fully configurable order reports
Easy Administration
Automated installation and configuration
Runs under Perl 5 and almost any UNIX
Designed to be secure, runs with taint checking enabled
Built-in online help capability
Works well with all browsers
Andrew Wilcox wrote Vend, the copylefted shopping cart
software. MiniVend was originally based on Vend V0.2, but has been
greatly enhanced, adding powerful relational database functions, support
for frames, powerful searching, remote administration, superfast
server mode, conditional HTML, user-customizable help and displays, and
much more. This version of MiniVend includes an automatic configuration
and installation utility, and continues to be free under the GNU copyleft.
To learn more about MiniVend, see the
HTML documentation,
visit the offical MiniVend
site, or
download it.