Thinking of changing from Actinic to osCommerce - a few questions

[ggv]

I'm thinking of changing my ecommerce store from Actinic to osCommerce but have a few questions that I would appreciate feedback on please ...

 

Changing to osCommerce would provide the following main benefits:

1) ability to link the same product to numerous categories without having to duplicate it over and over again as you have to do with Actinic and then you get an overly inflated store that takes ages to manage and to upload

2) that the product prices, manufacturer names etc can be automatically pulled into the category pages without having to mess around with custom fields and numerous templates

 

However, not sure about the following:

1) How do you add meta tags and descriptions to each page?

2) How do you change the cryptic page titles for something more SEO friendly and meaningful

3) How do you do googlebase / froogle feeds from osCommerce

4) How do you add unique descriptive text to the top of each category page i.e. info relevant to that specific category, brand etc - more as fodder for the search engines.

5) As I have an existing working site, what is the best practice in setting up the replacement osCommerce site? In a sub-domain / sub-folder and then move it to replace the main site when fully constructed? Is it easy to say re-install in the correct location and then just overwrite the database with previously configured one? Or is there a better way to do it.

 

No doubt there will be addons for points 1 - 4 so would appreciate suggestions and feedback on best options to work with 2.2 RC2

 

Many thanks for any feedback and input

[ggv]

Also ...

 

Can't seem to find out how you do discounts?

e.g.

'Buy 3 and get 50% off the third'

'Spend over £xxx and get x% discount'

etc.

 

I've installed a test site and am impressed with a lot of the features it has that Actinic hasn't

But on the other hand Actinic seems to be better at SEO, googlebase feeds and discounts

I don't suppose there is any one system that has it all.

 

Would still appreciate any feedback to the original post or the discounts

 

Many thanks

[♥geoffreywalton]

I'm thinking of changing my ecommerce store from Actinic to osCommerce but have a few questions that I would appreciate feedback on please ...

 

Changing to osCommerce would provide the following main benefits:

1) ability to link the same product to numerous categories without having to duplicate it over and over again as you have to do with Actinic and then you get an overly inflated store that takes ages to manage and to upload

2) that the product prices, manufacturer names etc can be automatically pulled into the category pages without having to mess around with custom fields and numerous templates

 

However, not sure about the following:

1) How do you add meta tags and descriptions to each page?

2) How do you change the cryptic page titles for something more SEO friendly and meaningful

3) How do you do googlebase / froogle feeds from osCommerce

4) How do you add unique descriptive text to the top of each category page i.e. info relevant to that specific category, brand etc - more as fodder for the search engines.

5) As I have an existing working site, what is the best practice in setting up the replacement osCommerce site? In a sub-domain / sub-folder and then move it to replace the main site when fully constructed? Is it easy to say re-install in the correct location and then just overwrite the database with previously configured one? Or is there a better way to do it.

 

No doubt there will be addons for points 1 - 4 so would appreciate suggestions and feedback on best options to work with 2.2 RC2

 

Many thanks for any feedback and input

 

For q 1 -4 you will have to install additional contributions, same for discounts.

 

G

[Guest]

osC can do everything your other store can and then some. We have sites that have 2 contributions and we have sites with over a hundred contributions, that is the beauty of it... it can be completely tailored to work with your business and can grow along with you. The issues you may get into are... 1- some contributions are tricky especially if you have not worked with them before. 2- there are a ton of people out there who will install for you for a fee but you never quite know what you are going to get. Some are amazing and I envy their work, others well... where they learned about computers I would not send my 5 year old, so just be careful and have fun. You will end up with a store you love that fits every need you have and can fit every future need you may develop.

 

I'm thinking of changing my ecommerce store from Actinic to osCommerce but have a few questions that I would appreciate feedback on please ...

 

Changing to osCommerce would provide the following main benefits:

1) ability to link the same product to numerous categories without having to duplicate it over and over again as you have to do with Actinic and then you get an overly inflated store that takes ages to manage and to upload

2) that the product prices, manufacturer names etc can be automatically pulled into the category pages without having to mess around with custom fields and numerous templates

 

However, not sure about the following:

1) How do you add meta tags and descriptions to each page?

2) How do you change the cryptic page titles for something more SEO friendly and meaningful

3) How do you do googlebase / froogle feeds from osCommerce

4) How do you add unique descriptive text to the top of each category page i.e. info relevant to that specific category, brand etc - more as fodder for the search engines.

5) As I have an existing working site, what is the best practice in setting up the replacement osCommerce site? In a sub-domain / sub-folder and then move it to replace the main site when fully constructed? Is it easy to say re-install in the correct location and then just overwrite the database with previously configured one? Or is there a better way to do it.

 

No doubt there will be addons for points 1 - 4 so would appreciate suggestions and feedback on best options to work with 2.2 RC2

 

Many thanks for any feedback and input

[ggv]

For q 1 -4 you will have to install additional contributions, same for discounts.

 

G

 

Thank you Geoffrey for your feedback - much appreciated.

 

As the site is very large and Actinic has a completely different file structure to osCommerce, is it feasible to install osCommerce in situ (side by side with Actinic but have osCommerce 'off-line' whilst it is being set up and then when setup is complete, switch over to osCommerce and delete Actinic? Is there an 'offline' or maintenance mode in osCommerce?

 

If there is a conflict between index.html (Actinic) and index.php (osCommerce) and I temporarily remove/rename index.php, would the admin part still be functional to populate the categories and products?

 

Many thanks

[Guest]

Thank you Geoffrey for your feedback - much appreciated.

 

As the site is very large and Actinic has a completely different file structure to osCommerce, is it feasible to install osCommerce in situ (side by side with Actinic but have osCommerce 'off-line' whilst it is being set up and then when setup is complete, switch over to osCommerce and delete Actinic? Is there an 'offline' or maintenance mode in osCommerce?

 

If there is a conflict between index.html (Actinic) and index.php (osCommerce) and I temporarily remove/rename index.php, would the admin part still be functional to populate the categories and products?

 

Many thanks

There is a contribution for Maintenance mode. With the index.html and index.php issue, you could place the following in your .htaccess file:

DirectoryIndex index.php