Integrating database into online shop

[tigger]

I have a new site to build & the company want to have an online store, which I have done before using Miva. The trouble is the catalogue is the size of a phone directory with just as many entries!

The supplier has said that they can provide the catalogue in a database format (Platinum, Barclays or Windows) but does anyone know of any suitable software I can use to build & manage the shop but itegrate the database so that I don't have to manually type in all the products?

Another point is that I don't know any programming languages and I don't really have time to learn it just at the moment.

[TallTroll]

Depending on exactly what the project parameters are, you might very well be looking for the package my company works with. E-mail/StickyMail me if you want more details

The package can handle '000s of stock items, and can draw info from external d/bases, so it might be suitable

[Rhys]

Hi Tigger - I too want to get a site working with server based data and asp's. I propose to use Miva and a search as well, but need some non-geek software to set it up. I'm too old to learn more new languages just to do this job...
Clues please....
Rhys

[tigger]

Hi Rhys & welcome to WmW

I've had some interesting offers made sticky sent with details

[Brett_Tabke]

What'd you guys ever come up with for this? I'd really like to hear it.

There are some off-the-shelf solutions out there, but they can be soooo expensive. ($10k+)

[Rhys]

Lo Brett -
I looked at some off the shelf stuff and got frightened to death. I am now looking at Frontpage generated ASP pages hooked to a data base to try and write this myself. I have seen a site that appears to do what I want and it sems to have been generated with FP.
cheers - Rhys

[tigger]

Brett.

I've had a couple of companies contact me direct offering either services or software so I've asked the client to copy the database over to me so I can have a poke around with it.

I'll let you know how this all pan's out, but this certainly isn't as straight forward as I’d originally thought.

[tedster]

Two ideas:

1. I've been reading some articles from Direct magazine that indicate many big retailers have decided to limit their website offerings, using the 80-20 rule to minimize work and maximize profits.

2. Americart offers a very inexpensive service (usually under $25 a month) which allows you to create pages from comma separated data -- and they then output flat HTML pages for the site using your template(s), making a very SE friendly site. I've found their service to be extremely flexible and technically rather straightforward.

[john316]

I use a db/cart solution on several sites that is really a no brainer. Try webteacher.com. It's not free, but I have found that when dealing with shopping carts, "free" is not really a bargain. I have no interest in the software other than the fact that I use it.

There is a SQL version and a flat file version. If you have a db to import, you could probably have the whole deal set up within an hour.

[Conard]

I know I am late on this one, but Miva Merchant is not that hard to set up, you can convert a product data base to a flat file and upload all of your products at once. You do have to create the product catagories first. There are 2 plug ins available to create static copies of the cart for the search engines.