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sally_in_wales
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 06 Mar 2005
Posts: 20809
Location: sunny wales

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 06 5:48 am Post subject:

I'm now in the same position as Stacey- I need a new web hoster. I had been pretty happy with Yahoo, I liked their sitebuilder software and it did everything I wanted. But, having decided that I needed a 'proper' shopping side to things, rather than just a few 'buy it now' buttons pasted into my other pages, its not up to the job.
( I think I want to use osCommerce for the shopping bit unless anyone can suggest another free or very cheap package that covers the same ground)

A couple of people have suggested I get a Linux based site rather than a Windows based site- they tell me its more stable and flexible for what I want. Never having used Linux before, am I going to end up getting into a complete tangle?

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28111
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 06 6:08 am Post subject:
The alternative to oscommerce is the Joomla virtuemart system which gives you a downsizer type site, plus the shopping cart.

sally_in_wales
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 06 Mar 2005
Posts: 20809
Location: sunny wales

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 06 7:25 am Post subject:

Does its shopping cart let me show the number of things in stock? I think thats going to be important if I want to offer lots of one off things on the site, my main worry at the moment is getting the site all set up, then two people clicking 'buy' within a short time and not getting an automatic message that something as already been sold.

I want to keep the information part of my website pretty much as it is now (needs a tidy up, but the basic format works ok) but also offer a much more professional looking 'go shopping' option.

Been having a sneaky browse of web hosting things this morning, and it looks like there are plenty out there that will only cost about £25 a year with the domain name included that will cope with a shopping cart.

One or two offer a free three month trial on a subdomain name of their site, so maybe I should try setting up the cart on one of them and see if it pans out, then I have time to patch over the original site if I'm happy before transferring the domain name.

Any idea how much bandwith is normal for small business use? Seems to vary a lot on the packages, and whilst I know more is better, whats the sensible minimum?

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28111
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 06 7:37 am Post subject:
VirtueMart is pretty full featured. 5gb a month is ample traffic allowance. £25 a year may work out expensive, if it means a slow site as you are paying cheap. trouble with trialing on a subdomain is your site is getting moved around. Wish I had some good answers for you

Forager

Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 144

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 06 9:02 am Post subject:
Mals-e is a great shopping cart. It is also free; well there is a free version and a paid version but we never needed anything the free version didn't offer. It's been a few years since I last used it so I'm guessing it has even more features now too. https://www.mals-e.com/

sally_in_wales
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 06 Mar 2005
Posts: 20809
Location: sunny wales

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 06 9:10 am Post subject:

I've got Mals e at the moment, and its ok for what I have now, but I don't like having to paste individual buttons into my existing webpages, they keep drifting all over the place, plus there is no way to show that something has been bought if it is a one off. I want to develop a sepearte chunk of my site as the shop, and an option with more features will hopefully help

Hmm, Joomla. I hadn't really considered this. I just had a look at the main page for it and it all sounds straightforwards enough. I'm a bit fuzzy about these things though, is it really suitable for a person fairly new to non-wysiwyg applications? I'm more than happy to advance my knowledge of how these wretched pooters work, but I want to feel I have a hope of actually managing to convert my current website into a new system and then get it all patched back online again.

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28111
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 06 9:15 am Post subject:

sally_in_wales wrote:

Mals-e was hoiw I got into helping people with carts in the first place!

Arkwrights homebrew were using it, and it was just way to crude and manual for real shop use.

oscommerce is what they are on now, and this still has required me and to a degree them to tweak more php files than I think a beginner wants to do

Joomla/VirtueMart is less mature than oscommerce, but is a solution that is totally menu driven, I have put this on the rosewood farms site and one of my own.

On balance I am happier with that solution for a beginner than oscommerce.

Fee

Joined: 21 Mar 2005
Posts: 15922
Location: Earth

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 06 9:23 am Post subject:

I use www.doteasy.com, the Unlimited Hosting package, which works out at around £5 something ($9.95) a month, and has lots of extras and support features for the beginner, and I believe it has a website builder too...yep, it does.

Though I use the Unlimited Hosting version, I used to use the $0 hosting with Doteasy, and I found it had everything I needed, I only upgraded for the extra webspace, this package only has 100MB, which is more than enough for most people, but I'm redirecting several websites to feesworld...and I'm not sure it'd be suitable for eCommerce.

sally_in_wales
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 06 Mar 2005
Posts: 20809
Location: sunny wales

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 06 9:24 am Post subject:
Right! I will download Joomla this evening and have a crack at it and see if that makes any more sense. I suspect I'll still need to move to a new host won't I Jema- you've seen the guts of my current host- still a good idea to move on?

sally_in_wales
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 06 Mar 2005
Posts: 20809
Location: sunny wales

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 06 9:25 am Post subject:
[quote="Fee"]I use www.doteasy.com, the Unlimited Hosting package, which works out at around £5 something ($9.95) a month, I had a glance at them earlier. Would I be able to do this Joomla thingy on them, or do I need a special type of hosting package?

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28111
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 06 9:34 am Post subject:

sally_in_wales wrote:

Right! I will download Joomla this evening and have a crack at it and see if that makes any more sense. I suspect I'll still need to move to a new host won't I Jema- you've seen the guts of my current host- still a good idea to move on?

Yahoo seems to be the AOL of the hosting world. There were a lot of options there, but some of them plain did not seem to work, I could not get into phpMyadmin or add database users

On the other hand I could edit php files directly which is unusual.

What an old hand like me looks for is the ability to get shell access to the account, so I can edit file directly via "ssh" and the "vi" editor. This knocks spots of the yahoo interface in experienced hands. Frankly if I were being paid to maintain a site, I would probably be inclined to charge double if I had to use the yahoo interface

Your position is a little different, but all the same a host offering CPanel or Plesk which are common hosting control panels and shell access will give you most of what you get with yahoo, and it will work! and you can keep someone like me happy if you have to call on them to help.

Forager

Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 144

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 06 9:35 am Post subject:

jema wrote:

We ran a real shop, an mp3 site, selling mp3 hardware with hundreds of products and it worked a treat for us, we seriously did not have any problems with it but I can see it isn't for everyone. This is going back six years ago though so I'm sure things have moved on in the market.

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28111
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 06 9:40 am Post subject:

Forager wrote:

jema wrote:

oscommerce is a workable solution, but breaks down a little once you want to do "just that little bit more". I have no particular plans to move arkwrights away from it.

Forager

Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 144

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 06 9:41 am Post subject: Re: Web hosting recommendations?

Stacey wrote:

Jema doesn't think his services will be suitable for what I need so I'll ask here as well

I want to register a domain name and find someone to host a simple site. Lots of people here have site so who do you use and what have your experiences been?

If it is not mission critical i.e. not a business site then https://www.servage.net/ "looks" good. Cheap as chips which is why I wouldn't suggest them for a business site. I keep thinking about moving all my domains over to them but the price actually holds me back as I wonder how they could provide a reliable service with so much on offer for so little!

Last edited by Forager on Thu Jun 01, 06 9:44 am; edited 2 times in total

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28111
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 06 9:41 am Post subject:

[quote="sally_in_wales"]

Fee wrote:

I use www.doteasy.com, the Unlimited Hosting package, which works out at around £5 something ($9.95) a month,

I had a glance at them earlier. Would I be able to do this Joomla thingy on them, or do I need a special type of hosting package?

You will need a mysql/php package for Joomla/virtuemart.

For oscommerce you will need a mysql/php package which allows "php register globals" as occommerce is dated and some hosts have security restrictions that will stop it working.

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