e-commerce site building?

[stormchsrs]

Any suggestions on good books and software for building a site for a small business? Thanks in advance!!

[dotcom-pro]

Go with a professional website building program and a good shopping system.
I prefer Microsoft Front Page (I KNOW some really hate this program, but to each his own eh?) and I have used the Dansie Cart www.dansie.net and 2CheckOut's (http://www.2checkout.com/cgi-bin/aff.2c?affid=48581 ) shopping system with great success

[ApplePie]

I would highly recommend you get a copy of Dreamweaver and use it. There are many tutorials available on how to build a small e-commerce site.

As for FrontPage, I'm of a differing opinion, don't use it for e-commerce. There are many elements that can keep non-IE browsers from using FrontPage generated pages. With an e-commerce site you don't want to limit people to only one type of browser.

As an answer to your post and question, I'd ask you to check out Apple Pie via the link below. It is a search engine friendly shopping cart.

[dotcom-pro]

There are many elements that can keep non-IE browsers from using FrontPage generated pages.
From my site stats.
MSIE 6 86.23%

Netscape 7 6.26%

MSIE 5 5.35%

Netscape 3 0.91%

Netscape 4 0.61%

Other 0.45%

MSIE 4 0.15%

So it looks like non IE browsers are down about the 8% level.
Front Page also allows you to select the browser you are designing for.
There is nothing wrong with using FP for ecommerce, in fact there are a few very good plug in carts available for it.

[ApplePie]

Interesting that you would attempt to bring up stats. Browser stats are errant at best. There are many browsers that identify themselves as IE. Opera is one of those.

There are also many spiders, email harvesters and page harvesters that identify themselves as IE so they don't get blocked with robots.txt files.

However, you ignored the point. The point is you're missing out on a few million users that don't use IE. Therefore, FrontPage is not a tool one should use for e-commerce development regardless of the number of plug-in carts available for FrontPage.

If you choose to use FrontPage that's fine. Just realize there are issues you're missing out on. Perhaps this will help some understand the issues at hand and help make their sites better.

As for myself and my firm, I refuse to hire anyone that says they know how to use FrontPage. We code everything by hand, but we do use Dreamweaver for the various features it has. Our shopping cart even uses a Dreamweaver(r)-like WYSIWYG browser-based designer.

[dotcom-pro]

I don’t think I missed the point at all.
When designing in front page you can choose whether to code for IE or Netscape, or for both. You are NOT losing visitors because of Front Page Code.

Having tried most of the professional web design programs I have come back to Front Page for several reason, one of which is its cross browser compatibility.

Another reason is that once a web is set up, FP is quite simple for clients who need to make their own changes and updates to their websites, instead of depending on a webmaster.

Perhaps you have not tried the latest version.

Can you explain your “search engine friendly” shopping system?

The first thing I see when I go to the admin demo is:

Administrative Interface works properly only in:Internet Explorer 5 and higher Gecko-based browsers

If you are so adamant about building websites that are cross browser friendly, why code your shopping system for IE only?
(BTW) Your admin demo, once logged in, only delivers a totally blank page.

You also state the following:
Advantages of Search Engine Friendly Shopping Carts
• Higher positions in the search engines
• Search engines and customers can find your products much easier
• Every search engine with a robot can crawl all of your pages
• Increased sales from highly targeted customers.

Pages served by a shopping system script are CLIENT SIDE only. Once the browser is closed on the visitor’s computer no “page” remains on the server.
There is nothing for search engines to spider or list when it comes to served pages so I cannot see the above as being true.

Upon opening one of your served pages (Aroma Therapy http://demo.applepiecart.com/shop/aromatherapy/sensual_aromatherapy_synergies/page1.html) and looking at the source, I see incomplete tags. Why isn’t your cart inserting the title, keywords, and description?
<title></title>
<meta name="keywords" content="">
<meta name="description"

[ApplePie]

If you are so adamant about building websites that are cross browser friendly, why code your shopping system for IE only?

Gecko works on Linux, Mac and MS. Some features require ActiveX and therefore requires IE. But, it doesn't stop one from using the system. Just two features require the ActiveX support. However, Gecko is working on adding ActiveX support.

Another reason is that once a web is set up, FP is quite simple for clients who need to make their own changes and updates to their websites, instead of depending on a webmaster.

I can do this with Macromedia Contribute for $99USD. Also, Macromedia operates using HTML, XHTML, and XML standards without putting in all the junk codes FrontPage puts in.

PHP operates on the server-side, not the client side. So, any request by any system is provided the pages.

(BTW) Your admin demo, once logged in, only delivers a totally blank page.

You need to select the area you wish to work in.

Upon opening one of your served pages (Aroma Therapy http://demo.applepiecart.com/shop/a...gies/page1.html) and looking at the source, I see incomplete tags. Why isn’t your cart inserting the title, keywords, and description?

Let me suggest you check our client sites? There are things on the demo that don't work because I don't want them to work.

