Following his Day Camp 4 Developers event, Cal Evans needed a way to release the videos and materials from the day long even to those that paid to attend. Obviously, a download link just wouldn't do, so he went looking for something a bit more powerful and WordPress-y.

It sounds like such a simple thing; just put them up for download, right? Not really. Let's look at the actual requirements: Shopping cart to allow me to eventually sell the videos, a way to let my existing ticket holders "buy" them for free. (Coupon codes), a way to keep the real location of the files hidden so people don't just go download them. Those were the biggest items. Beyond that I was willing to either sacrifice or code it myself.

After searching around and trying out a few solutions, he decided on eShop ("it's good, not great) a WordPress plugin that lets you set up a quite configurable ecommerce website. It also includes some basic statistics features, uses the custom post types to configure products and lets customers sign into the site to handle their own options.

There have been a few posts around the community related to the OXID application ever since the Zend Developer Zone posted the latest article in a series looking at using their eShop software. The quality of the application came up and several even questioned the "94% code coverge" they claimed.

Some of the posts on the matter include:

• Demian Turner's "PHPterror on OXID eShop"
• Arno Schneider's "oxid esales - the extend parade
• The PHPTerror article that caused some of the problem

However, in this piece from Lars Jankowfsky he tries to set the record straight on a few things:

As I am the guy who introduced the disliked functionality many years ago ( actually years before ZF popped up) I feel the need for a statement to put the things into the right order. Please note that I did work for OXID in the past (years ago) but I do not nowadays.

He responds to the criticism of the way modules/classes are used in the eShop application and the comments about the test coverage claims made without the proof released to show it's true.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted the next article in their OXID and Authorize.net series (part one) focusing on the setup and application code to accept credit card payments.

Over the next couple of pages, I'll discuss this in detail, showing you how to create an OXID eShop module to accept credit card payments via the AlertPay payment service. Unlike Authorize.Net, this service requires users to visit and enter credit card information into a third-party Web site. As such, integrating it with OXID eShop is somewhat more complex, but it can be done.

The tutorial includes not only the description of how to make it work but also sample code and screenshots to ensure it's easy to follow each step of the way. There's lots of content here and plenty of steps to follow.