[ic] Deciding between Interchange and Miva (Questions)

[Lara]

Just wanted to throw my two bits in as yet another perspective from a less 
Interchange-experienced developer.

I'm a graphic/interface designer with a very _basic_ (see: minimal) 
background in programming, except HTML and JS, and I love Interchange. I do 
have access to a great programmer, but have only needed to call on him a 
couple of times for a bit of Perl. Our client wanted lots of customization, 
which, as far as I know, wouldn't have been possible with Miva. I find the 
interface fairly easy to work with. I haven't had any trouble modifying and 
adding tables, as needed. I was able to easily modify the look-and-feel of 
foundation store; the end result is something entirely new and different.

Yes, there's a big learning curve, but it's been a smooth ride, for the 
most part. The documentation is lacking but getting better. I've been 
dependent on the list archives; it has gotten me out of 
I-don't-know-how-many jams.

Customization is our primary concern and in that respect, Interchange wins 
easily. We wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to future clients.

Lara




At 10:41 AM 11/26/02 -0800, you wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I've been reviewing e-commerce packages for a store I
>want to open and I have pretty much narrowed down my
>choices to Interchange and Miva.  I was hoping I could
>ask a few questions here to help me decide.  Basically
>I'm interested in opinions from folks who have
>actually used both products.  I realize cost is one
>major difference, but I'd like to ignore that for now
>and find the best product.
>
>For a quick outline of what I'm doing, the shop I'm
>getting ready to get going on is a sports shop with
>NFL, NHL etc... stuff.  There will need to be multiple
>levels of categories (ie, apparel -> mens -> shirts)
>and different ways of sorting ie (product categories,
>leagues, teams, players, events, etc.) and multiple
>vendors.   I want to start slow with a few products
>and slowly continue to add products/vendors.  Some
>vendors I will buy direct from and handle shipping and
>others will drop ship.  Later on I want to add things
>like an affiliate program and a "members" area where
>people can customize preferences, track past orders,
>set birthday reminders and such.  It will initially
>run on FreeBSD/MySQL, although that may change to
>Linux next year, and running on our own servers.
>Also, from going through the mailing list archive, I'm
>figuring to start with 4.8.6 since 4.9.3 doesn't seem
>to be 100% production stable yet, although I really
>like some of the new features in there, including
>mod_perl.
>
>1. How steep is the learning curve on this?  I have
>heard it's pretty high.  I have some perl/mysql
>background and a programmer I work with who has a lot
>more.  I've worked with programs using Template
>Toolkit and have some familiarity with that, which
>seems somewhat similar to how templates are used here.
>
>2. How easy is it to switch from one to the other, ie.
>if I decide on one and find it wasn't the right one
>for me, can the data be converted relatively easily
>from/to interchange/miva.
>
>3. Is there some sort of repository for additional
>modules where I can find add-ons that aren't part of
>the core package (ie, like mvcool.com or
>mvcentral.com)
>
>4. Is there an expected time frame when 4.9.3 will
>become stable?
>
>5. Can products be in more than one category?  And can
>there be additional levels of product
>groups/categories... In the demo I see product group
>which appears to be the first level of grouping, then
>category, which appears to be a subgrouping of product
>group.
>
>6. I didn't see anything in the demo for importing
>products.  Is there a facility to do this and can it
>handle both full imports (for updating everything on
>the site) and incremental imports (for just adding new
>products)?  And is it as simple as creating a text
>file, uploading and running an import program?
>
>7. I don't quite get the concept of having multiple
>catalogs vs subcatalogs.  Ultimately where I want to
>go is to have multiple stores (is that catalogs?) and
>within at least the main store, let vendors have
>access to their product data and reporting (is this a
>subcatalog).
>
>8. Is is possible to have different templates for
>different categories.. for example in all of hockey it
>might use one template and another for football... and
>then say on the teams areas, it might use different
>css files for team colors and such?
>
>9. How hard is it to add fields to various tables to
>be used either in the user side or the admin side or
>both?  For example, let's say I wanted to add a cost
>field that I can add to reports in the admin?  Or
>options fields for products?  Or say a vendor id or
>additional features for more product information?
>
>10. And this is for later too, but can I create a
>separate "store" if you will, where anyone can
>register to add products (become a vendor) and have a
>marketplace like at amazon, based on the same category
>structure and stuff.  I'm thinking for folks to sell
>their own stuff, used stuff, whatever... Has anyone
>done anything like that where I could look at it?
>
>Thx for all the help anyone can provide me... I really
>do appreciate it.
>
>
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