Forum Moderators: buckworks
Has anybody ever worked with it? Do you have any opinions? I think it runs on both Unix and Windows platforms, but I can't tell what type of database it uses...
It's a good product for people who don't want to build their own cart or don't want to purchase one. Many hosts include Merchant with their ecommerce plans or provide a version of it for free, so it has a limited initial investment of $$, you just need to invest time in learning it's tweaks. To me, the biggest drawback is the customization limitations.
One article there stated that only 1400 .mv product pages were in the Google database at the time of writing - and all of them had used one method in particular: you must bypass Miva Merchant's default behavior of adding a second variable for 'store' to the query string, especially since it does this even when you are running only one store.Trying to actually run more than one store on a single cart is search engine death.
I worked with a client for a short while who was "stuck with" Miva. It was a tough battle getting their pages listed anywhere, and they didn't want to spend much more than they already had in the initial development. We had no joy at all.
Also, it's not terribly customizable....unless you purchase a module that will give you more control or learn Mivascript.
That's all relative, I suppose. I tried OSCommerce (as an example), and some of the most basic things that Merchant can do "out of the box" could not be done with it. OTOH, there are some seemingly basic things that Merchant doesn't innately do, requiring you to spend $20 on a module or tweaking the .mv source (if you are not running the compiled version).
Let me know what features are important to you, and I can give you a guess as to how suitable Merchant is for that project. While at times I curse and moan, I haven't yet found anything better for the money; I've got 3 Merchant sites and have been using it for the past 2 years.
