My old boss called me back to work for his website. He's using goemerchant.com for ecommerce, a simple external site like ccnow, ibill, clickbank... and hosting with intermedia.net (which is good support). Anyway, I feel that is unprofessonial. If you were the customer, would you buy computer hardware in commerce system like that?

He already paid about $100/month (goemerchant+hosting) but hasn't made any profit since Dec. Now he let me take care of everything about website, just let him know how much and he'll pay for it. I'm going to use some ASP (since intermedia.net is Windows hosting) or CGI scripts on his site but I don't have any experience at all. Should I change host? Get cybercash account? What's the best solution for computer-hardware-selling website like this? Serious help needed. Thanks alot.

Well, if you wanna and can learn ASP, you could learn it. Its not that tough a langauge. I thought php works on Windows. Ask your host if they can install php. If they can write your programs in PHP.

Switch to a Linux/Unix host and try and lower your costs as much as possible. PC Hardward markup is soo little that too many expenses are hard to justify.

Apache and PHP make a good win98 combination for local development and personal use.

Try this link for a comparison with other languages:

http://www.WebDevelopersJournal.com/articles/why_php.html

Try this link for release information.

http://www.php.net/

Gary