As for whether the search engines can index the pages, I would recommend you spend some time investigating the performance of my cart with http://www.healthypooch.com which uses version 2 of my cart. Every page is served by the database. To save you some time let me recommend this search "cat urinary tract". Upon my last check it appears at position 9 on Google. I haven't checked the other search engines for this client. They also inform me that every month their percentage of new customers to return customers is around 50% new customers. They actually quit using Overture PPC and are now saving 98% of their advertising budget.

I hope this helps explain some things.

I reviewed your web site and was going to call, but it seems the phone number on your site is incorrect or simply disconnected.

[dotcom-pro]

Originally posted by ApplePie
Gecko works on Linux, Mac and MS. Some features require ActiveX and therefore requires IE. But, it doesn't stop one from using the system. Just two features require the ActiveX support. However, Gecko is working on adding ActiveX support.

Right, I understand that, but don’t you think its a bit hypocritical to say that one program is not browser compatible when your own program will not work at all with certain browsers?

I can do this with Macromedia Contribute for $99USD. Also, Macromedia operates using HTML, XHTML, and XML standards without putting in all the junk codes FrontPage puts in.

I've heard of Contribute before but had not tried it.
As anything that would make my customer's learning curve easier is worth exploring, I downloaded and installed their demo.

First it was a pain to setup, and most users would have a hard time determining what to put in the multiple form fields.
Compared to the routine used by FP (Open web, type in http://mydomain.com, and enter log in and pw when prompted, its cumbersome.

Contribute will not let you check the source code, or I couldn’t find the command.
This is a very limited program, compared to Front Page. I would much rather that my clients used Coffee Cup or Homesite if they were not going to use FP.

As to price, FP2003 can be found at on EBay for around $40 to $110.


PHP operates on the server-side, not the client side. So, any request by any system is provided the pages.

Right, PHP does run server side but the dynamic pages are ONLY ACTIVE while the clients browser is open. PHP is mainly focused on server-side scripting, so you can do anything any other CGI program can do, such as collect form data, generate dynamic page content, or send and receive cookies.



Let me suggest you check our client sites? There are things on the demo that don't work because I don't want them to work.

I used the healthy pooch search for cat urinary tract and your client has climbed to #2 - congrats.

As for whether the search engines can index the pages, I would recommend you spend some time investigating the performance of my cart with http://www.healthypooch.com which uses version 2 of my cart. Every page is served by the database. To save you some time let me recommend this search "cat urinary tract". Upon my last check it appears at position 9 on Google. I haven't checked the other search engines for this client. They also inform me that every month their percentage of new customers to return customers is around 50% new customers. They actually quit using Overture PPC and are now saving 98% of their advertising budget.

Every page is served by the database? I don’t think so.
Looking at http://www.healthypooch.com/shop//cats/cat_urinary_tract/homeopet_digestive_r.html it seems to be a "hard coded" static page while looking at a cart served page (http://www.healthypooch.com/cart/index.html) looks like a dynamic page served by the shopping system.

I hope this helps explain some things.

I reviewed your web site and was going to call, but it seems the phone number on your site is incorrect or simply disconnected.

Yup, I have a degenerative hearing problem and using a phone is more trouble than its worth, but please feel free to contact me in a IM chat in Yahoo or ICQ. Contact info is right above my phone number.

[ApplePie]

I can understand your misunderstandings, however let me assure you that every page is dynamically served on that site. All information on the pages, including the HTML used in the product descriptions are held in the database and served as a static HTML page.

There are no hard-coded pages in the entire system.

If you would like to look at one of our clients on our latest version, you can look at http://69.93.178.52. The site isn't up for business yet, but it will be later this week. We adding some finishing touches such as USPS connections and SSL. Then we'll turn on the domain name.

Again, every page is served dynamically without any indication that the pages are dynamic. I spent an extremely long time working out the bugs.

We even have a CMS that operates on the same principles used in our shopping cart.

As for the backoffice, that part is available only to our clients, designers, and resellers. That is a controlled situation where we can have people use a browser of choice.

The front-end is usable by any browser and assistive technology.

When the search engines follow the links provided by our system, they are requesting pages. Those pages are developed in such a way that the search engines have no idea they are dynamic. That removes all the garbage in the URL such as &, ?, session ids, and other things that block search engines.

As for performance in the search engines, you have seen how well it performs. There are some optimization steps that need to take place, but I can assure you that anyone can learn those steps. The HealthyPooch clients don't know anything about SEO; they simply follow my directions.

I hope this helps you understand further. I don't have icq or yahoo, but I do have msn and you can reach me at roserockdesign@hotmail.com for msn messenger. I'd love to chat with you and answer more questions, perhaps even earn a client.

[gblanas]

"Any suggestions on good books and software for building a site for a small business? Thanks in advance!!"

First let me say that I don't know alot about website building. I use NetObjects Fusion and have gotten good results. Everything is a text or graphic "object", I don't need to know html, Fusion does all that. There are nice templates and site styles to get started with. It also updates all links when you make changes. I can preview how the site will look in the browser. Fusion also has built in FTP to upload the site. Dreamweaver is a very powerful program, but too pricey for me right now. You can download a trial of Fusion, and I think it's only $149 to buy. Worth a look.