New Shopping Cart Wanted!

[StoreOwner]

Hi,
I have been retailing on the web for a couple of years, and my ol' trusty shopping cart is a bit dated, and I want to upgrade to include a number of new features. however, I am struggling to find those features anywhere! Can anyone help please!

Simply, I have a store that takes about 2-3 GB of bandwidth, and I want the new store to cope with about 5X that. I am told that cgi is out, too slow, and what i want is php and mysql.
Sound right?

I want complete flexibility on the page, so I can put 3 variables per product, and even be able to tick a box to add a product. (e.g. tick here to include the free brochure, or matching pen at £10 etc).

Shipping has to be MEGA flexible, ideally calling from a separate file (say txt or csv)that can be adjusted for delivery country and product).

Finally, all pages must be spidered by ALL s/e, so no "?" in the strings, ideally some thing like

www.mydomain.com/product/beautiful_pen/

Oh, and as I already have 1000's products online, I need to be able to transfer them easily...

I want...I want...I want..cant have? :(

Anyone know if it is possible without going bespoke? If Bespoke, what would it likely cost in the UK? The last cart cost £250 or there abouts, and I thought that was expensive at the time. There is a little more in the pot now, as the shop works, OK, just need it to be better.

Any thoughts, suggestions, advice, would be appreciated. Thanks.

StoreOwner

[DaveN]

"mega flexible" and "not bespoke" I don't think i have ever seen a off the shelf package which will do exactly want a customer wants.

Just for information the company I work for uses MS-SQL, MY-SQL, and even access on customer sites some that we have done seo work on rank very well with ? we always create static linked site maps to all the product pages which get spider no problem.

so my advise would be go bespoke if you want a price on the job sticky me i don't forum barter ;)

DaveN

[Reflect]

Hi,

I have had good luck with StoreFront [storefront.net]. It comes in Acess or SQL. They have several platforms of the poduct to fit what you need. What you stated they do. The only down side is the shipping/handling. You can configure static shipping or feed off of USPS, UPS or FedEx servers for rates. Item pages can be static or dynamic. You can use a CSV file to import your products also.Down sides that I have found, all I can say is watch out for new releases, Normaly they have around 10 updates per product cycle. Most updates occur during the first few months. Most updates will overwrite any modifications that you make.

Sorry to ramble,

Brian

[StoreOwner]

Thanks DaveN,
I will call you.
Reflect, very interesting, thanks. I have had a look at storefront, and the URL on the demo was:
[naturestore.storefront.net...]

and every time i try to get good rankings with a ? , I am right at the bottom. (Unless there is no competition. Can this be avoided? As i understand it, all pages could be in html?

I like the "how about " pop ups. normally hate pop ups, but they can be controlled for specifics.

Also, It seems to be all microsoft. Microsoft is great on a PC, but i am not the greatest fan on servers. Security is one issue. Will it work on Apache/linux?

Looks a good one, and your feed back is appreciated. An honest assessment is worth so much more than a sales pitch!

StoreOwner

[digitalghost]

I've had some good experiences using XQASP to get rid of the annoying ? in the URL for storefront sites.

For smallish sites the 404 trick comes in handy if it's coded in .asp.

For Apache, mod rewrites do the trick.

Optimizing dynamic sites creates more work but a dynamic site doesn't have to be in the cellar of SERPs.

DG

[ctprof]

I'm using Agora.cgi on three shopping carts. It's very flexible, and I have it running on linux / apache server. And best of all, it's open source. Also, there's a free message board and a pro board ($25 subscription) on yahoo groups. It's pretty good. You can check it out at [agoracgi.com...]

Good luck

[physics]

Couldn't hurt to look at Akopia Interchange [google.com] the open source cart from Red Hat. Advantage is it's free and open source so you can change it if you can figure out how or pay someone to.

[JeremyL]

[x-cart.com...] is very feature rick, flexible, and cheap ($150). The only thing is it uses the ? in the url. But it's source is PHP and is open so you could use apache to do rewrites to kill the ? if you know your way around it. Or they also will customize the cart for a price to do what you need.

[StoreOwner]

Thanks all of you!

I have spent the w/e working through all your suggestions, and the programs have developed somewhat since I last looked! Feature Rich! Great!

I am gettting a few people to quote their best installation/adaption.

the biggest issue with all these sites is the ?, and I have to say it surprises me it is not a standard feature.

Once again thanks.

StoreOwner

[Marcia]

StoreOwner, welcome to the board.

Top left is the search - look for dynamic urls or something similar, you'll find plenty of discussion on getting rid of the ?

[chuladi]

You can try zoovy.com. I use them for one of my stores and they have the reweite done at the server level so that all the URLs are search engine friendly. Their documentation is lacking, but they have the ability to handle complex shipping scenarios and product options

[Marcia]

Welcome to the board, chuladi.

StoreOwner, there has also been code written to eliminate the "?" in Miva. These fixes are generally programmed by individuals for their own use (as was this one), but unfortunately it's not generally known that such a thing is possible because it's not publicly available.

It's a good thing to consider that issue before even starting. I just looked at yet another brand new site that has only the index page in HTML and the rest all long dynamic URLs, which was entirely unnecessary. What seemed like a quicker, easier solution really isn't in the long run.

[StoreOwner]

I know, and most of the scripts out there are still in the dark ages. Incredible really.
Thanks to everyone, i think I have cobbled a solution together with Red Hat and XQASP, and someone has offered to help put them together for me.:)

Zoovy looks good, but i think i am now too far down the road...

May be next update!

Thanks everyone.

Storeowner.

[jakeblue]

I am doing a similar search and stumbled upon a cart... it's made by digitalplacebo.com... they use paypal shopping cart, it's only 10 bucks amonth, and the say they have *unlimited* bandwidth. Anyone try them? Should I try their 30 day free trial? any opinions?

(edited by: rcjordan at 7:11 pm (utc) on April 9, 2002)

[sun818]

Red Hat is Linux right? and XQASP is for Windows IIS? Am I missing something here?

[StoreOwner]

Sun 818, you mean it won't work? mmm.

as for unlimited band width, i have been caught with that. It was OK until i used it...

[Conard]

Just my 2 cents on this.
I tried several "Free" shopping carts in the past 5 years.
Most have gone under. I switched to a host with Miva Merchant and I will never look back.
It is very easy to configure, there is a forum to ask for help besides the company support, there is an open source version you can switch to that has 100's of plug ins to do whatever you can dream up and the language it is written in (Miva Script) is fairley simple to learn to make your own modifications.
You can also write .html pages with the script to do SSI like calls or again anything you can dream up.
This is not a product promotion....I am not affiliated in any way.... I just love the system and the fact that there are only a few people that understand the language.