Frontpage, Ecommerce, & Expression

[steve f]

I want to add ecommerce capabilities to our website. I have a couple of
questions:

(1) I searched Microsoft's site and found a link to several ecommerce
add-ins (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/925318/en-us). I was
interested to see that Microsoft apparently has an add-in for ecommerce, but
when I went to the download link, it's dead. Is there something that I'm not
aware of?

(2) Does anyone have a recommendation for an easy (but customizable) add-in
for Frontpage that will allow us to do ecommerce?

(3) With Expression right around the corner (supposedly), we don't want to
spend money for an add-in that will become obsolete. Knowing that we want an
ecommerce solution, would it be in our best interests to migrate to
Expression now? Does it have ecommerce capabilities?

(4) Am I the only one who wonders why Microsoft (or Dreamweaver, or
whomever) doesn't create a simple add-in inside these programs for ecommerce?

Thanks for any info you can give me on this.

Steve

 

[Ronx]

Considering all the complexities involved with e-commerce, a simple
addin is not possible.
You will either need to use PayPal (or similar) or all the following:
Merchant account with your bank
SSL certificate for your website (or at least the commerce section)
Shopping Cart, which includes presentation of goods, database, order
forms, validation checks, credit card processing ...
The shopping cart and all it includes depends on which server you are
hosted on - Windows or Unix

If you are hosted on a Windows server, then look at CandyPress at
http://www.candypress.com
This can be configured to use PayPal as a payment option.