Name your price seems to be the catch-phrase in e-commerce these days. The success of sites like eBay and Priceline testify to that.

Not long ago retailers were scrambling to set up online stores. Now they're scrambling to set up online auctions. If you're champing at the auction bit for your own site, or are facing the task of building an auction application for your clients, AuctionBuilder Pro! from AbleCommerce may be just what you need.

Having had the experience of writing a custom auction application for one of my own clients, I had some insight into the complexity of the task that faced developers. My foray into this area had introduced a number of very involved problems, and that was a much simpler app than would be needed for a large auction site. AuctionBuilder Pro! provides not one, but three different auction environments, and does so in a manner that allows for quick customization, altering the environment to specific markets, and a surprisingly easy-to-use administration interface, considering the difficulties involved.

What You Get
I tested AuctionBuilder Pro! version 1.0, which requires ColdFusion Professional 4.5 to run. Installation was quite painless and included no surprises. In fact, it took only about 20 minutes to install, set up and begin running my initial tests.

Installation on an NT Workstation with IIS was no problem, but I decided to run it on my creaky old Pentium system running Win98 and Personal Web Server. It was my thought that this would give me an idea of what the system would be like running over the Net and/or on a heavily loaded server. I will say that it performed very well under these circumstances.

The package includes three licenses, plus source code. Also provided is a complete context-sensitive help and a programmer's reference for tailoring the product to your client. AuctionBuilder Pro! comes with three predefined auction environments:

• AbleAuction: This template is primarily for business-to-consumer sites that seem to be the primary targets for this product.
• BidKingdom: This template is probably the model you're most familiar with from other auction sites on the Web. It allows both businesses and consumers to buy and sell in an open-market atmosphere.
• BidMadness: This model is a reverse auction concept, where buyers post items they want to buy. Sellers then compete to provide the lowest price, and the low bidder "wins" by making the sale.

Setting Up an Auction Site
Since I'm a little more concerned with how the site will be managed rather than used, I dove right into the auction administrator. The first thing to note is that all password requests are confirmed. In other words, administrators have to enter their password twice. This ensures that an unauthorized user can't just use the "back" button and repost the password to gain access. And that brings up another thought: the administration environment has a very complete navigation system, but since the application is so complex, it's easy to get a little lost at first. That being the case, there is a temptation to bypass the navigation and just use the "back" and "forward" buttons on your browser. The problem is, using the buttons may create duplicate database entries in some cases (as it did for me). Once you're familiar with the menus, it'll be a piece of cake, but you may have a shaky start to begin with. One nice touch that I appreciated was a menu icon that popped up a child window with the complete admin menu. If I got a little lost, this always helped me find my way back.

Your first admin page is where you set up "auction halls" for your site. Three licenses allowed me to create three auction halls based on each of the models mentioned above. An auction hall is essentially the auction environment in which site visitors will interact. Creating an auction hall is simple. Give it a name, and AuctionBuilder will create the appropriate data sources, server mappings and settings, all based on the model you select. In my testing I focused a bit more on the model that seemed to be what most site owners would want: the BidKingdom auction, where all users can browse listings and make purchases, and where premium (paid) members may create their own auctions.

Once the hall has been created, you select that hall to administer. The administration menu allows you to edit pretty much any data on the site, including auctions and lots up for bid. Activity logs and reports can be viewed from here as well. This is also where you'll set up some of the custom options, like item categories, fees for auction services, shipping methods and payment processors (AuctionBuilder Pro! includes support for CyberCash, Authorize.NET, and ICVerify).

The User's End of Things
Now that I had an auction hall set up, it was just a matter of registering users and getting started with the selling and bidding. AuctionBuilder Pro! administrator gave me the URL to the auction site. One note: no "default" or "index" file is provided, so my Web server returned a 404 Error message when I went to the URL. Add the filename "auction.cfm" to the URL and you'll see the goods. Click the "register" icon and fill in the form provided. The registration process is fairly straightforward, but I did run into something that stopped me for a moment: entering an address requires an alias so that later users can simply select "home" from a drop-down list instead of retyping their address information.

The same is true of users' payment information. A user can define one or more credit cards to pay with, and later just select one from a drop-down list using the alias. Your typical Web site visitors may not understand this right away, and since it's a required field they can't register without the alias defined. Be prepared to explain what the alias is. The help explains this of course, but who actually reads that?

With all of the vital data added, I was now a premium member. Because premium members incur a fee in the default setting, they must be ap-proved by an online credit processor or by the administrator. Presumably, members will be approved if their credit card payment is successfully processed online, but since I couldn't test that, I had to manually approve premium users. Once registered and approved, I was able to create auctions, bid on lots, win bids, receive outbid notices and generally do all the things I'm familiar with from other auction Web sites. In fact, having had some experience with eBay, I have to say that I like AuctionBuilder's out-of-the-box interface just a little better; it's slick and intuitive.

Customizing
Included with the AuctionBuilder Pro! package is a 200-page programmer's reference in PDF format. After an exhaustive review of file structures, security features and database framework, there's a compact but complete set of directions for customizing most of the auction site. The critical question - How do I customize the "look and feel" of the site? - is answered in this section. A reference page guides you through global settings that allow you to make your AuctionBuilder Pro! site truly a part of your existing Web page.

Other settings can be changed to allow you to customize how the site operates, and examples are given to guide you through these changes. It's my feeling that even a CF newbie could customize AuctionBuilder Pro! in a fairly short period of time. Also included in the programmer's reference are instructions for adding a payment processor, allowing you to use almost any method of payment that you or your clients demand.

AuctionBuilder Pro! is modular, which makes it easy to modify files for a particular activity. But its modular design also means you have to spend time tracing out exactly which files do what, and when. That being said, filenames are meaningful (e.g., search. cfm and sell.cfm are fairly descriptive), which makes it a great deal easier to locate what you're doing and where it needs to be changed. Much of the program uses CFMODULE to call additional files, and parameters are descriptive as well. In all, modifying the program's functions should involve a fairly short learning curve for most CF programmers.

Conclusion
I stepped into this product somewhat gingerly, knowing from experience that the process of creating and running an auction Web site included some horribly complicated issues. This solution from AbleCommerce not only handles the complex tasks, but also breaks them down in a way that makes it quite easy. No matter what type of auction model your client needs, AuctionBuilder Pro! can handle it, and it can be modified to accommodate virtually any business. The program with source code and three licenses will run you $5,995. This is not an application for your local mom and pop establishment. However, for most e-tail clients that want to move into the auction world, AuctionBuilder Pro! has everything you'll need.

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