PCAC v1.00
Documentation

README v1.00

PCAC (Pretty Cool Auction Client) is a fully featured auction program (actually its a client and server).  Its still in its development stage, but is fully functional and highly robust.  It allows users to create accounts, sell items, bid on items, find featured items, it even has a built in help system to walk users through the bidding and selling process.  It is backended by a mysql database, so it's very fast.

The documentation is skinny, but that'll improve as necessary.  Feel free to email me, at auction@friedmanconsulting.com.  I'm happy to answer any questions, or take any suggestions.

Requirements:

* PHP version 3 or higher (tested with 3.0.12 & 4)
* MySQL (tested with 3.22.26a)
* Webserver (preferrably apache) -- I've only tested this with Apache with the php module compiled in, not on the cgi version or on winnt but would probably work.
* The color scheme is half stylesheets so you may wan to encourage people to use 4+ browsers.

The mysql dump for all the tables is in auction.sql.  This creates a database
called "auction" and the products, users, and feedback table.  You should just
be able to run is inline with mysql like:

mysql -h HOST -u USERNAME -p < auction.sql

If you don't get any error messages, then it worked.

START HERE

conn.php3 is the connection file, all it does is connect to the database.
Change the variables there to connect to your database.  If you don't do 
this first, you will get alot of error messages about sending header
information after the header has been sent.

funcs.php3 is the function file, I found that in php4 & some versions of php3 there was a problem declaring them in config.ini like I used to.

config.ini is the config file, it holds a couple of things, file paths and coloring scheme

login.php3 does all of the authentication.  It uses cookies so advise all users of your site to have cookies enabled.  I'll add cookie checking to my todo list

index.php3 is your main page.  The left side is a listing of all categories,
the right side in just featured.php3 included.

view.php3 shows the categories and products abbreviated information (name,
number of bids, current bid, starting and ending time)

buy.php3 is actually where you place bids.  There are 2 versions included, buy-no-proxy-bidding.php3, which doesn't allow proxy bidding.  Then buy-proxy-bidding.php3 which requires a little more configuration with proxy.php3 (explained later), that allows proxy bidding to take place.  Rename the one you want to use to buy.php3, you can delete the one you don't need

footer.inc is the footer to all the pages, change it as you want, but I think
it's very appropriate

license.php3 displays the license

license.inc contains the text to be displayed in the textarea in license.php3

help/help.php3 is the help menu, the menus aren't all in place, but the
this is just a beta version

sell.php3 is where you put items up for bidding, there are 2 versions, one sell.php3 which has image uploading capability, use this inline with the featured-with-imagemagik.php3 (which dynamically generates thumbnails).

search.php3 is the search page for searching both name & description of the
item

advanced-search.php3 is the same as search, but has more options, I need suggestions for this page as there are only 2-3 options

user.php3 is for editing the users account, you can modify existing items,
your home address/telephone number, your password, and other stuff

modify.php3 is for actually modifying existing items, only call this script
from the user.php3 script, it must be called like modify.php3?pid=22.  22 is
the product id of the product you want to modify.  Modify.php3 is called from user.php3 so it gets the right product id's for the right person

myauctions.php3 is a list of all of your items up for bid, and a list of items you have bid on in the last X days (ala My Ebay page), items still up for
auction are specially noted

mybids.php3 is a list of all the items that you have the highest bid on in the last X days

remove.php3 is how you cancel (or delete) auctions

mail.php3 sends mail to a user that has the highest bid in an auction (again don't call this script without passing it variables, it needs a product id (pid) and an address (who your mailing).  This script is used by myauctions.php3, to email the user with the winning bid, this is so the seller can discuss terms with the buyer.  I'm going to build in an automatic email system that will send cc'ed message to both the buyer & seller on an auction end

feedback.php3 allows users to leave & receive feedback to each other

comments.php3 allows users to view the comments that others have left for them.  Linked from buy.php3 a.l.a. ebay.

adm/index.php3 menu page for all the administration menus

adm/revoke.php3 is the page that allows the administrator to suspend an account for a specified amount of days.

adm/reinstate.php3 is the page that allows the administrator to reinstate a revoke account

adm/remove.php3 is a variation on the remove.php3 in the main directory.  This allows the administrator to cancel auctions regardless of who started them.  It acts as a content manager.

adm/remove.php3 show and allows removal of stale accounts, meaning people that haven't logged in in a long time.

adm/suspensions.php3 allows the admin to run suspension reports to see who has been suspended in the last X number of days/months.

forget.php3 is the "forgot password" page.  Plain and simple.

featured.php3 also has 2 versions.  The default (named featured.php3) is just a display of the current featured items.  The other, featured-with-imagemagik.php3, requires the "convert" binary from the imagemagik package.  This program does the thumbnailing.  Rename the imagemagik version to featured.php3 if you want to use it and discard the other one.

account.php3 is the current (logged in) user's account status.  Right now it just charges people $0.50 for making an item featured.  You can adjust/add/take away stuff as necessary.  I'm working on ebay style boldfacing, featured products & other stuff, suggestions are appreciated.

PROXY.php3 -> No longer part of the distribution, its just not stable enough to use.  I'm working on a new one for a future release.

NEW watchlist.php3 is a watchlist, links are provided on all auction pages to add an item to your watch list.  Currently there's no limit, maybe I'll add a
limit on the number of items you can watch at a time in the next release.

NEW buy_it_now.php3 allows users to set a BUY IT NOW price so that if a buyer wants they can pay the buy it now price and end the auction immediately (only
before bidding starts).

NEW view_other_auctions.php3 shows the sellers other auctions

NEW add_to_description.php3 allows the seller to add to the item description after the auction has started.

NEW image_opt.php3 is part of sell.php3, it allows users to choose the imaging options, they can choose to have the image hosted locally (must be set up for image uploading -- see config.ini)

NEW hot.php3 displays auctions that have more than 4-5 bids (that's alot for a small scale auction like mine)

NEW email_validate.php3 provides the email validation scheme for users, this is now required the first time the person logs in

NEW upload.php3 this has been reworked so it actually works :)