Ecomm software for 50k item shop

[bumperman]

A pal of mine has a 50,000 item ecomm shop which he has developed & modded over the years. It is based on a proprietary PC based system using MS Access database and he wishes to move it to a new s/w package, but he has several concerns:

1. He does not want to lose his ranking & doesn't fancy 301ing 50k items!

2. He is nervous about web based packages 'cos he's had host problems in the past that would have kept his shop offline for a considerable time.

He's a clever guy and pretty techy,

Any ideas/comments?

thanks

bumperman

 

[OldWelshGuy]

the only way to move the site and not lose rankings is to keep the url's the same, and that is unlikely. If he is moving to Apache based, then he can use redirect match which will follow rules rather than individual full URL's.

Other than that he has to cover every base on redirection because lose his rankings he might well do otherwise.

2. there is no way on Gods earth should you go from a bespoke site to a hosted solution, ABSOLUTELY not. it is a backwards step unless the cart does absolutely everything that needs to be doen PLUS (and here is the kicker), if it is a hosted shopping cart, he can forget about rewriting urls as they mostly don't support HTACCESS apache modrewrite etc.

He needs to spedn an hour or so talking to someone who knows SEO and the technical aspects of moving a site/hosting etc. otherwise he might be shooting himself in the foot.

The obvious question is why is he moving?

 

[bumperman]

OWG said
"there is no way on Gods earth should you go from a bespoke site to a hosted solution"

apologies-perhaps I wasn't clear enough. My friend isn't looking to move to a hosted solution, his concern is most packages today are web(on-line) based & thus he feels more vulnerable to hosting problems.

I hope this is clearer now.

thanks

bumperman

 

[OldWelshGuy]

I am really confused now

Websites are web based, how else can they run? I assume you are saying that his current system connects to his local machine?

Hosting is crucial and he must stay away from companies like fasthosts or webfusion 1&1 and HosteEurope (as they all have pants service support).

He can back everything up though so what is the problem?

 

[Optegris]

I could be wrong but what I think he is referring to is stores that are hosted by the provider?

 

[edmondscommerce]

doing very large scale 301's is entirely possible

the way I have tackled this in in the past is to use a custom PHP script to handle the redirection

depending on the URL structure, it is usually possible to store the "old" product / page id on the new system, grab this from the URL, do a query to find out the new item and its URL and then do a redirect.

I've migrated some really big sites this way and it works fine.

 

[bumperman]

openmind said "I could be wrong but what I think he is referring to is stores that are hosted by the provider?"

-Correct! He's currently using a PC based package (like Shopfactory or Actinic etc)where he can update on his own PC & then upload to his host.

I hope I have explained that clearly?

 

[xsibx]

why not try something like OS Commerce where you can keep same URLs so you do not lose search engine ranking and software is open source so no cost there, and hosting can be as cheap as £5 a month?. May be even less then that.

 

[zabestof]

why not try something like OS Commerce where you can keep same URLs so you do not lose search engine ranking and software is open source so no cost there, and hosting can be as cheap as £5 a month?. May be even less then that.

Are you kidding me? He has an online store that has 50k products and you recommend OScommerce and £5/month hosting?

 

[xsibx]

Are you kidding me? He has an online store that has 50k products and you recommend OScommerce and £5/month hosting?

no i am not kidding you its just you who is making fun of himself

Now obviously freelancers and web designers wont like this post as it suggests DIY saving them the bill of hiring someone like you for £1000 or even more for this job. Makes sense?

 

[Faevilangel]

no i am not kidding you its just you who is making fun of himself

Now obviously freelancers and web designers wont like this post as it suggests DIY saving them the bill of hiring someone like you for £1000 or even more for this job. Makes sense?

oscommerce is slow, outdated and bloated. He is far better going with magento.

£5 a month hosting? You're having a laugh, for an ecom store, depending on the payment procedure, you need a PCI DSS compatible host, which means a dedicated server. The last thing anyone wants when visiting the store is a slow and unresponsive site, don't go cheap, get the best you can afford, a dedicated server is a near must for an ecommerce store.

 

[xsibx]

Having 50k products won't make anything slow. It's the traffic. Now if you have something like 10k hits a day yea you need a dedicated server but if not, then £5 a month hosting works out very good. Just because you can afford a dedicated server doesn't make it a requirement. Let's look at this way, because you can afford 24 GB of RAM, putting that in to your server will make it fast? No, it will create memory buffers more then it require so it will add more cpu cycles for no reason, making processing slower with more RAM.
Computers are different than normal stuff. Expensive or More does not always mean better.

 

[Faevilangel]

Having 50k products won’t make anything slow. It’s the traffic. Now if you have something like 10k hits a day yea you need a dedicated server but if not, then £5 a month hosting works out very good. Just because you can afford a dedicated server doesn’t make it a requirement. Let’s look at this way, because you can afford 24 GB of RAM, putting that in to your server will make it fast? No, it will create memory buffers more then it require so it will add more cpu cycles for no reason, making processing slower with more RAM.
Computers are different than normal stuff. Expensive or More does not always mean better.

Did you read my post? If they take the payment on their site then they need a dedicated server to comply with PCI DSS rules. Also it's not about what they need right now, what if they get a sudden burst of traffic (featured on digg as an example) then their server is just going to crash and burn.

Ecom store needs a dedicated server, I wouldn't risk my store on a £5 american server. They can use a entry level dedicated server to start with, just upgrading when needed.

