Feeling anxious about project help :)

For the past 4 days I have been working non stop on my project. I am making an e-commerce website. The thing is, I am a hobbyist programmer and I am designing and coding it from scratch (including backend cart).

I have never worked personally on such a 'big' project myself, I am a simple construction worker on 2 week holidays. I have thoughts constantly crossing my mind like, what if I somehow fuck up the cart and people will be able to place orders without paying. What if the customer pays and somehow I do not register it because something went wrong somewhere. What if it DOES work out, what do I do then? The website is for a big part automated since I have to go back to my regular job in 2 weeks time.

One minute I think this is it, this is the idea/niche I have been waiting for, if this works out I can quit my regular job and focus on the things I like. The next minute I think there's no way this will work, what am I even doing, but I can't stop now since I've put so much time in this.

I am on an emotional roller coaster to be honest and had to express my thoughts somewhere. Well, it's time to go back to 'work' now.

Just smash out the work. Just test and try and make it work as fast as you can.

Negative thinking wastes time

Don't ask yourself so many questions, bro. just get to the work with the site and see how it goes.
If it goes well then it's perfect. if it didn't then we can see whats wrong.
Coz many things work perfectly in theory but fails in practice.
Good luck with your site! Do keep us updated if you can

Why reinvent the wheel when the wheel is already been invented. Try a free e-commerce solution, based on Wordpress, or a self powered CMS and tweak it the way you want it. Other people/ programmers already filtered out the pitfalls, the only thing you have to do is giving it your own twists.
When you're creating your own you have to do a lot of testing and I can guarantee you that you won't find all the threats and exploits that can be used to mess with your code. When scriptkiddies find a bug you're screwed and when there's money involved it can cost you a lot.
I won't take the risk if I were you, I'd go for an out of the box solution and customize it the way I want to. Saves a lot of work and stress.

roadhamster said:

Why reinvent the wheel when the wheel is already been invented. Try a free e-commerce solution, based on Wordpress, or a self powered CMS and tweak it the way you want it. Other people/ programmers already filtered out the pitfalls, the only thing you have to do is giving it your own twists.
When you're creating your own you have to do a lot of testing and I can guarantee you that you won't find all the threats and exploits that can be used to mess with your code. When scriptkiddies find a bug you're screwed and when there's money involved it can cost you a lot.
I won't take the risk if I were you, I'd go for an out of the box solution and customize it the way I want to. Saves a lot of work and stress.

Click to expand...

Well, I agree with roadhamster. use the ones that are already there. less risky and easier.
You can then work on getting traffic to your site instead of worrying about bugs

I agree with roadhamster, just find a solution that is made for what you are doing and put your own spin on it.

I went for years building my own websites from scratch because I love coding and thought it was the right thing to do, but then I realized I was wasting so much time on things that were not making me money. I switched to Wordpress and it now takes 2 days to get a site up and running instead of 2 months!

LinkHeros said:

I went for years building my own websites from scratch because I love coding and thought it was the right thing to do, but then I realized I was wasting so much time on things that were not making me money. I switched to Wordpress and it now takes 2 days to get a site up and running instead of 2 months!

Click to expand...

Kudos for this. Saves a lot of time.

roadhamster said:

Why reinvent the wheel when the wheel is already been invented. Try a free e-commerce solution, based on Wordpress, or a self powered CMS and tweak it the way you want it. Other people/ programmers already filtered out the pitfalls, the only thing you have to do is giving it your own twists.
When you're creating your own you have to do a lot of testing and I can guarantee you that you won't find all the threats and exploits that can be used to mess with your code. When scriptkiddies find a bug you're screwed and when there's money involved it can cost you a lot.
I won't take the risk if I were you, I'd go for an out of the box solution and customize it the way I want to. Saves a lot of work and stress.

Click to expand...

I thought about this, but I don't know enough php to mess with WP. Heck I don't even know how to theme a WP template. I've seen too many problems with wordpress ecommerce stores, from plugins that let you upload SVG images with code in them to popular plugin bug leaks on Russian boards. I had the feeling it was too bloated for what I needed, I'd have to basically strip it to bare bones, so I thought why not make it from scratch. I've spent most time building my own API requesting prices from different sources and adjusting them accordingly on my pages. I will also have live graphs and feeds on my site. I am also thinking about a career switch in real life (from construction worker to a junior web dev) and it's always something on my portfolio to show potential employers in the future.

Why the fuck didn't you just use opencart or a wordpress free cart like woocommerce? You could have had your store running in an hour?

"I've seen too many problems with wordpress ecommerce stores"

Where as your half-arsed hack script with your self-admitted lack of php skills is really going to be water tight isn't it!

Dude you're coming across as a bit nuts.

Stop. Regroup, Calm down. Stop the paranoia and just use an off the shelf cart like a million other people do!

Don't let your mind think negatively. Hard work never fails. Cheer up and finish off your work successfully. Good luck

OP work like a professional, create a site and then test its as visitor and buyer, find bugs and fix them. Its that easy. Even if some bugs left dont worry about it. Its just a part of development of every project.

The anxiety won't go away. You just need to learn to channel it into productivity. Use your fear as leverage to work smarter, not harder.

Yeah, you shouldn't be making your own cart. There's already software that does that.

Shopify for example. It just about has everything you need.

The payment stuff is too complex. You wouldn't know how to handle credit card chargebacks. Your fulfillment process will be slow and clunky if you're coding it yourself, and you'll have limited payment options. If you aren't handling PayPal transfers, you could be killing about 20% of possible transactions.

And your cart experience would be unpleasant. It wouldn't responsively adapt to the user's device, you'll probably have difficulty with session tracking (keeping track of what customers have added to their carts and recommending related products etc.). Again, you'd lose money here.

It's just a bad idea to code it yourself.

If you want a quick and easy shopping experience, use Shopfiy. If you want control over how the experience works, use Magento (it's enterprise-level software) and you'll have extensive documentation on how it works.

I have to agree with some of the other posters here , you really really shouldn't be making your own cart , and you should be using an established ecommerce platform as well , skip shopify since you sound pretty savy , Id personally never use it as a platform unless your a beginner but try magento , woocommerce , prestashop and theres allot of others but find one your comfortable with and that you would easily be able to tweak and repair , you will save yourself a ton of headaches and bug fixing. Use your coding ability to resolve the bugs , issues and streamlining and module installations yourself since most of us including myself end up having to hire specialists for the platform we use when theres any sort of bug , error or custom edits need to be done , that would atleast save you allot of time money and energy since you know what your doing , I would save your expertise for these instances instead of trying to build from scratch. Its kind of like you want to build a custom car from the ground up , why not choose a frame and exsisting engine and mod the hell out of it instead of trying to engineer everything yourself from ground up and cost yourself untold hours of bug fixing / R&D instead of using a proven platform and using your skills to mod it to your liking? Just my 2 cents