AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

Hey there,

Since this is my first post, I suppose I will give a brief introduction as to my web development history. I have always (for about 1 year and a half anyway) been a PHP developer. Until recently (about a week ago), when I started to take a look over the fence so to speak, I had never even given ASP / .NET a fair chance. Now, I am VERY interested in it. It seems so much more powerful than PHP, and almost every large website I can find uses it, which says a lot about the platform. And the feature list in AbleCommerce v7 is just stunning (I'm not even done reading it). I have never found any application written in PHP / MySQL that even comes close.

But I do have a few concerns about switching to ASP.NET. For one, I really like the v7 demo I signed up for, and it seems perfectly stable, but I haven't used it very much and 1 person on a test setup is really no indication of a web scripts stability. With it still being in RC1 I am concerned about the reliability for a live webstore. Does anyone have v7 setup on a live store? Any problems with it?

I also really would like to not have to pay for a dedicated server. Which seems to be pretty common for ASP.NET websites, would it be possible to run it smoothly on a VPS? Or possibly even a shared host? I don't have a problem paying for a VPS, but hey, if a shared host would work that would be awesome too. Can somone recommend a high quality VPS/shared host, with the emphasis on "quality"?

I also have a question about the session ID's. I noticed when you first enter the website, for example, http://coffeebean.com/, the links in the store auto append a Session ID and User ID like so:

?UserID=5726626&SessionID=H7oUpjPYJOFnZwtLjJVW

But, I noticed that the demo I signed up for doesn't seem to do this. I signed up for a v7 demo, I'm not sure what version coffeebean.com is using, was this changed in v7? Now, this doesn't cause any problems from a usability perspective. But from a SEO perspective it will lead to duplicate pages being record in the search engines. Which will drag down your website rankings, and depending on severity you could even get a spam penalty. And I don't know if it is differen't for ASP.NET sites, but this can also lead to session theft, in PHP web scripts anyway.

Oh, by the way, odd question... Why did AbleCommerce go from v5 to v7 instead of v6?

Thanks for reading,

Brandon

Hello Brandon,

With the exception of PayPal everything is pretty darn good. The next release which is coming soon will be very strong.

The session ID's are not given out to search engines which don't accept cookies.

You certainly would not need a dedicated server for AbleCommerce 7.0

5.5 went though 3 releases without being re-versioned, 5.5 SR3 should of been labeled AbleCommerce 6.0. It's 2007 so we went with v7.

I've been live with the release candidate of AC7 for about two weeks.

It's been remarkably stable from a server perspective. I would have no concerns running it on a shared hosting platform. In fact, that's where I first started running it but elected to buy my own server (the control freak in me won again).

From a developer standpoint, I'm a 22-year FoxPro developer who jumped the fence to VB ASP.Net this spring. AC7 is incredibly well designed and commented under the hood. Despite being written in C-Sharp, a foreign language to me, the page code is written well enough for me to translate with only a small investment of time.

What problems that have been documented are not unexpected for a package with this level of complexity at this stage in release-development. None were deal breakers for me, however my needs are simpler than most. There are some issues surrounding payment processing that have impacted others on a greater scale. Able has assured all of us the resolution to those issues is their top priority and has done a good job of keeping us posted.

Here's my opinion: If your primary source of income is your website, my recommendation would be to wait for the forthcoming update to Release Candidate 1. If you're planning a 30-60 day migration to the new site, start now and by the time you're ready for live the next release should be out.

The Able team has been incredibly helpful delivering support via the forums. In turn, the forum members have made our best effort to help get the next release of AC7 as strong as ever. A team effort always succeeds.

You're not going to find a comparable platform for the money. You just aren't.

The session ID's are not given out to search engines which don't accept cookies.

Can you expand on this? Don't follow what you mean exactly. I noticed that there is no session code in the demo version, neither in Solunar's site.

Is the session code passed under the seems? Is this the URL re-write coming into effect?

