[ubuntu-uk] Very Off Topic - Apologies in advance.

[Chris Wilson]

If it was me, I wouldn't attempt to do these things using my own hosted
services for fear that something would go wrong due to my inexperience,
tarnishing my reputation with the clients. Instead, I would use Amazon Web
Services (http://aws.amazon.com/) for accepting the disk image. AWS is a
company spun off from amazon.com for the purpose of commercialising the
technology the Amazon uses in it's own operations, and one of the
services available is S3 (Simple Storage Service http://aws.amazon.com/s3/).
You would simply send your client a link that would allow them to upload
their image and you would download it at your end. There's also a number of
consumer-oriented services that use S3 that you could look at (
http://aws.amazon.com/customerapps/Amazon-S3/Consumers).

As for payments, I've used PayPal for selling stuff on eBay, including
issuing refunds once of twice, and it exactly fits the specification you
described - money can be held in PayPal for some amount of time and parts of
it can be withdrawn to you bank account, or you can hit the 'Refund' button
to send it all back to the client. The connection to paypal.com is also
encrypted by default, which is one less (very expensive) thing you would
have to worry about yourself. There's also Google Checkout and Amazon have
their own checkout system.

But this all depends on how much trust you're willing to place in
third-party hosted services. Personally, I've always found that using
someone else's tried and tested product/service, rather than building my
own, is always far easier than trying to reinvent the wheel.

Hope that helps,
Chris

On 14 April 2011 15:28, Dave Hanson <d.hanson at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

> Hiya Everyone,
>
> I was wondering if might ask an off topic question please as I assume that
> there are many people on this list who may do something similar?
>
> I'm planning on doing some data recovery work from home when I finish my
> degree (Computer Forensics Bsc), My plan is to promote myself through my
> Wordpress powered blog (shameless plug: hansonforensics.co.uk). - It is on
> an Ubuntu Server! ;)
>
> I need some sort of ecommerce plugin for Wordpress which will allow
> clients, and myself to upload large files (HDD Images, so I'm talking GB's)
> and take payment from them for recovering their files and things - Obviosly
> not every job would involve huge amounts of data, but some may.
>
> The main problem is that I would prefer to take either the expected amount
> in full and reserve it until the job is completed, with the option of
> returning it to the client or take a small diagnostic fee in advance and log
> what fee came from who/what job number.
>
> Could anyone reccomend a plugin or perhaps share how they conduct such
> transactions?
>
> Thanks - And as I say, Apologies in advance for being off topic.
>
> Dave
>
>
> --
> ubuntu-uk at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
>
>
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