
----------------------
PgMarket main features
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- PostgreSQL (>= 6,5) and MySQL (>=3.22) support
- multilingual support (i18n)
- images and thumbnails handling
- easy customization of many look elements through .css files
- secure passwords handling: passwords are automatically md5'ed
  on the client side through JavaScript, hence also the remote administration
  of categories and products does not compromise the web shop security
- a simple and an advanced search engine
- products are organized in categories and subcategories;
  they are shown ordered by their respective "special level" values
- a "Special products" section
- comfortable category browsers through the integration
  of TreeMenu and PHP Layers Menu
- a detailed description for users
- handling of different users types (italians, non italians, and companies)
- Euro currency notation
- IVA (Italy, a Value Added Tax) and brands for the products
- brief and extended descriptions for products
- discounts support
- delivery price based on the the total shopping cart weight
- ability of disabling many features through the configuration file,
  without modifying the scripts
- mailing of the orders, and storage of all the orders in the database
- order states handling
- ability for the customers to track their orders states and logs
- ability for clients to contact the store without buying anything,
  through a suited contact form
- splitting in sub pages for pages that show a large number of products
- easy customization of the currency and of the weight unity
- comfortable administration interface: the web shop is easily built up
  through a simple browser interface, the "web shop root" can insert categories,
  as well as insert, edit, and delete products also while browsing the catalog,
  even if connected from home
- importing of brands, categories, users, products, products images,
  and IVA values from text files easily obtainable through a spreadsheet
- maybe some other features, but just now I'm so sleepy and maybe
  I don't remember everything '-|  ;^)

PgMarket has been developed by Marco Pratesi
starting from MyMarket, authored by Ying Zhang
(ying@zippydesign.com).
For instance, the work has started from the following version:
http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/PHP/Commerce3/mymarket3.tar.gz
Now the MyMarket project can be found also on
http://sourceforge.net

There are many differences between MyMarket and PgMarket.
MyMarket uses MySQL, while PgMarket supports both PostgreSQL and MySQL.
Moreover, PgMarket fixes some bugs of MyMarket
and introduces many security improvements, input parameters checkings,
many modifications and extensions such as the multi-language feature,
images handling, and others.

PgMarket includes code developed by
Oleg V. Kalashnikov <oleg@ok.gnu.zp.ua> and 
Fabio Molinari <fabio.m@mclink.it>

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I think that my English could be improved...
please contact me if my Italian --> English translation is bad,
any valid help is surely welcome.


Documentation
-------------

Sorry, I still haven't had time to write a comprehensive documentation.
I hope that PgMarket code is sufficiently self-explanatory
and that I will write soon a better documentation.
Feel free to contact me if you need and maybe to help me documenting it.
Furthermore, a large portion of the documentation wrote by Ying Zhang
for MyMarket, see
http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/PHP/Commerce1
applies to PgMarket, too.

--
Marco Pratesi
http://www.telug.it
pratesi@telug.it

