bROWSER HIHACKS

[JohnR]

Originally Posted by JohnnyD

Scott, you should look at switching to an online content management system. Much easier to deal with, significantly easier to manage, no more FrontPage (which I hate) and no more copy/pasting then uploading code just to find out it's all screwed up. As an added benefit, it may make your website easier to navigate for the customer and increase conversions, while also improving how Google ranks your pages.

It's definitely a bit of an undertaking. I could go on for hours about how to best optimize a website to increase conversions... but it all depends on your goals.

What he said ^

What you are doing now is trying to find an oddball cart system to work with an even more oddball web editor (Frontpage) that most people hate. This is causing you to jump through some gawdawful hoops and suffer some oddball tech issues (VPS Windows Server ).

I don't have an answer for you specifically as what I might do might not be best for you. But you should have a discussion with Pros or investigate from a clean slate.

There are plenty of packages out there that run well, reasonable costs, and are reliable. Miva, Zencart, just two quick examples. You would be well served to find a company that specializes in hosting these systems that can walk you through a bit of it.

[UserRemoved1]

All of which is going to cost so much as to make it prohibitive and you wonder why I'm still where I am doing donuts and tripping over the bar. It would involve shutting the whole thing down for an extended period of time. I'd be eating more peanut butters n jellies by weeks end. square one here we come

Originally Posted by JohnR

What he said ^

What you are doing now is trying to find an oddball cart system to work with an even more oddball web editor (Frontpage) that most people hate. This is causing you to jump through some gawdawful hoops and suffer some oddball tech issues (VPS Windows Server ).

I don't have an answer for you specifically as what I might do might not be best for you. But you should have a discussion with Pros or investigate from a clean slate.

There are plenty of packages out there that run well, reasonable costs, and are reliable. Miva, Zencart, just two quick examples. You would be well served to find a company that specializes in hosting these systems that can walk you through a bit of it.

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by #^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&

All of which is going to cost so much as to make it prohibitive and you wonder why I'm still where I am doing donuts and tripping over the bar. It would involve shutting the whole thing down for an extended period of time. I'd be eating more peanut butters n jellies by weeks end. square one here we come

You can build the entire website on a sub-domain before changing it all over to your main page. No shutting down, no loss of current sales. Then, when the website is complete, you make a couple small changes with regards to how the domain is setup in the Content Management System and the software does the rest of the work.

I bet it takes you at least an hour if not a couple hours to add new plugs to your website right now... you know how long an online CMS would take? Minutes.

According to a couple sources online, Saltys.co only has 13 pages of content. You could transfer that to a new CMS in a day or two. I also just noticed that there is a restaurant in Seattle that is Saltys.com. I guarantee you're losing some customers by them typing .com instead of .co.

Are you doing any tracking of your web traffic? That can tell you a lot. For instance, if tracking shows that a lot of people are loading items into their cart and then they start to checkout but you then they quit, some of those lost sales could be saved through testing and making adjustments but you won't know how without tracking.

Like I said before, I could go on for days about this stuff. If you're curious about looking more into it, let me know and I'll dig up some info for you to take a look at.

[JohnR]

Originally Posted by #^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&

All of which is going to cost so much as to make it prohibitive and you wonder why I'm still where I am doing donuts and tripping over the bar. It would involve shutting the whole thing down for an extended period of time. I'd be eating more peanut butters n jellies by weeks end. square one here we come

No need to shut down at all, bring up two sites concurrently and when the new site is ready to go, more or less flip the switch.

Johnny is correct WRT a CMS system (Content Management System) that hooks your cart system. Look at SWE's site using Miva, pretty good job. You can make the changes over a web page, no need to create file in FP (5 times) and FTP up the site 5 times until you like it.

Anyway, not trying to go too much into this online, just saying it might be worth a different approach.

[UserRemoved1]

understand John. So whose cms? if not joomla then who? wodpress?

Originally Posted by JohnR

No need to shut down at all, bring up two sites concurrently and when the new site is ready to go, more or less flip the switch.

Johnny is correct WRT a CMS system (Content Management System) that hooks your cart system. Look at SWE's site using Miva, pretty good job. You can make the changes over a web page, no need to create file in FP (5 times) and FTP up the site 5 times until you like it.

Anyway, not trying to go too much into this online, just saying it might be worth a different approach.

[JohnR]

Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, I'd say you should find a forum for people managing small ecommerce sites and read for a bit.

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by JohnR

Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, I'd say you should find a forum for people managing small ecommerce sites and read for a bit.

Take a look at true eCommerce solutions. I'd suggest avoiding Wordpress, as it is most susceptible to exploits if not kept up to date While there are ecommerce plugins for Wordpress, it really is just a blogging CMS.

For super easy to manage yourself, I'd suggest taking a look a Shopify — Create Your Online Store
also check out Ecommerce Software & Shopping Cart Software Solutions by BigCommerce
A little bit more complex and you'd need someone to set it up, but locally hosted: Magento - Magento Community Edition - eCommerce Software for Growth

The first two are the most secure and easiest to immediately get up and running.