MP3 Gift Vouchers

Itunes

Currently there are online wholsalers who distribute itunes gift cards, however they do not seem to have any connection with apple themselves, nor do apple condone it.

http://www.tradetang.com/wholesale-iTunes-Gift-Cards_c262011.html

Amazon

Amazon currently offer corporate gift vouchers which are for large businesses who are wishing to purchase vast amounts of gift vouchers for their employees.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/b/ref=gc_gc_corp2/?ie=UTF8&node=236462011

Summary

As gift cards are classed as an item, I can imagine the first sale doctrine and the sale of goods act would apply. So purchasing a gift card for commercial use would not be feesible. However, having permission from either brand, or smaller music distributers would be an option.

Join our club

Since I have already produced a sign up form for the website I have decided I will try and incorporate it into a mailing list or a 'mixtape club'.

Mixtape Club Newsletter

- updates on new mixtape themes
- fan photos
- mixtape stories

Actionscript & PHP

Using a tutorial within the book 'Flash and PHP bible' by Mathew Keefe I managed to get flash to talk to PHP.

This will be useful for when creating the mixtape sleeve designer as I am coding the site in PHP, the designer will be in actionscript. I will need some way for actionscript to talk to PHP and my mySQL database to transfer these details.

In the tutorial I used the classes URLRequest, URLVariables and URLLoader to talk to a PHP file I wrote which included some variables with values within them.

URLRequest = captures all the information in a single HTTP request
URLVariables = allows you to send variables from an application to the server
URLLoader = downloads data from the URL as text

The file can be viewed here:

http://www.sezzah.co.uk/FMP/phpflash01/connecttophp.html

PHP Sign up/Login

I had originally wanted to include a members area where users could store their mixtapes they had made. I coded up a sign up form and login script for this.

There was no design and it was still in its early stages. It still would have benfitted from:

1. Adding a $_SESSION variable for the username
2. Error messages to display for individual fields which are missed within the sign up/login stages
3. A second "reconfirm" password for sign up
4. To include MD5 encryption
5. To include cookies for when a user close the browser and the session closes

The files can be found here:

http://www.sezzah.co.uk/FMP/new/

Project Considerations

After some careful consideration, I have decided not to feature the playlist maker within the website. Instead the website will flow, similar to the following:

Design mixtape -> Add gift voucher -> write love note -> send!

I have decided as this is my final major project to concentrate on my strengths so with this new site tructure in place I can spend more time on the design.

I will still be using some of the work I have already done. Also my research into working with actionscript 3.0 and PHP/MySQL will still be beneficial for the mixtape designer stage.