Build an online store with cryptocurrency payment support — deploy my online store to cloud
If you are a beginner with no coding experience at all but still interested in getting involved with cryptocurrency trends and setting up your own website, blog, or online store, then you have landed at the right place. This is the last section of a series.
What you’ll need
- No programming experience needed
- Some time, each session is about 20–30 mins
- No fee for building a test toy store locally
What you’ll learn
- API usage and other programming jargon
- Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency terminologies
- Website hosting and cloud deployment concepts
What you’ll build
- An online store with cryptocurrency, credit card, and PayPal payment support enabled
The last section includes advanced topics about putting your online store on the internet and certain services are paid only, so please prepare a few bucks for them. Without buying a few more cups of coffee every month, you get to play the most fun and exciting part and deep dive more into the programmer’s world. If you are only interested in the free version, please check them here.
Deploy my online store to cloud
- Where to buy a domain?
‘Google.com’ is the domain name for the search engine we use daily. To visit google, we simply type in its domain name and the browser will redirect us to the right location without knowing the IP addresses and other tricks behind it.
Domain name registrars are the companies that manage the domain names on your behalf. You can get a domain name from them and do the mapping using services they provided. Then you broadcast your website by giving others your website domain name, but not the IP address. Easy to remember, good for the business.
Below are some popular registrars:
If you just want a test website, you can search for ‘free domain name’ via google.
A bunch options will pop out. Usually, the free ones have either uncommon extensions versus common extensions like .com that don’t rank well and lack credibility or require a sign up for other paid services like web hosting services, but enough for test website.
- What are the most popular web hosting websites?
Once the code part is done for your web application and a domain name is ready, the next step is to put it online.
For a simple small scale online store, everything can be done by yourself on physical servers if you have enough knowledge about how to set up a server, deploy the application on your server, configure your local network properly to open it to the internet, map your IPs with the domain, do updates and backup, monitor and maintain the website up 24/7. Then more servers, and more complex architecture are needed as your business grows.
Sounds like a lot of work, and it is. Thus many third party companies provide solutions to host your websites, taking the burden off your shoulder.
To only get rid of buying physical servers at home but DIY all other steps, Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is the right cloud service for it. With IaaS, you rent IT infrastructure — servers and virtual machines (VMs), storage, networks, operating systems — from a cloud provider instead of constructing everything from scratch physically. The cloud providers also offer other two types of cloud services, Platform as a service (PaaS) and Software as a service (SaaS). With PaaS, developers focusing on the coding part, let the platform takes care of setting up or managing the underlying infrastructure of servers, storage, network, and databases needed for development.
With SaaS, you rent the use of an app for your organization, and your users connect to it over the Internet. All of the underlying infrastructure, middleware, app software, and app data are located in the service provider’s data center. Common examples are Google G-suite, Microsoft Office 365.
Below are some key players in the cloud computing:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/
For our WordPress website, we can deploy it on a VM (virtual machine) rent from a cloud provider, or host it on a clouding hosting website.
The former process gives you a chance to gain more knowledge about what is inside the black box, so we will go down this path today. If you prefer to pay a few bucks to avoid thinking or learning this part, please go with the latter, check these Cloud Hosting Providers for WordPress or google more.
Add advanced crypto currency support features
- What are the drawbacks of bitcoins?
Compared with other crypto currencies, bitcoin’s main disadvantage is its slow transaction rate. The transaction processing capacity maximum estimated using an average or median transaction size is between 3.3 and 7 transactions per second for bitcoin. It can’t scale if no good solutions developed to address this issue.
- What is a lightning network?
The Lightning Network is a solution to address this scalability problem. It is a “Layer 2” payment protocol that operates on top of a blockchain-based cryptocurrency like bitcoin. It enables fast transactions between participating nodes.
(Youtube link: Lightning Network Explained Simply
https://youtu.be/pBh4DcM-0pg )
Forgingblock implements the lighting features as well, it is at its early stage, if you would like to give it a try by using its testnet, please contact with us (https://www.forgingblock.io/contact.html), we will provide test account access for you.
- What is Ethereum?
After bitcoin, a bunch of new coins/tokens showed up to resolve technical issues in bitcoin and explore more user cases. Ethereum is one of the newest technologies to join this movement and by far one of the most popular. The uniqueness of Ethereum is it is not a coin or a token, but a platform, an ecosystem. It is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform and operating system featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality. As an ethereum developer, not only can you build your own blockchain apps but also publish your own crypto currencies as ether tokens.
(Youtube link: What is Ethereum? A Beginner’s Explanation https://youtu.be/jxLkbJozKbY)
- What are the coins/tokens supported by forgingblock?
Currently, we support the following crypto currencies, you can also find the newest update on our API docs (https://api.forgingblock.io/docs/#fbuni)
Update and improve my website
- What is version control?
Apps on our phone notify you about their patches and updates. The strategy used by developers to manage different versions of the application run environments, the code is version control.
- How to download and upload the sample store?
For our wordpress website, no fancy technique is needed, only a plugin to copy and paste your whole website.
- What are git and docker?
The drawback of copying and pasting is you can only do it at one location, by one person at one time. What if I have a team of developers or I am a part of the team, who can work in parallel for the same project, are there ways to orchestrate things elegantly?
The answer is yes. For source code version control, please check git and GitHub.
https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-About-Version-Control
For app running environment version control and orchestration, please check docker and docker hub.
Then it is time to get into programming by starting to learn a formal language or contact with us (https://www.forgingblock.io/contact.html), let us handle and design payment integration strategies of your website for you!
