Do password fields on registration forms need to be masked?

Proccessing Forms

• Hello, I was wondering if someone could tell me how and what I need to be able to proccess credit card forms, password forms, registration forms, etc... Also I wanted to know how and what I need to proccess a form where the user takes his picture and puts it on my website by browsing. I want to know how I can get this service, where I can get it, and what certificates or lisences I need for it to proccess any kind of form. I want to know all other ways to be able to get your forms proccessed or proccess them yourself.

• Answer:

  * E-Commerce There are a few ways to process credit cards. The best is a full e-commerce solution. They require a merchant account. A number of e-commerce providers will set up a merchant account as part of their services. There is a huge range of pricing: from $0 up front and $0.50 to 5% per transaction; down to $2500 up front and $0.20 to 3% per transaction. Jumping through these hoops can be frustrating, but some banks have e-commerce packages. Your bank may be one of those. Example e-commerce providers: http://www.arvicsecure.com/ http://www.beanstream.com/website/index.asp http://www.worldpay.com/ http://www.planetpayment.com/ Of these, I liked Arvic Secure the best. Planet Payment has a policy where they require that you announce that they are your payment processer in different locations throughout your site. Given how much they charge for set-up, I feel this is asking too much, but their services work well. Another route is PayPal. They have some odd policies and practices. With that said: set up is free, transaction fees are something like 3% or less (see http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/fees-outside). You can build a form that points directly to PayPal or makes a pit stop and redirects the user to PayPal (see http://www.epico.info/hostingquote.asp for an example: make a quote and ask to pay via PayPal; go to PayPal then abort the transaction). * Forms You need to consider using a database to store your form material. With PHP, ASP or ColdFusion, you can make dynamic pages that give users access to their information. That information is stored in a database and drawn from the database to build a form. The form has the default values made up of a user's information. The users can change that information, re-submit their information and the ASP/PHP will update the database with the new data. - ASP is available on Microsoft platforms. Many Web Hosting companies support Microsoft servers. There is no licensing involved in writing ASPs, but the server software needed will cost from $2000 up-- not an expense you will have to bear, if all you're doing is leasing a space (a virtual domain) on a server. - PHP is available for Linux and Microsoft. It isn't everywhere, but it's really popular. There is no licensing involved in writing PHP. The PHP interpreter is free to download and install. - ColdFusion is less popular than the above two, but it has a strong following. Writing and using ColdFusion code is free, but running the ColdFusion engine can be costly (see http://www.macromedia.com/software/coldfusion). All three are called "in-line" scripting languages. That is, the HTML you send to a user has all of this programming hidden in there. The server uses that code to do things like populate forms and talk with the database. The end result is HTML code sent to the user. Perl, C++ and other programming languages can do similar work, but if you're considering the jump from HTML to programming, the leap to an inline scripting language isn't as far. You should also check out the available CMS (Content Management Systems) (see http://www.opensourcecms.com/ There you can try out the different CMS). With some massaging, you might be able to one of those to do what you want. In most cases, the applications-- the scripts-- are free because they are Open Source. One really simply way to deal with submissions is to have all of the form content sent to the server to a waiting script. This application/script can turn the form content in material for email and send it to you. You can take that content and manually build a page for the user. Two large problems with this route: it's time intensive; and the user cannot call up their own information for editing. * Image/Resume Upload In PHP, it's not too difficult to do image uploads (see http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorials/36/0.php). In ASP, it's trickier, but far from impossible. There is an application that I like called DynuUpload (see http://www.dynu.com/dynuupload.asp). The licensing cost is $20 US. If your ISP doesn't have it installed, you can buy the license, send them the license key and a copy of the software and they should be able to install it without trouble. The trick is to make sure that you can control what gets uploaded. You want to make sure that only valid users are allowed to upload images. You want to make sure that they only upload images (or documents). You also want to make sure that a user doesn't upload a program or other objectionable material. Lastly, you want to control the size of the image they upload. Otherwise, users could fill your server with junk in a matter of minutes. If you want to do the site by yourself, consider the learning curve. If you want to gain the programming skills, it's worthwhile. If all you want to do is build your site and maintain it, you should look at a CMS. With a number of CMS (like PostNuke), you can deploy multiple CMS products for the same site. They can even share the same data. For example, you could use PostNuke for your site content add more.groupware for Groupware functions; and throw in PHPBBS for online forums. All three can be part of the same site, share graphics and database material. A third way to go, is to retain a consultant to build for the "backend" -- the programming. Ask that they allow you to control as much of the frontend-- the look and HTML functionality-- so that you can revisit that functionality later and change it as you need to.