text links instead of paypals fat ORANGE buttons

[timeshhift]

Im building a website for my family candle business. Weve got a decent inventory and were trying to set up shop via the www, but I dont want to use junk like cubecart or zencart, they make you use templates and I would rather code from the ground-up to be as creatively flexible as possible.

I decided to use paypals simple shopping cart option which lets you apply one of their HUGE ORANGE "add to cart" buttons to your site, in my case where I wanted to have a basic text link that added a specific candle to the cart. a large, distracting orange button doesnt do much for the aesthetics of my site in any way what-so-ever

this is the HTML paypal makes you use for the button:



<form target="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="hosted_button_id" value="MWH84VUP2S7E8">
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_cart_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
<img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
</form>


ok the button works fine for what i wanted it to do (I need it to process variables for things like size, weight, price) but I wanted a text link that did the same thing that I could use in the buttons place. so I eventually came up with something like this:

<a href="https://www.paypal.com/webscr?cmd=_cart&add=1&[email protected]&item_name=product%20 name&amount=10.00">add to cart</a>

I works great for what i want it to do, i got business, item, and price down, but I need to know how I could add variables for things like tax and shipping, maybe even item ID.


I coded my entire layout in using divs and css (a first for me) and its sorta a first for me. any help would be greatly appreciated guys. or ladies.

 

[PixelPusher]

Im not quite getting what you're asking, are you going to have other buttons other than "add to cart". So tax and shipping would be a button? Item ID would be a button?

In my experience you would have these items calculated once the user goes to checkout/purchase. The "add to cart" button would be a constant. That is the standard online purchase process.

 

[timeshhift]

sorry for the confusion. I only need them to click one link that adds a single item to their cart.

when you click the regular "add to cart" button, it automatically processes an items tax, shipping, and price using simple variables, then sends the customer to the shopping cart. I want to make a basic HTML text link that does the same thing, so I dont have to use the button they provide. I just dont know how to code the <a> tag beyond product name and price, I still need it to include at least tax and shipping.