It's been 2 years since the first time I thought of building an online order system for 工E设计, the Gong E Design Studio.
Two years ago when I was the chairman of 工E设计, I received orders from all over the campus with different types and requirements. It would have been a mess if I did't manage all the orders with a calendar to remind myself of the deadline. Simple work, but quite annoying, especially when you get quite a lot of messages without a general form to regulate the styles - actually I did try to regulate, and wrote a well composed docx file, on the basis of some former chairman's work. Even then it was too much information to type into a calendar so I end up adding only the title and deadline to the calendar. By then the idea had emerged to have a automatic system developed.
On first thought the system should be integrated with calendar so I won't need to add the order deadline manually. Secondly, it should be interactive so that the customer would be able to provide specific information for different types of order, such as posters, logo, roll-up-banner, leaflets, etc. Next, integration with the mailing system should be great, so that a formal routine can be established.
I guess the easiest way to achieve all above should be a web page. Given the fact that I now own a server, it's time to put my thought into practice, and here we go:
I learned quite a bunch of javascript during the two day's work to build and improve the system. By far it has no problem with:
- Instructing customers to fill specific blanks of the order
- Calculating printing price automatically
- Generating e-mails according to the order based on php template
- Sending confirmation e-mails to customers and order e-mails to the Studio
- Exporting .ics file
Credit to naa986, wpdevelop and oplugins, 霍欣婷, 肖达.
Edit: GEDesign Order System went offline on 2018.10.10.