Online Auction solution For a Charity

Client profile:

A charitable foundation that caters to the sociological, physiological, emotional, and financial needs of the homeless people in Malta. It helps homeless people get back on their feet.

The solution:

Our team was involved in two key activities - enhancement of the client's existing website and integration of an auction solution with the website.

The auction solution provides a web-based administration interface, using which the administrator can upload items to be auctioned off. The administrator can specify Reserve Price, Duration of the Auction, Minimum Bid Increment, Starting Price etc along with product details and images. The administrator can also group items into custom defined categories to facilitate efficient and quick searches for a particular item.

The users have to register before bidding on an item, an email is sent automatically to the user's email address, the email contains the user name and a system defined password. Users can change the password and update their personal details once on the website. Users who have bid on items are also informed through email if they have been outbid, and can raise their bids by visiting the website again.

The administrator can also view a list of all auctions that have taken place complete with all relevant details like the Winner, Winner's Contact Details, Winning Bid etc.

The solution was based on Perl.