1. THE TECHNOLOGIES REQUIRED FOR E-COMMERCE
By Serge misona

2. TECHNOLOGIES
 The advert of e- commerce in business was made
possible by the introduction of technology such as
the internet and credit cards and this technology
continues to improve. Using a combination not only
gives more functionally to a business, but also
improves effectiveness. In addition, at this time
larger number of customers have access to high
speed internet connections, for stance broadband,
it is even more important that e-commerce is
efficient. If a site is slow a customer is likely to
choose to shop elsewhere

3. HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
 As with all computer systems, e-commerce consists of a
collaboration of hardware and software view the picture
on the right. The software of both the web developer and
the user needed to be considered.

4. BROWSERS
 Browsers are installed on a user’s computer and convert the data received
via the modern into a visual web page. There are numerous types of browser
available. For Microsoft Windows the standard browser used internet
explorer, which comes free with the operating system see the second image.
Other that are becoming more popular are Mozilla Firefox and Opera. The
most popular for apple products is Safari. Browsers store viewed web pages
in a cache so they can be reloaded quickly if viewed again this allows you to
view preivoius pages using the back button. When you are viewing previous
pages, browsers also give an option to reload pages using the forward
button. In addition, they provide a history list of frequently, and recently,
vistited sistes to allow you to return to them quickly.
Most browsers have a favorites or bookmarks list- these are sites that the
user has chosen to add to the list, ethier websites that they accessed
frequently or ones they know they will want to return to it in the future. At any
time, the user can access this list and select a website. A target of web
design is to encourage users to bookmark the site< which usually means
they will visit again, hopefully regularly

5. SERVER SOFTWARE
 There are several web server software applications, such
as (IIS) internet information services, which comes
bundled with modern versions of the windows operrating
system and apache HTTP server. In addition, there is
software which makes uploading web pages to the web
server easier. This process is called FTP, as it uses the
(FTP) file tranfer protocol. Programs such as CuteFTPare
designed to make uploading more user friendly

6. WEB AUTHORING TOOLS
 Web authoring tools make it possible for more people to create
web page because they simplify the process and make it less
technical. This means that creating and uploading websites on to
the internet is no longer solely the territory of IT experts. There
has recently been much debate as to whether this has helped or
hindered the internet, as the quality of content on the internet has
come into question. Suggestions hav been made to ‘clean up’ the
internet, although how that would be carried out is a very difficlut
question. One response has benn to begin to develop web
2.0, also known as www2. This is a ‘new’ internet which has the
aim of sharing resouces and promoting online collaboration
between users. All web authoring tools provide the basic facilities
to create a web page and upload it to a web server. The two
leading web design tools are Mirosoft Expression Web , which is
part of the Mirosoft Office 2007 suite, and Adobe Dreamweaver .
Both have a huge range pf tools for web design, wysiwyg
interfaces and include additional features such as templates and
(CSS) cascading style sheets

7. DATABASE SYSTEMS
 E-commerce websites usually have a database
backend storing the catalogue of products,
customer reocrds and other business information.
This database should link to the website seamlessly
so that the user is unware of it.
 Some organisations outsource the creation of their
website, but retain control of the content of the
database. This means that if any changes need to
be made, such as price changes, only the database
needs amending and the organisation can do this
themselves. Applicatins such as Oracle , or
languages such as MySQL, can be used to create
the database.

8. NETWORKING
 This section focus on the methods used to connect
comtuters together to create the network. It looks at
how individal computers are identified so data can
be sent to correct place, the methods of data
transfer across such a massive network and the
naming of websites.

9. TCP/IP ADDRESSES, PORTS AND PROTOCOLS
 TCP/IP is a protocol that is used when transferring data across a
network.
 If computers do not use the same protocol, it becomes impossible for
them to understand the data transmitted between them. This is similar to
humans who speaks different languages – unless they agree to speak
a common languages, they will not be able to understand each other.
 To make sure the data reaches the right location on a network, each
computer is given a unique number, called an IP address. It is a set of
four numbers, each drom 0 to 255. For instance, 145.2.78.255 would
address a specific computers on a network. The internet is a large
global network and works in the same way as a WAN (wide area
network).
 Ports connect protocols and IP addresses together. Each computer has
several ports for data to pass through- they are virtual so they cannot be
seen. Ports are like doors- each has a number to identify it and it can be
opened or closed. There are some default ports, for instance port 25 is
usaully for email and port 80 is usally for the internet, althrough these
can to close all ports that are not being used otherwise hackers can take
advantages of open ports to get into the systems.

10. DOMAIN NAMES

11. MULTIPLE REGISTRATION OF DOMAINS

12. PROGRAMMING REQUIREMENTS
 Web pages are usually written in HTML, or a form of HTML such as
XHTML.
 Within the HTML code, other languages can be used, including PHP ,
ASP , Javascript and others which add functionality. HTML itself does
not provide e-commerce capabilites, so another language must always
be used as well. HTML used a system of tags (indicated by angle
brackets:<and>) which contain the instuctions. Almost all tags uses a
pair of open and close and close tags enclosing the content to be
affected. For stance <font color =‘red’>Some text</font> would produce:
Some text. Note that american spelling is used in HTML.
 HTML pages should start and end with <html> </html> tags to declare
the language being used> Each page is divded into a head and body
section is unseen by the user and can be thought of as the brains of the
page. It Contains all the information for the page to function correctly.
The body is the part seen by the user and contains all content of the
page. A well- designed page should have re-usable code in the head and
minimal code in the body.

13. DOWNLOAD SPEEDS
 A variety of downloads speeds are availble and a
business should never never come to the Connection Speed
conclusion that all custmers will have the type
same connection avaible view the table.
Internet connection speed is measured in Dial –up (v.92) 56 Kbps
kilobits per second (Kbps) or megabits per
second (Mbps). A kilobit is 1000 bits. This is
different from the binary measurement of a ISDN 64 – 128 Kbps
kilobyte which is 1024 bits. A megabit is
1,000,000 bits.
DSL broadband 512 Kbps-20
 There are several ways of minimising the
download times of a website. Images are Mbps
essential to create interest on a web page,
images should be compressed and conform Cable 1 Mbps – 50
to the website palette. Use the ATL functionso broadband Mbps
that to expect. Text only options need also to
work without the images, so great care is
needed in designing pages.
 Animations can bring a web page to life and
demonstrate a product which might help the
visitor decide to buy, but it uses up alot of
bandwidth (data transmission rates), so it
should be used sparingly. Tables of
imformation might be best way to summarise
iformation. However, these also take longer to
download, so it makes sense not to include
very large tables.

14. BROWSER AND PLATFORM COMPATIBILITY
 There are several web browsers available and each
renders graphics on a website differently see. This is to
do with the way the browser interprets the code and
must be taken into consideration when designing a
website.
 In addition, the different computer platforms that users
might have should be consided: not just the lastest
platforms, but also older ones that are still being used,
such as earlier versions of inter explorer and Netscape
Navigator. Web developers should design to meet the
lowest specifications available, otherwise potenial
customers may be excluded from purchasing products
and so the business will lose pontential profits.