 

[xsibx]

Why they need a dedicated server when they are payment through a 3rd party gateway storing no card/paypal data on this host? They for NO reason require a dedicated server.
There is a big problem with IT. A lot of people use the keywords without even understanding the meaning. Requirement of a dedicated server is something linked with hardware requirements, not the products database. For the number of products, we have database normalization in place.

Like I said, just because you can afford a Jag to drive, does not mean that you deliver pizzas on Jag

 

[dataferret]

Did you read my post? If they take the payment on their site then they need a dedicated server to comply with PCI DSS rules. Also it's not about what they need right now, what if they get a sudden burst of traffic (featured on digg as an example) then their server is just going to crash and burn.

Ecom store needs a dedicated server, I wouldn't risk my store on a £5 american server. They can use a entry level dedicated server to start with, just upgrading when needed.

Do you blow **** like this from more than one orifice or do you often talk through your backside?

A shared server will do just fine if there is not a huge amount of traffic and open source applications such as Zencart, OSCommerce etc are just as good as some of the "paid for" solutions. Some money should be spent on customisation, SEO etc but it is not going to be a huge investment.

Shared SSL certificates are probably easier with Zencart or OSCommerce when on shared hosting.

The big question is going to be about shifting the inventory into the correct format but there are ways of doing this using plugins - but also if he is quite techy then he could write an MSAccess database then do a direct data transfer.

The payment solution can be Paypal but also use Nochex and a third party card processor

A dedicated server is only really needed when traffic slows down the site enough for sales to be lost. Until then a decent shared hosting solution would do just fine. Get a dedicated one if you are storing sensitive data and have lots of traffic soaking up the bandwidth.

Spend the extra money saved on real world marketing to increase sales.

 

[edmondscommerce]

lol spelling corrections..

Got to agree though dedicated servers aren't exactly a minimum requirement for ecommerce stores, though neither is £5 hosting really going to cut it for a 50k products store.

Then again, osCommerce is not necessarily a bad choice of platform (or more likely an osC derivative such as CRE Loaded or Zen Cart) and will handle a large catalogue (though some DB query optimisation will be required to get it to run fast).

Have to agree though that Magento is probably a better platform - more modern and powerful and something I woudl rather invest into as a new / migrating business because it is definiltey on the up and I woudl rather invest in something that is at the beginning of its lifecycle than something that is on the tail end of its lifecyle

 

[xsibx]

well I agree with dataferret's whole post and when I said Os commerce then I meant anything similar like Zen cart, magento and probably a couple of hundred others. This will actually depend on the person responsible to shift your inventory though. May be you can write a code that will push the data to new tables.

 

[zabestof]

no i am not kidding you its just you who is making fun of himself

Now obviously freelancers and web designers wont like this post as it suggests DIY saving them the bill of hiring someone like you for £1000 or even more for this job. Makes sense?

Lol, why should I make fun of myself. Dude, that has nothing to do with the fact that I'm a web designer (not developer). Why should he hire someone like me if he needs totally different things. Whatever.

Also, in what era do you live? It's 2010 here not 1999 to recommend OScommerce and ZenCart for a real online shop. He has 50k items and I guess he doesn't have 100 uv/day. So, at least a vps and the free version of Magento (or something like it) is required if you are serious about your business. The guy seem to have a serious shop, not an ebook for sale that you could host it on any $5 shared server.

I still can't belive that you are serious about recommending OScommerce to a serious online shop.

P.S: anyone arguing that OScom. is good please take a little research on mighty G about OScom compared to other REAL shopping cart solutions.

 

[dataferret]

Lol, why should I make fun of myself. Dude, that has nothing to do with the fact that I'm a web designer (not developer). Why should he hire someone like me if he needs totally different things. Whatever.

Also, in what era do you live? It's 2010 here not 1999 to recommend OScommerce and ZenCart for a real online shop. He has 50k items and I guess he doesn't have 100 uv/day. So, at least a vps and the free version of Magento (or something like it) is required if you are serious about your business. The guy seem to have a serious shop, not an ebook for sale that you could host it on any $5 shared server.

I still can't belive that you are serious about recommending OScommerce to a serious online shop.

P.S: anyone arguing that OScom. is good please take a little research on mighty G about OScom compared to other REAL shopping cart solutions.

The fact you are a web designer and not a developer shows. Most developers concern themseves with using the most appropriate engine and code for the task at hand whereas most web designers are itching to use the bestest most latest and flashiest engine they can grab hold of.

True, Magento is awesome and impressive and a fabulous piece of kit. But it is also the ferrari of the ecommerce word at present and not everyone needs a ferrari. Other offerrings may not be as impressive but they get the job done and probably do not need a full blown web designer to be paid in order to customise it and start making money.

Now 50k of products is not really a huge amount (although I would question if a shop would really need this many but I guess it depends on the marketplace itself) and OSC, Zencart, Prestashop etc could easily handle them.

Now as a web designer one of the first rules you should have learned is "Just because you can, does not mean you should".

So following this reasoning, just because Magento is there, does not mean it is the most appropriate tool for the job. Nor does it mean it is not. What it means is it should be considered along with everything else taking into account the budget, resources needed and of course the fact it will need a developer to heavily change it, plus the fact it is resource hungry.

In comparison OSCommerce, Zencart etc are equally viable but may be more suitable if the budget is limited.

The goal is to make sales not to impres other web designers so you can slap each others backs. I have seen simple html websites making more money than some Magento stores because the web designer does not understand this basic concept.

Mock the out of date ecommerce engines if you will but you will not be serving your clients properly if you dismiss them.