One thing that everyone wants to be able to do these days is accept credit card payments online. There's a few ways to do it, but, for most new sites, the only options are to let a third party handle the transaction. Well, if you're one of those smaller sites, and have access to compile and install some software on your web host, then this new article from Zend just might be your ticket to integration.

In this new piece, Accepting payments using Verisign's Payflow Pro, they step you through how to create a payment system with the PayFlow modules as the basis. Now, obviously, you have to have a merchant account and they have to be Verisign-friendly, but other than that, it's just a simple matter of compiling in the PayFlow Libraries on your PHP installation, and testing it out with the sample code they provide.

I've done this pretty extensively on sites before, and, I have to say, it's one of the easiest integrations that I've done. You just grab the information that you need charged, pop it into a simple array, and send it off for validation. They even return error codes and other information based on the info you send them. The class they give is good, but it would definitely need some logging - always, always, always log when credit cards are involved.