Hi,
I am working on an e-commerce site. It uses a CMS. One requirement is to
have a static off-line version so that the company's sales reps can visit
customers and take orders on a laptop without having to go online (I'm told
that the rep's customers don't always appreciate being asked for a phone
line to be tied up and that sometimes they operate in areas of poor cellular
coverage). The reps upload their orders when they reach a phone line (back
at home or hotel).
Writing a static version of the site won't prove to be a problem. We can
create a javascript shopping basket facility for the reps to replace the
server-side one that the www "public" customers would deal with - we'd need
a different form for the reps customers anyway since they deal with account
customers rather than customers paying by credit card.
However there is a problem: reps still need to search the site to find
items. Is there a decent javascript search facilty solution? Googling hasn't
proved too helpful thus far.
I'm inclined to think that we need to bite the bullet and install apache and
perl/php (and probably the database too while we're at it) and go for a
server side solution although Im worried about reps getting into difficult
with that. Javascript for them would be a simpler way to go, assuming a
solution exists.
The reps would be issued with a "snapshot" of the website every month or so
on a CD and the search facility would be restricted to searching files on
that CD.
Thanks for any help and advice that you can provide.
Deryck
