Subject: ANNOUNCE: MiniVend V2.0 Shopping Cart
From: [email-masked] (Mike Heins)
Date: 30 Aug 1996 15:05:26 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.announce,comp.lang.perl.misc

ANNOUNCE: MiniVend V2.0 -- Powerful free shopping cart package

MiniVend, based on Vend, Andrew Wilcox's fine shopping cart program, has
just gotten better. It now fully supports ISP configurations, including
multiple catalogs and "mall" capability.

It will be available at all Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN)
sites in the directory CPAN/authors/id/MIKEH.

See info at:

               http://www.iac.net/~mikeh/mvend.html

-------------------------------------------------------------

    MiniVend V2.0

    Copyright 1996 by Michael J. Heins <[email-masked]>

    Largely based on Vend 0.2 Copyright 1995 by Andrew M. Wilcox
    <[email-masked]>

    Portions from Vend 0.3 Copyright 1995,1996 by Andrew M. Wilcox

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
    modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
    published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
    the License, or (at your option) any later version.

-------------------------------------------------------------

                     A B O U T    M I N I V E N D

MiniVend is a powerful electronic catalog system (commonly known as a
shopping cart) with fast and easy online ordering. It provides SSL
security, a search engine, and full database support. It rivals even the
costliest commercial systems.

MiniVend 2.0 Features

   * Multiple independent or shared catalogs allow one server
     to run many storefronts or a "mall"
   * SSL and PGP support
   * Multi-server mode for very high capacity
   * Cookie support
   * Complete database, virtually unlimited rows and columns

Powerful search capability
   * One-click scan and search -- build a whole search in a single HREF
   * Fast binary search and complete Glimpse interface
   * Range searching, numeric and alphanumeric
   * Search any file, build results from any database

Complete control of appearance

   * Catalog pages automatically selected -- either built
     "on the fly" from the database or pre-made for popular items
   * Embedded Perl and conditional HTML
   * Full frames support

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, coupons or across-the-board
    * Fully-configurable quantity pricing
    * Easy to add fulfillment of orders with back end capability
    * Hooks for real-time credit processing and fulfillment

Easy Administration

    * Easy installation and configuration
    * Runs under Perl 5 and most UNIX systems
    * Designed to be secure
    * Works well with all browsers

-------------------------------------------------------------------

                 C O M P A T I B I L I T Y

MiniVend has been well-tested on Solaris 2, SunOS, Linux, OSF/Alpha,
BSDI, and FreeBSD. It should work on any UNIX with Perl
5.002 and GDBM or DB_File support.

IRIX 5 has problems with MiniVend -- it apparently has bugs
in the UNIX-domain socket code that were not yet resolved as of
this writing.

Please let the author know if you have successfully run MiniVend on
any additional platforms -- patches would be appreciated.

The author is very interested in learning your problems with MiniVend,
and is always interested in improving the documentation.  (He isn't much
interested in BEING your documentation, though, unless you pay well and
promptly.) Please send comments, questions, kudos, and complaints to: 

                   [email-masked]