Advice on developing a product catalog/menu for a small retail site.

[ret5hd]

I own a small retail store. The products might be a simple flavor (banana, cherry, watermelon, etc) or might be more complex (a creamy butterscotch with a touches of citrus and berrys).

The simple flavors are generally "house flavors" that we create ourselves and the more complex ones are generally "branded" flavors that we purchase pre-made.

We currently use printed menus that people can look thru to find a flavor they are interested in. These are clumsy and expensive to update.

What I "see" is a touch-screen mounted on the wall. A customer could come in and type "citrus" or "fruit" or "creamy" or "banana" etc in a search box on the screen and it would display the different items that match the criteria.

I am somewhat familiar with networking (I maintain a small private network that serves flat files to 10 boxes).

I am somewhat familiar with simple HTML (I set up the Apache server and developed the flat webpages that allow users of the network to select the file they wish to view/download).

I am somewhat familiar with Wordpress (I maintain my retail store's website, but it was developed by a person I contracted for that).

My questions are:

1) Is there a simple easy way to do this? A program I can download to the tablet/Ipad, etc, fill with data and hang it on the wall, no networking, html, http involved?

2) If the answer above is "No", would it be better to set up the Apache server on the tablet itself and have all the requests go to 127.0.0.1/xxx/xxx or would it be better to set the server up on a separate computer and have all the requests go to 10.0.0.1/xxx/xxx

3) Also, if the answer to 1 is "No", is Wordpress a good solution or is there something simpler?

Thank you to anyone answering.

[ChromeFoundry]

1. There are products that do this...

Here are a few:
http://www.ezeeimenu.com/pricing.php
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.innmenu.free&hl=en

A few more:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/tablet-ipad-uses-unexpected,review-1682-2.html

[Tab]

2. I don't know whether WordPress does this kind of thing

(I wouldn't be surprised nowadays)

But I do know you don't want to write this stuff from scratch, especially if there's off-the-shelf stuff out there. Even the mediocre stuff might be better than what you can do by hand in a month or two.

Let us know what you find.

[ret5hd]

3. The "mediocre stuff" costs an upfront fee...

and a monthly subscription.

[Tab]

4. Perhaps

It's a time-value trade-off between what they charge to get you to where you want to go and what it'll cost you in terms of time and money (mostly money) to accomplish the same thing.

[Tab]

5. That said,

Many sites, from Etsy to Ebay to Cafepress allow you to generate your own site, but there might be a monthly fee. It depends on your product, resources, and timeline.

You can also pay a majorly-known site to process your business temporarily while you rig up a more permanent site on your own.

Let us know what you decide....

- Tab

[MikeWilsonn]

6. How about Outsourcing this Task .. ??

I would suggest you to go with WordPress.

Although, it's quite good that you are familiar with Networking, HTML etc and you are trying to develop the things from your won; but sometime its better to go with professionals who have experience of doing so. So, I would further suggest you to give a thought about outsourcing it to India. As the cost per hour is very cheap, it could save lots of money and your precious time which you can devote into your business.

Thanks & Regards,
Mike Wilson

[FSogol]

7. Why would anyone on a Democratic website want to outsource work to India?

oh, our precious time! Regards!

[GregD]

8. Did you ever get this done?

I happen to have done something for a client a while back, and I just happened to come across your post here.

This guy wanted to have a television hanging inside of his office that would list out jobs that are in production. The page that he wanted displayed on this screen is part of his e-commerce admin section. All other pages in the store admin require login, but it would be a hassle using the TV on-screen keyboard to punch in the password every time.

What we ended up doing was providing for him a means of introducing IP numbers to a list. And then we coded that page so that ONLY if one is addressing the page from one of those IPs, would the page be displayed. That way he controls who has access to the list, but without dealing with entering the user/password normally required for access to the store admin.

Something similar could be rigged up for your menu page. Did you ever get this project done?

[ret5hd]

9. Yes. I ended up doing it myself. Thnx