1). I looked at many shopping carts on the web, however.. most of them seem to be a collection of code that you can install. I was under the impression that shopping cart is stored on the server where the cart was bought from, along with all of the other product information? Then i would have to link that information to my site... can someone clarify this for me please?
Yes you could either install your own Shopping Cart or some host Already come with Shopping Cart installed.

2). I thought a shopping cart already cleared shopping transactions provided you had a valid merchant account. However, this does not seem to be the case. It looks like you have to purchase a Transaction Gateway from authrorize.net or something like that and then link your shopping cart to that?!?! im really confused...
No shopping cart mearly lets you add/delete/modify Items, once you select Buy then all the Item Details are passed on to another application which deals with validating CC Card etc.

Yes you do need an merchant acoount or you could use 3rd party company whicll will validate the card for you.


3). Does anyone have any links, tutorials, books, websites, shopping carts, or gateways they would recommend? I'm also looking for a good webhost that has ASP support, not linux and PHP.
Most of us(VBF) use Jodohost.com as our ASP hosting, you could check it out. Their price is extremly resonable and provides good service, and the owner/founder of JodoHost is a felllow member here.


As Neo said, creating shopping cart its pretty simple.

I am writing a tutorial, i have put togethe a simple shopping cart, but havent finished writing the documentation. If you wish I could email it to you. I have commented the code extensively so it should be quite simple to follow. PM me with your email, i will email it to you.

Hope it helps.

Danial