Re: My First Shopping Cart
At 11:46 AM 8/19/2004, you wrote: Okay guys/gals, I am going to start doing the planning for my first custom shopping cart and would like any pointers you all can give me? The best I can tell so far, my best bet is to use session variables because it is a high traffic site - please correct me if I'm wrong. And I plan to have things like a wish list, view past orders, multiple shipping addresses for return customers - just to name a few. At any rate, ANY advice that you can give would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Donna French Save yourself250+ hours: Buy CFWebstore @ http://www.cfwebstore.com -- Alex [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
Yeah pointers anyone? I am redesigning our's trying to take an OOish approach, as mush as CF will allow me. Adam H On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 10:46:07 -0500, Donna French [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Okay guys/gals, I am going to start doing the planning for my first custom shopping cart and would like any pointers you all can give me? The best I can tell so far, my best bet is to use session variables because it is a high traffic site - please correct me if I'm wrong. And I plan to have things like a wish list, view past orders, multiple shipping addresses for return customers - just to name a few. At any rate, ANY advice that you can give would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Donna French [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
Couple of things that are pretty easy to implement if you design with them in mind 1)Tell them who you (the company and site developer) are (names of real people, if possible) and what you are about -- many customers like know something about who they do business with. 2) Give them an unconditional, satisfaction guaranteed -- no questions asked! 3) Accommodate the power/return shopper as well as the lookie-loo (browser) -- Make it easy for the power shopper to get in, buy and get out ( don't throw a lot of specials at them (but have a option for them to look at specials, if they desire) 4) try to make it (the buying experience as pleasant as possible) 5) Explain the above what why in an about this site/how to use) screen (available if they so choose) 6) Ask for feedback follow up on it 7) if many orders are multi-item, arrange it so the cart frame (inner window, etc) scrolls--not the entire window-- nothing more tedious then to have to scroll the window back up to see the nav bar, etc. 8) try to have the cart (maybe abbreviated) visible at all stages -- including checkout 9) If possible ballpark (high) the shipping charges and show with each item (or the omni-visible cart) so this is calculated as they shop. 10) have a checkbox where they indicate if they are a resident of the state(s) where you do business -- thus their order is taxable -- compute and show taxes on the omni-present cart. 11) give the user the option of saving personal credit information on the site, or not. 12) TTT (tellum, tellum, tellum) that you won't sell/provide this info to anyone -- then DON'T! 13) Provide a search (if your product line is big enough) but do not overwrite the cart screen (I prefer a popup) provide category/keyword/similar items/related items accessory searches as necessary 14) provide a product details screen (again, I prefer a popup) link in the search results, catalog pages, and in the cart item itself 15) save the cart, etc to a database, as they enter items -- so if they get interrupted in the middle of a long order, they can come back pickup where they left off -- tell them you are doing this -- they will appreciate it 16) Put yourself if the role of a shopper, not a developer -- make the site work the way a shopper would want it -- everything at your fingertips, nothing shoved in your face-- it must be intuitive and easy to use! Whew That should get you started! HTH Dick On Aug 19, 2004, at 8:46 AM, Donna French wrote: Okay guys/gals, I am going to start doing the planning for my first custom shopping cart and would like any pointers you all can give me? The best I can tell so far, my best bet is to use session variables because it is a high traffic site - please correct me if I'm wrong. And I plan to have things like a wish list, view past orders, multiple shipping addresses for return customers - just to name a few. At any rate, ANY advice that you can give would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Donna French [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
