I wouldn't take credit cards unless you can control the server. Taking credit cards is a big responsibility, and you will have a hard time proving that you did it correctly should anything go wrong. Although I am used to US liability laws (and am therefore paranoid about such things), I wouldn't want to be the one who got sued because someone hacked into the ISP and set up a credit card sniffer.

I set up a credit card system and found it to be painful, because I had to deal with:

• Learning how credit cards really work. This isn't as simple as you might think. There are many issues that I can describe if people are interested.
• Dealing with the US Department of Commerce denial list. They keep a list of bad guys that I wasn't allowed to sell to.
• Security reviews by a guy who was long on paranoia and short on real knowledge. He insisted that I implement a really twisted system that had performance problems.
• An antiquated order processing system in the company.
• There were many more...

Once the site is running, you need one or more people in a production and support role. This is the area that many people don't think about at all, and it makes many sites fail quickly after deployment.

Given the level of experience you have described, the tools that you have available, and your time frame, it sounds like a crash-and-burn to me. Debugging problems will be extremely difficult, especially with your credit card system, which is difficult to prototype. For example, say your credit card transaction times out. How will you solve the problem?

It should work perfectly the first time! - toma

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