Can anyone recocommend an oscommerce website & hosting company?

[allthingsgifts]

Hi
I currently have an oscommerce site which has had a lot of changes made to it but am having some trouble with my website guy, whatever suggestions i come up with he thinks are rubbish so just dismisses them eg. 301 redirect for www. non www. and looking into whether i can have h1, h2 tags on homepage etc are these stupid requests? he doesn't believe in seo but worry if i changed to someone else that the site will go down hill as i don't know how to make any changes.
Anyone recommend any companies that do hosting and can make changes to oscommerce sites but more than just uploading modules as a lot of coding has been changed.
Regards
Lianne

*sorry spelt the title wrong!

[Duncan_W]

Hi,

we do exactly the type of work you mention. Although we have all the necessary coding skills, our focus is on Marketing and making sure your site effective and meeting you business objectives.

A couple of the sites we have built Recently, and are now marketing are:

www.mettricksbutchers.co.uk (http://www.mettricksbutchers.co.uk)
www.voijeans.co.uk (http://www.voijeans.co.uk)
www.abyssdivecentre.com/ (http://www.abyssdivecentre.com/)[/URL]

We would be happy to talk to you about supporting your site. you can contact me via our website [URL="http://www.bsamarketing.com"]www.bsamarketing.com (http://www.abysdivecentre.co.uk) or PM me with your details & I will get back to you

[awebapart.com]

whatever suggestions i come up with he thinks are rubbish so just dismisses them eg. 301 redirect for www. non www. and looking into whether i can have h1, h2 tags on homepage etc are these stupid requests?
SEO changes should be prioritised in terms of their importance and the effect they will have on your rankings. H1 and H2 tags on the home page certainly isn't a stupid request and could add a lot of SEO benefit. Less benefit will be gained from the 301 non www to www redirect, the benefit of this only really kicks in if you have people linking from external sites to your non www domain.

I currently have an oscommerce site which has had a lot of changes made to it
No you do not have an osCommerce site. You have your own custom semi-bespoke developed unique site which is an amalgam of a base default osCommerce system which has subsequently had coding changes made to its base code, with modules added on which may also have had changes made to their base code. Such is the nature of osCommerce development, that once every osCommerce owner starts customising the system they end up with a very different system to osCommerce.

As such you have to ask yourself who would be willing to take on and support a uniquely custom coded system like your system, which is based on osCommerce but very different to the osCommerce base code. If the supplier is an osCommerce specialist, how many very different uniquely coded osCommerce systems can they feasibily support and maintain? How many different uniquely coded systems based on osCommerce is your current supplier supporting? Perhaps this is why your current supplier is struggling to provide maintenance and support for you.

There are some hosting/development companies that spring to mind that in the past have offered support contracts for systems, maybe client's existing systems, based on osCommerce, like www.seiretto.com (http://www.seiretto.com), but don't be surprised if they say it would be more cost effective if you migrate over to their custom osCommerce implementation, because for a company supporting various 'osCommerce systems' it is more practical support and maintenance-wise to have those systems running on a common code base.

[awebapart.com]

As such you have to ask yourself who would be willing to take on and support a uniquely custom coded system like your system, which is based on osCommerce but very different to the osCommerce base code.
On the other hand I'm sure you will find plenty of developers who will offer to add the odd bit of coding here and there on maybe hourly coding rates, but that is very different to taking on the responsibility for supporting your system, and once you start outsourcing the odd bit of development it is you who is ultimately responsible if something goes wrong, not your latest coder who has added something, nor your previous supplier.

[alphaseocompany]

try os commerce or free css templates.org for hosting fast hosts or one and one for hosting. also they are in the states but siteground are really good for hosting.

[allthingsgifts]

Hi awebapart
Because i've had so many changes made i think i am going to find it hard to find someone who will make the changes for me and monitor the site, but he is being so difficult he just dismisses any suggestions I make. If i give the ftp details to someone else to make changes then they could mess up other areas of the site and then understandably my current guy won't fix it as he didn't break it and i'm then worse off.
Lianne

[alphaseocompany]

what is your website address?

[allthingsgifts]

allthingsgifts dot co dot uk

[alphaseocompany]

what type of changes will you want to make?

[allthingsgifts]

most changes have been made, it's really just the 301 redirect and being able to add h1, h2 tags etc but he does monitor the site to make sure it loads quickly etc and if anything does go wrong then he does fix it very quickly which is why i would prefer someone to monitor it just incase. I did also want the product options to be drop down menus instead of what i have which is just links to other pages but he said this way was easier.
Lianne

[alphaseocompany]

h tags are really easy to implement try the following <h1></h1> i dont really understand why you want the 301, but H tags are important for seo especially with your keyword in them. h1 should be on every page not just homepage. We offer bespoke website optimisation and after looking at your site i feel we can seriously help you achieve first page results.

[allthingsgifts]

Hi
The 301 is for the non www. to the www. can you just type html code in then for the homepage like you would to make it bold or add a link? so on my homepage i have a title 'welcome to AllThingsGifts' can i change that to h1 by putting the right coding in, or isn't it that easy?
Lianne

[alphaseocompany]

yeah just replace the p tag with H1 be warned it is an unsightly tag
place font tags in between i.e. <h1><font aize="-1">keyword</font></h1>
if this is still too big or too small play about with the size. do not add + or it will go massive

[alphaseocompany]

also what keywords do you want to appear under?

[jamie1183]

I dont think you will have any problems by someone just doing updates like you suggested. I think if your guy is advising against H1 tags and does not believe in SEO then you should probably consider asking someone to look at it for you.

Most developers would set the site up on their local testing server or PC and make changes there and do full testing befoer replacing anything on your server. When I develop a site it is always run on our testing server locally to check before it gets uploaded to the clients hosting account.

Most developers willing to take this on or look at taking it on should be able to download the site and setup locally to check if they are able to update and edit the site, I would say 90% of PHP developers and anyone familiar with oScommerce can do this.

If you need nay advice drop me an email I can take alook at it for you.

[allthingsgifts]

Hi Alpha
Thanks, just did it for 'welcome to All Things Gifts' on the homepage and it put it to the left and in lilac which is what the category headings are set too eventhought i told it to be black and centered so it must be setup somewhere already.
I already have someone doing the seo on the site these were the two on site recommendations but as i don't have the ftp details i was hoping my website guy would make the changes for me.
Lianne