Newbie concerned about contribution compatibility

[Guest]

Hi all, thanks for the great forum and the continual development.

 

We've been running an e-commerce site for just over a year, and up until last week, I didn't even know osCommerce existed. We're currently using a Microsoft product called Commerce Manager which is very inflexible, SEO unfriendly, and for any real stats or development, requires purchase of additional modules and add-ons (gotta love Microsoft!). In any event, we're very excited to have run across osCommerce and I hope to have a redevelopment complete in the next few months.

 

With help from the forum, I was able to get a local install of osCommerce up and running on Xampp and will be spending the next few days trying to learn the application. My concern at this point regards contributions. There are several contributions which seem useful, but how do you know if they play well together? For instance, in reviewing different threads, I'd be interested in the following:

 

SEO Ultimate URLs

Header Tags

Google Sitemap

Froogle Feeds

Article Manager

LinkPoint Payment

 

Is there a specific order recommended for performing the installs? Are any contributions known to conflict with each other? Is there typically a noticeable decline in speed/optimization caused by installing too many contributions? Finally, there seems to be several similar-type contributions by different users (for instance, a search for Google Sitemap yields 4 packages) - how do you determine which version is the most ideal?

 

Thanks in advance for any replies.

 

--

Tommy

[Jack_mcs]

Incompatibilities are rare but they do happen. The ones you listed all work fine toegether.

 

If doesn't matter which order they are installed in. Although if this is a new shop in which you have not made any changes to the files, then do Header Tags first and just upload the included files that have already been edited. That will save you a lot of time. There will still be edits to make for it but the majority of the work will have been done for you.

 

There may be a decline in speed if some of the contributions you install make changes to the database calls in the same file. Typically this is not a problem though. Stay away from the Basic Template System (BTS) and Simple Template System (STS) contributions and your shop will work and manage much better.

 

There is no sure way to tell which one of duplicate contributions is the best. You can search the forums for suggestions, or just ask, but sometimes it is still not easy to tell. Most contributions have a support thread. You can read through those and see what sort of problems each has. As for the google sitemap, I am only familiar with the first and the third one listed out of the four. They both work fine but the first one is easier to manage. However, an update was recently added that is called On-The-Fly. That is really a whole different approach. I wouldn't recommend using it if your site is going to have a large number of products becasue it has the potential of causing the site to hang while the sitemaps are created. The versions befroe that work fine though.

 

Jack

[trogette]

Just to add that a good comparison tool that does folder structures as well as files is *essential* IMO. I like Beyond Compare, had a quick look at Araxis Merge this morning as I wanted to look at 3 files but I couldn't see a way to compare line detail.

[Guest]

Thanks so much for the feedback. Lots to learn, but seems to be a very fast curve.

 

Jack - special thanks for the heads-up on installing the Header Tags contribution first. I can see how it would have taken twice as long had any other mods been put in place first!