Re: FN-FORUM Actinic Catalog (was: Sites in a box)

date posted 1st November 2000 17:23

I would like to echo Richard Eaton's comments. About a year ago I spent
around six weeks wrestling with Actinic to buid an ecommerce site for a
client who wanted a 'basic' solution.

After the site was launched he wondered where the stock catalogue was and
why it didn't warn him when stock was running low and why items on the
site weren't automatically marked as out of stock.

In other words, what he really wanted was a complete bespoke database
driven site! Having said that, Actinic has an excellent "backend" order
handling facility based on MSAccess which any client familiar with MS
software should have no trouble in using

On the next e-commerce project I decided to try out ShopAssistant which
is basically a kit of Javascript parts which you can bolt on to a site
the rest of which you have designed yourself using whatever tools you
like.

Eventually, that ran into the ground because if you want to do something
which is non-standard, again it was very tricky, or impossible to
customise. Having said that, the manual which is provided with
ShopAssistant (and which is free to download from the website) is an
excellent all round e-commerce primer. (www.floyd.co.uk)

In the end it did not take much longer to write a shopping cart
application from scratch using mySql and PHP than I wasted trying to
customise the out-of-th-box applications.

I now have code of my own which I modify for future projects and which
can be customised to do almost anything.

If anyone would like me to quote for developing a "backend" for one of
their projects I'd be happy to oblige.

Ray McGinty

>Unless you want a "cheapo" solution and the client just wants a basic,
>non-pretty e-commerce enabled catalogue (yes, catalogue, I'm English after
>all!) then I'd stay well away. As Ruth is finding out, anything less than
>simple modifications is a bit of a pain and the number of problems with V4
>(after a couple of months they're on patch 5!) makes you wonder why they
>released it so soon - oh yeah, they just got a wedge of VC funding so they
>have to look to be making rapid progess ;-)
>
>Having said all that, the encryption bit that doesn't require SSL to
>transmit credit card info is good, as it saves money on SSL servers and
>certificates, it doesn't however show that all important padlock though
>which the public are always warned about...
>
>In conclusion, Catalog is probably the best of the breed and if someone
>wants a cheap solution to add an e-commerce element to their small high
>street shop then it does the job.


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Ray McGinty Information Design
specialising in design for the web, e-commerce,
multimedia CD-ROM and print
Tel 0191 237 2816
Fax 0191 237 4774
[EMAIL REMOVED]
www.rmid.co.uk
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