How do you set up a website?

How can I set up a website where users can create an account and pay to buy credits?

• I'm looking to set up a website where users can create an account and pay to buy credits. These credits can then be used on the site (spent and received). Users could then decide, when they have a certain amount of credits, to get the credits converted back and paid into their bank accounts. I believe similar systems are used on betting sites, and others. I know how to set up a payment gateway, I'm just not sure how to set up this automated system. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated! I'm sure there must be a company or script that does this..

• Answer:

  If you are looking to do this ENTIRELY yourself, without the aid of an outside company, then I'd recommend using a PHP portal frontend with MySQL to store your user data etc. You could set this up fairly quickly if you download XAMPP which will take a lot of the configuration away from you, and the most complicated part will be making your website secure enough to take card payments. So you should research SSL level security, MD5 keys and HTTPS connections as far as possible. The great thing about XAMPP is its popularity. You will be able to use this for development, and then easily port your code over to a popular web hosting company. Streamline.net was the one I used, but there are dozens which will support this setup.