At 11:46 AM 8/19/2004, you wrote: Save yourself250+ hours: Buy CFWebstore @ http://www.cfwebstore.com -- Alex SWEEET! CRASHED CFWEBSTORE .. of course, its a missing cfx tag ... but you'd think the demo would be flawless. Error Occurred While Processing Request Error Diagnostic Information Error processing CFX custom tag The CFX custom tag 'CFX_LINKAPI' was not found in the custom tag database (the database is stored under the 'Allaire\ColdFusion\CurrentVersion\CustomTags' Registry key). Please be sure to add custom tags to the database before using them. If you have added your tag to the database then you should check the spelling of the tag within your template to insure that it matches the database entry. The error occurred while processing an element with a general identifier of (CFX_LINKAPI), occupying document position (99:1) to (129:1) in the template file C:\HOME\WWW.CFWEBSTORE.COM\WWW\CFWEBSTOREFB\SHOPPING\CHECKOUT\CREDITCARDS\ACT_LINKPOINT.CFM. The error occurred while processing an element with a general identifier of (CFRETHROW), occupying document position (246:11) to (246:21) in the template file C:\HOME\WWW.CFWEBSTORE.COM\WWW\CFWEBSTOREFB\FBX_FUSEBOX30_CF50.CFM. Date/Time: 08/19/04 12:46:51 Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) Remote Address: 68.233.135.46 HTTP Referrer: http://www.cfwebstore.com/cfwebstorefb/index.cfm?fuseaction=shopping.checkoutstep=payment Query String: fuseaction=shopping.checkoutstep=payment Please inform the site administrator that this error has occurred (be sure to include the contents of this page in your message to the administrator). [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
Premade shopping carts are the bane of my existance. Premade shopping carts save 250+ hours of developement time upfront then cost 300+ over time as a company grows and wants more and more features that have to be built into, atleast in my experience, conveluted code that was coded over and over again until it was so jacked it had to be completely rewritten.That being said I have never worked with cfwebstore so I can only speak from my personal experience with Able Commerce. Adam H On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 12:50:28 -0400, joe velez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 11:46 AM 8/19/2004, you wrote: Save yourself250+ hours: Buy CFWebstore @ http://www.cfwebstore.com -- Alex SWEEET! CRASHED CFWEBSTORE .. of course, its a missing cfx tag ... but you'd think the demo would be flawless. Error Occurred While Processing Request Error Diagnostic Information Error processing CFX custom tag The CFX custom tag 'CFX_LINKAPI' was not found in the custom tag database (the database is stored under the 'Allaire\ColdFusion\CurrentVersion\CustomTags' Registry key). Please be sure to add custom tags to the database before using them. If you have added your tag to the database then you should check the spelling of the tag within your template to insure that it matches the database entry. The error occurred while processing an element with a general identifier of (CFX_LINKAPI), occupying document position (99:1) to (129:1) in the template file C:\HOME\WWW.CFWEBSTORE.COM\WWW\CFWEBSTOREFB\SHOPPING\CHECKOUT\CREDITCARDS\ACT_LINKPOINT.CFM. The error occurred while processing an element with a general identifier of (CFRETHROW), occupying document position (246:11) to (246:21) in the template file C:\HOME\WWW.CFWEBSTORE.COM\WWW\CFWEBSTOREFB\FBX_FUSEBOX30_CF50.CFM. Date/Time: 08/19/04 12:46:51 Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) Remote Address: 68.233.135.46 HTTP Referrer: http://www.cfwebstore.com/cfwebstorefb/index.cfm?fuseaction=shopping.checkoutstep=payment Query String: fuseaction=shopping.checkoutstep=payment Please inform the site administrator that this error has occurred (be sure to include the contents of this page in your message to the administrator). [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
RE: My First Shopping Cart
That's why I'm building this one too. We are using a freebie right now but there are things the company I work for wants to be able to do that just aren't possible without coding a custom made solution. Thank you, Donna French -Original Message- From: Adam Haskell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 12:35 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: Re: My First Shopping Cart Premade shopping carts are the bane of my existance. Premade shopping carts save 250+ hours of developement time upfront then cost 300+ over time as a company grows and wants more and more features that have to be built into, atleast in my experience, conveluted code that was coded over and over again until it was so jacked it had to be completely rewritten.That being said I have never worked with cfwebstore so I can only speak from my personal experience with Able Commerce. Adam H On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 12:50:28 -0400, joe velez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 11:46 AM 8/19/2004, you wrote: Save yourself250+ hours: Buy CFWebstore @ http://www.cfwebstore.com -- Alex SWEEET! CRASHED CFWEBSTORE .. of course, its a missing cfx tag ... but you'd think the demo would be flawless. Error Occurred While Processing Request Error Diagnostic Information Error processing CFX custom tag The CFX custom tag 'CFX_LINKAPI' was not found in the custom tag database (the database is stored under the 'Allaire\ColdFusion\CurrentVersion\CustomTags' Registry key). Please be sure to add custom tags to the database before using them. If you have added your tag to the database then you should check the spelling of the tag within your template to insure that it matches the database entry. The error occurred while processing an element with a general identifier of (CFX_LINKAPI), occupying document position (99:1) to (129:1) in the template file C:\HOME\WWW.CFWEBSTORE.COM\WWW\CFWEBSTOREFB\SHOPPING\CHECKOUT\CREDITCARD S\ACT_LINKPOINT.CFM. The error occurred while processing an element with a general identifier of (CFRETHROW), occupying document position (246:11) to (246:21) in the template file C:\HOME\WWW.CFWEBSTORE.COM\WWW\CFWEBSTOREFB\FBX_FUSEBOX30_CF50.CFM. Date/Time: 08/19/04 12:46:51 Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) Remote Address: 68.233.135.46 HTTP Referrer: http://www.cfwebstore.com/cfwebstorefb/index.cfm?fuseaction=shopping.che ckoutstep=payment Query String: fuseaction=shopping.checkoutstep=payment Please inform the site administrator that this error has occurred (be sure to include the contents of this page in your message to the administrator). _ [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