Thanks

Hello,

7.0 uses a new system so you won't see session ID's. In 5.5 we have a list of the search engine spiders and it wouldn't hand out the session ID to the search engines.

Shopping Cart Admin wrote:Hello Brandon,

With the exception of PayPal everything is pretty darn good. The next release which is coming soon will be very strong.

The session ID's are not given out to search engines which don't accept cookies.

You certainly would not need a dedicated server for AbleCommerce 7.0

5.5 went though 3 releases without being re-versioned, 5.5 SR3 should of been labeled AbleCommerce 6.0. It's 2007 so we went with v7.

Hello Mike,

Do the PayPal problems includes Website Payments Pro, or just traditional PayPal payments? I was planning on using PayPal Pro for credit card processing, because you cant beat their rate: a flat $20 a month. Not to mention there great fraud detection.

Thanks for clearing up the Session ID issue, I'm glad they are private in v7.

I am very glad to hear I don't need a dedicated server. What size of a database would you recommend? Most of the Windows VPS host I have found (without getting super expensive), only have a database size of 100 or 200 MB on the high side. Would this be an acceptable size, for a store with somewhere under a 1,000 products, and possibly even under 500? I know the minimum is 50 MB, but what would be a "good" size for AbleCommerce?

And I definitely would like to buy v7, instead of v5.5, but what about software updates? Since it is stilll in beta, how easy is it to update the store when new RC/SP's come out? Do I have to start from scratch again? Or can I just upload the new files and keep all of my design work and database settings? Also, for customizing the website design, are the template files separate from the server side files?

And, expanding on design customizations, how much can you customize the cart without buying the source code? For example, if I wanted to add a new feature, or customize an existing on one? I read that most people won't need to buy the source, but could you provide a example of something that would require the source so I can get a better idea whether I might need it or not?

Also, for cart customizations, I assume I would need Microsoft Visual Studio? Would Visual Studio standard edition provide enough power for working with AbleCommerce? It is about 1 third the price of the Pro edition.

Thanks,

Brandon

SolunarServices wrote:You're not going to find a comparable platform for the money. You just aren't.

Hi Solunar,

I don't expect too, I've never seen a cart this good, much less better.

Thanks for taking the time to write such a long response, I appreciate your comments. Sorry I had to trim down the quote

I use VWD 2005 Express for all my work. My SQL db is 40Mb with 1,700+ products and 1,500+ actual users loaded up after two weeks of live.

Website Payments Pro is working flawlessly for me. It's the BuyNow flavor of PayPal (IPN) and Google Checkout that are having some issues so far as I know. I've been taking orders with WPP since day one - worked perfectly the first time and ever since.

I'm working on a customized order history page right now. Since my primary product is electronically calculated and generated, my customers need a way to pull up past orders and view/resend themselves their time tables. I'll have it done in another 8-12 hours of work. I'm a VB.Net guy and AC7 is all C-Sharp, so my progress is a little slower than because of that.

TTMedia wrote:

The session ID's are not given out to search engines which don't accept cookies.

Can you expand on this? Don't follow what you mean exactly. I noticed that there is no session code in the demo version, neither in Solunar's site.

Is the session code passed under the seems? Is this the URL re-write coming into effect?

Thanks

Those session IDs used to be there in AC5x and only in the case if the user's browser had cookies disabled. In AC7 there are no such session IDs.

Even in AC5x those session IDs were never visible to search engine spiders because spiders were treated in a special way.

In AC7 session id concerns are a history. We are using ASP.NET built in session management features.

Do the PayPal problems includes Website Payments Pro, or just traditional PayPal payments? I was planning on using PayPal Pro for credit card processing, because you cant beat their rate: a flat $20 a month. Not to mention there great fraud detection.

I like and use Paypal pro as well. But its $30 a month now and I wouldnt call it a flat fee since you are charged a percentage for every transaction.