I'm with you on the plugins. I had the same experience with foresite coupons in Able commerce.
As for CF Webstore - Mary Jo. has a great product - inexpensive with lots of features and easy to work with. More
features for the buck than 300.00 really deserves when it comes down to it. If you do a lot of small to medium single
tier e-commerce site you can make good money buying her software, adding a few customizations and launching a fully
functional ecommerce site with lots of features for the price - and it looks as professional as you want it to look <g>.
Let's not forget that for some things a slightly hoky site can sell quite well (ha). I'm tempted to add a couple of URLs
I know that sell gangbusters but don't "look that professional" (ha) - but I will resist.
What really drives most people crazy working with canned apps is the fact that it is not done the way they would do it -
it's not in their style. No matter what the framework is, or how well commented it is - it still takes a good bit of
leg work just to run something down in order to modify it. When, if it was done by you ... you would know exactly where
to go to change something.
The other issue is modifications themselves. It's hard to modify someone elses code and get it right. But embrace the
pain! Modifying existing code or adding a new application to an existing suite of applications - that's really WHY
contractors and small shops are necessary. If everything could be bought off the shelf.. if there were no "special
needs"... then companies like microsoft and AOL would own everything and we would all be automatonic grunt coders (ha).
Personally, everytime I see a new technology or a messy new standard or approach I simply thank my lucky stars. If it
ever gets TOO simple we are all going back to flipping burgers <g>.
That's my take.
-Mark
P.S. Also, if you do a lot of ecommerce sites, Mary Jo offers a volume discount... so you make a little money on markup.
-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Haskell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 2:40 PM
To: CF-Talk
Subject: Re: My First Shopping Cart
My problem with add ons is that add-ons only work with the original
package, once again my experience. We bought foresite design's coupon
program, which we knew would never work with our modded version, to
get ideas. When I looked at how much recode would be needed, just for
fun, to use foresite's package I nearly passed out. I agree fusebox
will ease customization but you are limiting your audience by forcing
that framework on your clients. At that point and I for one would
refuse to purchase it simply based on the fact it uses fusebox. *Puts
on flame retardant suite* I also think it looks unprofessional, but
hey thats just me :)
Don't get me wrong premade packages have their usefulness. Companies
just starting out that don't know what they want like our company was.
Without the premade package my company probably would have never made
it onto the web and I would never have been hired. For $300 its worth
it, simply use a storefront out of the box to get something out there.
I mean lets face it even at minimum wage I doubt I would get a
complete shopping cart coded in $300 worth of labor hours.
Adam H
On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:50:47 -0400, Mary Jo Sminkey
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >That being said I have never worked with
> >cfwebstore so I can only speak from my personal experience with Able
> >Commerce.
>
> Well, obviously I'm a bit biased. ;-) But you'll find the coding in CFWebstore much much easier to extend than
AbleCommerce. It was written in Fusebox for that very reason, to make it relatively easy to customize. There are already
a bunch of 3rd party add-ons available as well that you can basically just drop into it. That doesn't necessarily mean
it's the right choice for everyone, there certainly are still cases where the needs of a specific site might work best
with a custom solution. But so far the response I've got from users has been very positive, particularly those that have
had to work with other products in the past.
>
>
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