SWEEET! CRASHED CFWEBSTORE .. of course, its a missing cfx tag ... but you'd think the demo would be flawless. Well, it's a choice for me between letting people have full access to play with the demo, or turning half of it off so they can't do stuff that will create an error (like turning on a credit card processor that is not installed on my server, as in this case). I prefer to let people see all that it can do, and just refresh the site every night, but yes, it does mean you'll sometimes run into an error on the demo, and I do mention this on my site. It certainly means nothing about the actual stability of the product in a production environment. [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
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. [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
RE: My First Shopping Cart
What version of fusebox is it done in? -Original Message- From: Mary Jo Sminkey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 2:51 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: Re: My First Shopping Cart 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. [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
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. [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
What version of fusebox is it done in? It's done in FB3. At the time it was done, that really was the only viable option, particularly for support on CF5. I definitely want to upgrade it to FB4 (or 4.1) at some point, although I have concerns about it being considerably harder for newbies to learn...I get a lot of people that are not only new to Fusebox, but completely new to Cold Fusion as well. It's kind of a toss-up between improved performance and ease-of-use. [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
RE: My First Shopping Cart
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. Adam, That doesn't make much sense. If you're concerned about the cost/complexity of modifying a pre-built package, why in the world would you be opposed to using fusebox code which would make it much easier to modify? If you don't want to use a widely accepted framework when coding your own stuff for some reason that's one thing, but the issue here was saving money/man-hours by purchasing code that you can modify to meet your exact needs. Greg -Original Message- From: Adam Haskell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 3:40 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. [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
RE: My First Shopping Cart
Adam, 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 runsomething 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. [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
RE: My First Shopping Cart
For high traffic and easily modifiable code, nothing compares to Netready. Check it out: http://www.cfnetready.com http://www.cfnetready.com +---+ Bryan Love Database Analyst Macromedia Certified Professional Internet Application Developer TeleCommunication Systems [EMAIL PROTECTED] +---+ ...'If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace'... - Thomas Paine, The American Crisis Let's Roll - Todd Beamer, Flight 93 -Original Message- From: Donna French [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 8:46 AM To: CF-Talk Subject: My First Shopping Cart Okay guys/gals, I am going to start doing the planning for my first custom shopping cart and would like any pointers you all can give me? The best I can tell so far, my best bet is to use session variables because it is a high traffic site - please correct me if I'm wrong. And I plan to have things like a wish list, view past orders, multiple shipping addresses for return customers - just to name a few. At any rate, ANY advice that you can give would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Donna French _ [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
On Aug 19, 2004, at 3:40 PM, Adam Haskell wrote: 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 :) Is that because of the fuseaction=blah.blah part of the URL?That can be changed to something more reasonable, per a suggestion or three a few weeks ago. -- Damien McKenna - Web Developer - [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Limu Company - http://www.thelimucompany.com/ - 407-804-1014 Nothing endures but change. - Heraclitus [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
RE: My First Shopping Cart
