RE: Generate invoice from form

Freeway
1

Thanks Walter…I’ll take a look at Keith’s tutorial. I have a sql member database on the server using Sitelok…wondering if I can leverage that?

Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: Walter Lee Davis email@hidden
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2008 5:58 AM
To: email@hidden
Subject: Re: Generate invoice from form

This is one of those things that are simple if you know how, and
pretty hard to cobble together out of pieces if you don’t.

Basically, your customer would like a simple CRM (Customer Resource
Management) System. The way I would approach this would be to add a
MySQL database (or a table to an existing database) to the server,
and then put fields in that table representing each data point about
your members. Each successful form submission would add a row to the
database, and from there, your options as to presentation are
virtually unlimited.

You could make one view that showed a pretty and colorful
confirmation layout of the data just posted, another that is a
“printer friendly” layout, another that shows a table of all
registrants, etc. And of course, you could bundle up that same data
as an e-mail “tickler” to the client.

All of this is very basic data storage and retrieval, but it’s only
basic if you’re making the thing from scratch. Ironically, if you’re
trying to get packaged solutions (like FTG) to make the data layer
for you, then you’ve got to un-twist their code, insert your own,
hope that the next time you publish you don’t un-do what you just
added, etc…

If you want to learn how to do this (and I believe sincerely that
everyone who designs sites should know at least in principle how this
works) then the first port of call would be Keith’s PHP/MySQL
tutorials at http://thehelpful.com . If what you see there doesn’t
scare you off (as if!) then a Fat Book or two would be your next
step. It is certainly possible to learn this to a degree where you
can either do something simple, or at least be conversant with
someone you hire to do it, without a lot of time or effort.

Walter

On Oct 3, 2008, at 1:16 AM, Bill McCarroll wrote:

Does anyone have some suggestions on how I can generate an
“invoice” from a registration form?

The organization I’m supporting wants to collect registration
information from prospective members and automatically generate an
invoice.

I think I can do this with “forms to go” and send membership
details and an invoice via an email, but is there also a way to
generate a page with the same information that could be printed
out? Could I use mals to do this?

They also want to be able to see a current member database on the
site from these registrations but that’s something to challenge me
down the road.

Any help much appreciated.

Bill

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2

Not sure. Again, if somebody else wrote it, and you need to extend
it, you are really on your own. Worst case, the Sitelok feature will
stop running altogether. Also, did you have to install any sort of
license control software like IonCube in order to use Sitelok? A lot
of the more polished PHP applications are sold in an obfuscated form,
so you can’t edit them or even reverse-engineer them to see how they
work. If this is the case, then the programming interface to the data
(API) might be hidden or difficult to work with.

What you could definitely do is sidecar your new application along
side the Sitelok stuff. Add a new table for your members, put the
columns that you need (first_name, last_name, favorite_ice_cream) in
there, and then start populating it from your form. The fact that you
have installed Sitelok guarantees that you have PHP and MySQL and
that they can talk to each other. But I wouldn’t try to mess with the
actual data tables that Sitelok uses – that way lies peril of one
kind or another.

Walter

On Oct 3, 2008, at 9:38 AM, Bill McCarroll wrote:

I have a sql member database on the server using
Sitelok…wondering if I can leverage that?

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