I just bought the Shopp shopping cart plugin and it says that I should have an SSL certificate and a unique IP address. I was wondering if this is necessary for all shopping carts?
It depends on whether you want people to buy from you. A certificate of your own enables them to confirm the identity of the seller to make sure it is really your page and not a fake web page that just looks as if it is yours but which sends their money to someone else.
A unique IP address is required to be able to install the certificate.
The only alternative is to use a shared certificate where the buyer gets an alert that the certificate doesn’t match your site. Most will abandon the purchase at that point.
Entering credit card details without their being a certificate to encrypt the details means anyone can intercept the details and use them to make their own purchases.
Thanks for the input. Using the Shopp shopping cart, no credit card info is entered until the buyer enters the payment gateway (paypal in my case). As long as they are secure I shouldn’t need the SSL certificate and unique IP address, correct?
Dan
Correct. When they see the PayPal page, they see the name of the merchant who gets the money. If this is your name, then it’s OK.
Having SSL on your own site, before checkout, is additional trust builder though.
Thanks for the help.
Dan