Yes - nice package.It lacks several of the tools from CF webstore, but there are some things I really like about it. -Mark -Original Message- From: Bryan Love [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 3:06 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: My First Shopping Cart For high traffic and easily modifiable code, nothing compares to Netready. Check it out: http://www.cfnetready.com http://www.cfnetready.com +---+ Bryan Love Database Analyst Macromedia Certified Professional Internet Application Developer TeleCommunication Systems [EMAIL PROTECTED] +---+ ...'If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace'... - Thomas Paine, The American Crisis Let's Roll - Todd Beamer, Flight 93 -Original Message- From: Donna French [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 8:46 AM To: CF-Talk Subject: My First Shopping Cart Okay guys/gals, I am going to start doing the planning for my first custom shopping cart and would like any pointers you all can give me? The best I can tell so far, my best bet is to use session variables because it is a high traffic site - please correct me if I'm wrong. And I plan to have things like a wish list, view past orders, multiple shipping addresses for return customers - just to name a few. At any rate, ANY advice that you can give would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Donna French _ [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
Thats definitely part of it. Its also the fact that it is using the same template to do everything (at least to the user thats what it looks like). Any good professionally made website uses a whole bunch of pages. It is really superficial, I know that and I am ok with it because thats how nontechnical people think, like bosses and end users. I know that fusebox applications can be just as good as others, even better, but it still looks unprofessional to the everyday, uninformed user. Superficial stuff like this can be found everywhere. Power basic makes a function called bloat, it simply makes your exe large. They made this b/c their compiled applications were generally much smaller than similar application built with Visual Basic and many of these (great) applications were being ignored/thrown out by higher ups base on the file size and the managers' common misconceptions how to judge an application. On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 16:19:15 -0400, Damien McKenna [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Aug 19, 2004, at 3:40 PM, Adam Haskell wrote: 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 :) Is that because of the fuseaction=blah.blah part of the URL?That can be changed to something more reasonable, per a suggestion or three a few weeks ago. -- Damien McKenna - Web Developer - [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Limu Company - http://www.thelimucompany.com/ - 407-804-1014 Nothing endures but change. - Heraclitus [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
RE: My First Shopping Cart
One problem that I have is the company owner will come to me and want to give free shipping on a particular type or brand of items. Sometimes it's all dolls, sometimes all dolls made by a particular vendor. This is one of my primary reasons for coding a custom cart. Has anyone else dealt with this? If so, how did you handle it? I am just grateful that they are willing to let me learn more and more as we go. When I first started working here they didn't have a web site at all and I didn't have much experience building database-driven sites, but now we are both satisfied with the results we have. Just know it could be bigger and better. ;-) Thank you, Donna French Web Development -Original Message- From: Mark A. Kruger - CFG [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 3:33 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: My First Shopping Cart Yes - nice package.It lacks several of the tools from CF webstore, but there are some things I really like about it. -Mark -Original Message- From: Bryan Love [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 3:06 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: My First Shopping Cart For high traffic and easily modifiable code, nothing compares to Netready. Check it out: http://www.cfnetready.com http://www.cfnetready.com +---+ Bryan Love Database Analyst Macromedia Certified Professional Internet Application Developer TeleCommunication Systems [EMAIL PROTECTED] +---+ ...'If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace'... - Thomas Paine, The American Crisis Let's Roll - Todd Beamer, Flight 93 -Original Message- From: Donna French [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 8:46 AM To: CF-Talk Subject: My First Shopping Cart Okay guys/gals, I am going to start doing the planning for my first custom shopping cart and would like any pointers you all can give me? The best I can tell so far, my best bet is to use session variables because it is a high traffic site - please correct me if I'm wrong. And I plan to have things like a wish list, view past orders, multiple shipping addresses for return customers - just to name a few. At any rate, ANY advice that you can give would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Donna French _ _ [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
Sorry for hijacking the conversation :) Back to the original topic. If you have a set of objectives start plan everything out like Damien mentioned. If you don't, and even if you do, I suggest surfing around for ideas. Look at BIG successful websites and see what they are doing and what you can glean form them, or maybe more importantly things they are doing you dislike that you can 1) improve on 2) avoid. Also browse your competitor's, look for web boards where users might be complaining/complimenting a competitor's website. [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
