Hi there,

I am looking for some advice about how best to go about creating a booking system for deliveries for a cupcake company's website.

Basically, I have created a simple HTML website which has been running successfully for some time, but we would like to ADD a shopping cart. I have signed up for Romancart for the shopping cart which seems relatively straightforward to implement.

However, the complication I have found is in trying to limit the number of cupcakes that are available for purchase on any given date.  I need to put a limit on how many cupcakes (whether vanilla, chocolate etc) can be bought per day, as the company has a limit on daily production. e.g. 500 cakes per day across all orders.

I think it's a bit like using Ticketmaster or a hotel booking website, EXCEPT that the limit applies across all different cupcake ranges (rather than just the one set of tickets or one type of room) that a customer might order.

I want to have customers choose their cupcakes from a particular range and add them to the basket, choose other cupcakes and add them too, then choose their delivery date. If the total cupcakes they want to buy exceeds the limit of production for that date (e.g. 490 have been ordered already by other customers and they want to buy 20), I need them to be told that they need to reduce their order or choose another date.

If the cupcakes order is WITHIN the limit, I would like to have the quota of cupcakes "held" for them until they then process their purchase, like on Ticketmaster ("You have 5 minutes to complete your purchase")...

I have contacted a calendar company called phpjabbers.com who think they can help with a customised php calendar, but I'm not sure if this is the right ROUTE, and I'm not sure it will work with Romancart, as it is the Romancart Shopping Cart page that would display the calendar. I have also looked at javascript calendars, but from what I have seen I don't think they can deal with the server side.

Sorry for the long question, but if there is anyone out there who can give me some pointers I'd be really grateful. I am self-taught and very doubtful I can put together the necessary code entirely myself but would like advice as to what I should be doing/who I should be buying the code from.

Something based on ZenCart or osCommerce should do the trick.  Check out the modules for the projects to see if there's anything that fits your requirements.