During this time and age, its a pity that huge industry players like paypal and authorize.net still have high restrictions for e-traders and online stores based in African countries. Apart from a few countries, most of Africa is restricted to 2nd class payment processing who look like risky to deal with hence loss of business and trust from potential customers.

There are a few though that I have seen that quite translate to real business and are professionally setup and with standards even higher than paypal. Some of these even let you accept paypal on your site!

I particularly love 2checkout, accepts all major cards with very secure verification and fraud prevention. The range of allowed products is also quite big. There are a few integration issues that require a technical experience in web programming (You can always hire a professional from hostkenya.net).

I came accross AlertPay, also easy to configure, allows merchants from all over Africa, with direct bank account withdrawal of your funds and easy terms. Though its rules are quite loose as compared to its competitors, its the choice for Africa. Works 100% as paypal, with email payments and pay now buttons. Accepts all major cards and funds are processed in real-time.

I leave a challenge to the banks and developers in Africa, why are we taking this money from our poor economies to the west? Think and let us grow our e-commerce industry. Come on, leave a comment here if you have any challenges or ideas for this growth.

Tags: 2co, alertpay, e-commerce, hostkenya.net, payment processing, paypal for africa

I have seen quite a number of things that we can do as Africans to move to the next level in business and ICT…inform each other of developments in the industries. Being a web developer based in Kenya, (See portfolio at www.hostkenya.net), e-commerce is a huge challenge due to the fact that Kenyan banks have no online merchant solutions. So one of the major Challenges in Africa is payment processing. If you have a good product, you can easily sell it online if you have a good payment processor. Paypal doesnt love Africa that much, they want to “help” us make payments but not receive payments. For this, I salute 2checkout who have no limits on countries, although they have a few limitations on high risk products.

For the few years I have been on the internet, this has been a challenge, plus the high cost of setting up an online store…Thanks to open source, we have OS-Commerce, which has been vastly used worldwide and its free with lots of templates and plugins available for sale.

In all revolution of e-commerce and open source, there hasnt been anything like Magento. It is vast. It is sleek and neat. It covers a wide range of features. Since the day i first saw magento, I knew this was the end of e-commerce problems. It is free, only needs a few tech requirements to configure, which i can easily help but it is the one….try the demo online or see it in action at www.kenyanstore.com.

Watch this space for more updates on the latest trends in e-commerce….

Tags: 2co, e-commerce, gateway, hostkenya.net, magento, os-commerce, payment processing

I have gone through a week of hell without proper internet because while performing an update on my Huawei E220 3g Modem, it hang and the firmware got messed up. I tried all possible options i could find but nothing. When i tried to use my modem on another machine that already had all software installed, it worked properly so i realized that if i have the software, that is mobile partner, I could work perfectly with it. I searched the internet without any success for that until i got into a forum and someone decided to copy it for my from the emulated cd drive that comes with the modem.

I have zipped the same for anyone who might have similar problems and its free for download at SINCE97.com

Please feel free to get a copy and leave a comment if it helps you.

Tags: 3g, drivers, huawei e220, mobile partner

Somehow, open source always rules. There are many commercial and free mysql management tools that are great and really easy to use. I have used a whole line of them, from Navicat MySQL, SQLYog for MySQL and many more. MySQL front was another one that was opensource until it outgrew itself.

PHPMYADMIN, web-based mysql management tool is among the best tools i have ever used in my entire career. There may be options but 68% of web hosts use it, 75% of mysql developers do use it and there is no end to the starts. It is the ease in understanding it, the web interface that is easy to run, availability and the fact that its FREE to use. Its also quite easy to install and most of the pre-packaged apache/PHP/MySQL installations come with PHPMYADMIN pre-installed.

Lets hear you here, what is your best choice? I stand for PHPMYADMIN!

Tags: Apache, data for web, database, MySQL, mysql management system, mysql web interface, PHP, PHPMYADMIN, web database

As the web goes into more sophistication, its hard to keep up with the latest trends in development and making sure you are on the edge of the best. Different technologies are here each day and there is no one who is able to collect them all. This is a simple post that recommends DynamicDrive.com, a place where you find very nice web resources.

Here, you will find DHTML resources, CSS Menus, POP-UP menus, AJAX Downloads, JavaScript effects, Form Validation Scripts and much more.

Now, I know there are a million and one resources on the internet, please drop a comment here with your favourites…

Tags: AJAX, CSS Menus, DHTML Calenders, Resources

First, this is for the you who is thinking of your first PHP applications and you want to run and test them on a Windows environment. You need to have a web server and a database server installed. PHP runs best on Apache and the choice of a database server narrows to mysql.

Many people know from their own experience that it’s not easy to install an Apache web server and it gets harder if you want to add MySQL, PHP and Perl. I use XAMPP which is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use - just download, extract and start.

At the moment there are four XAMPP versions:

• a version for Linux systems (tested for Ubuntu, SuSE, RedHat, Mandrake and Debian),
• a version for Windows 98, NT, 2000, 2003, XP and Vista,
• a beta version for Solaris SPARC (developed and tested under Solaris 8),
• and a beta version for MacOS X.

I have developed most of my applications on XAMPP and i highly recommend it for anyone who wants an easy way to develop and run PHP applications on a Windows environment.

Tags: Apache, MySQL, PERL, PHP, PHP in Windows, Windows, xampp