RE: My First Shopping Cart
Adam, Sorry - no way I agree with that.I'd say about 2 to 4 % of users ever look at the URL at all - let alone grasp the difference between a document and a string of variables. I would say that the difference is not only superflous but a red herring only noticed by developers. -mk -Original Message- From: Adam Haskell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 3:50 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: Re: My First Shopping Cart Thats definitely part of it. Its also the fact that it is using the same template to do everything (at least to the user thats what it looks like). Any good professionally made website uses a whole bunch of pages. It is really superficial, I know that and I am ok with it because thats how nontechnical people think, like bosses and end users. I know that fusebox applications can be just as good as others, even better, but it still looks unprofessional to the everyday, uninformed user. Superficial stuff like this can be found everywhere. Power basic makes a function called bloat, it simply makes your exe large. They made this b/c their compiled applications were generally much smaller than similar application built with Visual Basic and many of these (great) applications were being ignored/thrown out by higher ups base on the file size and the managers' common misconceptions how to judge an application. On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 16:19:15 -0400, Damien McKenna [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Aug 19, 2004, at 3:40 PM, Adam Haskell wrote: 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 :) Is that because of the fuseaction=blah.blah part of the URL?That can be changed to something more reasonable, per a suggestion or three a few weeks ago. -- Damien McKenna - Web Developer - [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Limu Company - http://www.thelimucompany.com/ - 407-804-1014 Nothing endures but change. - Heraclitus [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
Sorry - no way I agree with that.I'd say about 2 to 4 % of users ever look at the URL at all - let alone grasp the difference between a document and a string of variables. I would say that the difference is not only superflous but a red herring only noticed by developers. I'd have to agree with Mark. Fusebox definitely has its detractors, but this is certainly not a reason I've ever heard before or one that really is an issue, IMO. I just can't see people judging the professionalism of a site on what the URLs look like. I'm not the biggest fan of Fusebox by any means. But it definitely makes a lot of sense for a canned application. Even if you don't use Fusebox, it's worth learning and there's plenty of information out there, so you don't have to deal with learning some methodology that no one else uses. And there were many ways it really helped simplify things for my customers (not having to deal with different paths to images, etc.) [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
I agree fusebox will ease customization but you are limiting your audience by forcing that framework on your clients. Had to comment on this too...not matter what methodology I use, I am forcing that particular one on my clients. There's always going to be people that love it or hate it either way (I got emails on both sides for my previous version, that was just sort of haphazard coding). I just felt that given a choice between making people learn my own made-up methodology, and a known one that they could learn and use for other sites as well, and that even can help when looking for a CF job, just makes more sense to go with that one. And there definitely is a large pro-Fusebox community that will certainly choose a Fusebox app over a non-Fusebox one as well. [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
One problem that I have is the company owner will come to me and want to give free shipping on a particular type or brand of items. Sometimes it's all dolls, sometimes all dolls made by a particular vendor. This is one of my primary reasons for coding a custom cart. Has anyone else dealt with this? If so, how did you handle it? That doesn't sound too hard, just have a toggle on the products to set the shipping as free. Then when you are calculating your shipping charges, check the flag for this setting when adding up the totals. I have this anyway, since there are lots of items that normally you wouldn't charge shipping for (like magazine subscriptions), it's a fairly standard shopping cart feature actually. If item-by-item might be too tedious (depending on how many dolls you are selling) you'd just need to add some bulk edit setting to do this as well. In my product, I have an edit form where you can change the settings on a filtered group of products at once, that would work well for this. Depending on what you already have, that might be something useful to add, or you could write a function just specifically to do this shipping function. [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
