Placido-Shop

Placido-Shop

e-commerce software

  What is Placido-Shop ?

Placido-Shop is an e-commerce software.
It offers you a simple, fast and effective way to develop your online sales activity.

Oh my God ! What did I do ?

I am an independent full-stack developer and I create websites and personalized online applications, for 10 years now.
In the past, I had to provide online sales solutions to my customers and most of the time I spent a lot of time tinkering with solutions existing open-source to adapt them to the specific requests of my clients, each time different and varied.
I found it painful and complicated, I was afraid that a security breach would appear in an unlikely plug-in.
The slowness of the interfaces and their complexities left me like a doubt on the quality of what I was going to deliver to the client.
3 years ago, I started creating an online sales software that I could easily add additional functions according to demand client.
I also needed to be able to quickly deploy and customize it.
Let's not be hypocritical: I also created this software to increase the performance of my business and get richer than ever!
(Just like you I hope!)
It was first a "marketplace" version capable of integrating several sellers that was created, why?
Because this idea has germinated in some minds here in my village of develop the sale of local products in order to boost local trade and then I liked the challenge.
I developed this program on my spare time.
This small local "Market-Place" program regained all its interest during the COVID crisis because here in France, small businesses had to close for a few months on several occasions.
In addition, we thought that developing local commerce would also an ecological approach, would bring social ties and not a withdrawal into oneself.

I developed this uni-personal version of Placido-Shop for a year, on my own funds, work having become rare, I decided to take the time to create this version of Placido-Shop with the idea that it would simplify my work in the future.
Finally, I made the decision to pass the application under "Open-Source" license because I think it can bring a plus in the development of e-commerce solutions and also because I'm tired of developing Placido-Shop alone, I hope to create a buzz around the program.

I had to make choices...

I developed Placido-Shop as we develop for the web at home here in the countryside:
With simple solutions, which require a minimum of updates and which are strong.
If large applications can afford bugs and data leaks, me here, that is forbidden to me.
You may not like my technical choices or my way of coding but I am convinced of one thing:
After going through the code of Placido-Shop, you will surely understand what it is about and how it works.
I have the ability to push much further in code abstraction but I wanted developers who have basic knowledge in javaScript, PHP and SQL languages ​​can understand and modify the code.
For others, who can do more can do less!
I tried to be as logical as possible in my code and being self-taught, I also learned a lot during the development of Placido-Shop.
If you find there's a better way to do things, if you see any improvements to be made to the program, while remaining in the idea that the code remains within the reach of novice developers, I invite you to contribute to the development of the program, everyone is welcome!

I am attached to democracy,

also the governance of the application will go through the management system of governance by direct democracy via the application Votemobile, see the group "Placido-Shop".
The application is free and healthy, I also contributed to its development.

To summarize the technical side of the application,

we can say that it is based on an MVC model but I would prefer to talk about a Controller -> Data -> View model.
On the server side PHP is used with a pool of public static classes (I see you screaming from there) loaded by the spl_autoload_register() function of PHP.
All classes are named after their file and can be called from anywhere in the code.
For novices, think of it as a reservoir of functions that you can call anywhere in the code by writing: $string_truncated = tools::cut_string( $nb_chars, $str ); no need to instantiate the "tools" class from the file PHP/tools.php.
SQL queries to the database are simple and are all handled by the same function (PDO) that handles all the most common query scenarios, we don't need more.

On the client side,

requests to the server are made using the "AJAX" technique. (you are still screaming!), with a simple call to $.post() from jQuery or by custom function $.ajax() of the app.
The data received is mostly in "json" format and modifies or implement the global application object (jQuery extended), the Placido-Shop global object is accessible from the console by entering $.o in the javascript console.
Here you will have access to all the data of the application, be careful what you spend here, this data is public!
The "templating" is managed by "Mustache" (server side and client side), we indicate a template and the data of the global object to Mustache and it will display a page with the data inserted into it.
There are many new templating systems, i choose Mustache because it is easy to learn and intuitive, it encourages doing things with a bit of mischief (and I love that, don't you?).
The application pages are not only accessible via "AJAX", all pages are also accessible by classic "http" request.

Placido-Shop has many very interesting features,

like a dynamic sitemap manager,
tags of Schema.org in html code to optimize natural referencing.
It rewrites the images in a smaller format, suitable for the web.
(it accepts .jpg, .png, .webp, .gif formats)
You can simply copy/paste a link to the page of one of your products on a social network to advertise them.
You will have access to detailed statistics (and super pretty!) from your online store.
The program has many more features, see page: All the features of Placido-Shop

I chose Stripe as payment system,

this offers you and your customers maximum security:
Payment data will not pass through your server.
In addition, Stripe does not require a subscription, at the time of this writing, Stripe's commission is:
(prices below may have changed)
For the USA:
2.9% + US $ 0.30 per successful card payment
+ 1% for international bank cards
+ 1% in the event of currency conversion
For Europe: (by successful card payment)
1.4% + € 0.25 for European cards.
2.9% + 0.25 € for non-European cards.

See the Stripe's website for more detailed prices.

The program includes a payment system by means other than by credit card, in this case no fees will be charged.

I have deliberately chosen not to bear the shipping costs.
(Are you still screaming?)
I think it is up to the merchant to take care of the transport calculation.
- I abandon 99% of my "baskets" when I discover the amounts of the shipping costs, I prefer to pay more and not suffer this frustration ... One price, everything is included, sell without hindrance !
(or code your own shipping cost management plugin ...)

In order to support my work on Placido-Shop,

you have the possibility to become an official sponsor of the program,
you can also invest in the application by buying shares or you can contribute to the code.
- Do not hesitate to contact us for more information.

I ask for an annual contribution of 5€/$ for the sites in production which use Placido-Shop to earn money,
if you do not pay this very small contribution,
you will expose yourself to have this shame on your conscience...

The program has been designed to reduce its energy consumption as much as possible and minimizing the data transferred, as much as possible but this has been the main frame of the application code.

I hope you enjoy Placido-Shop as much as I enjoyed programming it.

Cordially - Raphaël Castello  
developer of Placido-Shop "The Online Sale Software !"