SWEEET! CRASHED CFWEBSTORE .. of course, its a missing cfx tag ... but you'd think the demo would be flawless. Oh, and thanks for the reminder to turn my error handler back on. Maybe not flawless but an improvement at least. LOL Mary Jo Sminkey [EMAIL PROTECTED] Herndon, VA USA http://www.cfwebstore.com Author of CFWebstore, Cold Fusion-based E-commerce [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
Users maybe not, though I still contend that they do, but what about my boss? Who doesn't understand CFML let alone what a framework is, though he did used to be an electrician. Adam Haskell On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 16:09:23 -0500, Mark A. Kruger - CFG [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Adam, Sorry - no way I agree with that.I'd say about 2 to 4 % of users ever look at the URL at all - let alone grasp the difference between a document and a string of variables. I would say that the difference is not only superflous but a red herring only noticed by developers. -mk -Original Message- From: Adam Haskell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 3:50 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: Re: My First Shopping Cart Thats definitely part of it. Its also the fact that it is using the same template to do everything (at least to the user thats what it looks like). Any good professionally made website uses a whole bunch of pages. It is really superficial, I know that and I am ok with it because thats how nontechnical people think, like bosses and end users. I know that fusebox applications can be just as good as others, even better, but it still looks unprofessional to the everyday, uninformed user. Superficial stuff like this can be found everywhere. Power basic makes a function called bloat, it simply makes your exe large. They made this b/c their compiled applications were generally much smaller than similar application built with Visual Basic and many of these (great) applications were being ignored/thrown out by higher ups base on the file size and the managers' common misconceptions how to judge an application. On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 16:19:15 -0400, Damien McKenna [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Aug 19, 2004, at 3:40 PM, Adam Haskell wrote: 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 :) Is that because of the fuseaction=blah.blah part of the URL?That can be changed to something more reasonable, per a suggestion or three a few weeks ago. -- Damien McKenna - Web Developer - [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Limu Company - http://www.thelimucompany.com/ - 407-804-1014 Nothing endures but change. - Heraclitus [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
I am not a fan of fusebox thats why I wouldn't use it. I am not saying fusebox is bad, its not, I don't particularly like it though. It was actually suggested we use fusebox in our redesign I vehemently augured against it, mainly b/c I wanted to use a more OO approach. Just b/c something is written in a particular widely accepted framework does not mean it is easier to modify. ThoughI would love to see a shoppping cart solution in Mach II. Adam H On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:52:03 -0400, Greg Luce [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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. Adam, That doesn't make much sense. If you're concerned about the cost/complexity of modifying a pre-built package, why in the world would you be opposed to using fusebox code which would make it much easier to modify? If you don't want to use a widely accepted framework when coding your own stuff for some reason that's one thing, but the issue here was saving money/man-hours by purchasing code that you can modify to meet your exact needs. Greg -Original Message- From: Adam Haskell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 3:40 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. [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
Re: My First Shopping Cart
Had to comment on this too...not matter what methodology I use, I am forcing that particular one on my clients. Good point, my comment was a lead in to the fact I dislike fusebox more than anything but I completely agree with what you are saying. See my hate is deep for fusebox I was shocked repeatedly as a small child while trying to get the electricity back in my house ;) Adam On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 17:43:31 -0400, Mary Jo Sminkey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I agree fusebox will ease customization but you are limiting your audience by forcing that framework on your clients. Had to comment on this too...not matter what methodology I use, I am forcing that particular one on my clients. There's always going to be people that love it or hate it either way (I got emails on both sides for my previous version, that was just sort of haphazard coding). I just felt that given a choice between making people learn my own made-up methodology, and a known one that they could learn and use for other sites as well, and that even can help when looking for a CF job, just makes more sense to go with that one. And there definitely is a large pro-Fusebox community that will certainly choose a Fusebox app over a non-Fusebox one as well. [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
