Request for Site Beta Testers

Ok, there seems to have been a slight glitch with the merging/ splitting off of this thread with the result that everything has vanished into cyberspace, so as suggested by Russ D I'm starting it again...!

* * * * *

I think I've got my new site and shopping cart more or less sorted out, but whilst it may work on my system and browser I don't know if it will work for everyone else on their computers!

So I'd be grateful if any obliging people (who are over 18!).

NB it will not be running at top speed at them moment because I've not converted the files from .csv to MySQL format, so please bear with it as I'm not going to do that until it's ready to go fully on line.

If you want to put in trial credit card orders, you can use the Visa card "test" number of 4111-1111-1111-1111

Please feel free to do "silly" things (just like any regular user! ) to give the site a full work out.

Many thanks in advance.

[Admin Edit(Mick): URL to Adult orientated site Removed - If members wish to contact Graham - They may PM him for such links. Over 18s Only]

[SMHarman]

We need the proper link to your cgi, not the truncated one above.

Oops! Should be ok now.

(Oddly enough, I clicked on the edited link to try it out and got a "403 - You are not allowed to see this page" message! Then I tried again and it worked fine. Strange!)

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by Graham

Oops! Should be ok now.

(Oddly enough, I clicked on the edited link to try it out and got a "403 - You are not allowed to see this page" message! Then I tried again and it worked fine. Strange!)

gives me a 403 error.
I want to help, 'cause i'll be doing the same in the next couple of weeks.
Is it IP restriced?

Try it now, I've edited it because I don't think I should have included the /cgi-bin/cp-app.cgi bit.

I want to help, 'cause i'll be doing the same in the next couple of weeks.

Setting up a cart or looking to set one up? I'm using Click Cart Pro 5.1 for this, it's incredibly versatile and configurable (although that does mean there's a fair bit of configuration needed!) but it only costs £99 plus vat, allowed me to import all my existing product data from .csv files and edit them in Excel and gives lots of options for how to handle everything.

Also you get the full source code, so you can edit it in any way you want.

If you want more info, drop me an e-mail.

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by Graham

Try it now, I've edited it because I don't think I should have included the /cgi-bin/cp-app.cgi bit.





Setting up a cart or looking to set one up? I'm using Click Cart Pro 5.1 for this, it's incredibly versatile and configurable (although that does mean there's a fair bit of configuration needed!) but it only costs £99 plus vat, allowed me to import all my existing product data from .csv files and edit them in Excel and gives lots of options for how to handle everything.

Also you get the full source code, so you can edit it in any way you want.

If you want more info, drop me an e-mail.

I'm using x-cart. The developer dealing with the codeing and tweaking side recommended it, it seems a pretty flexible package. Weight based shipping (one of our customers biggest gripes), flexible product options features (e.g. larger sizes with a price increment, exception options (you cannot have small in red for exampe)), wish list functionality, advanced order management (you can easily substitute and amend an order once submitted). I think with the options it cost $600. We will probably be upgrading to the pro version to run a couple of shadow sites off the same checkout functionality once this is up and running.

I'm getting very frustrated with images at the moment, X-Cart (and probably many other cart softwares) like all their images to be the same width. Requiring a lot of work to make this happen. Ideally it would like them to all be the same size 150x150, but that is not possible as we sell many portrait shaped products and the images cannot be resized to squares.

Yours is not a site I can test at work so I'll try to visit tonight.

Wonders what is on there!! Websense at work stops me going there due to sexuality.

[Millay]

Hi all, im currently looking at JShop Server for a shopping site im putting together, interestingly have also been looking at X-Cart, what Payment gateways do you guys suggest? i think im looking at secpay at the moment..

[Graham M]

PayPal is always widely useful, they offer a shopping cart service too

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by Millay

Hi all, im currently looking at JShop Server for a shopping site im putting together, interestingly have also been looking at X-Cart, what Payment gateways do you guys suggest? i think im looking at secpay at the moment..

Current development uses NetBanx, the secondary wholesale site will just go direct to HSBC merchant services.
Hindsite tells me that you should pay up front for a proper merchant account with a bank (the same one the business account is with for the best rates) and integrate into their payment gateway, otherwise you are paying the gateway provider and the merchant.
That said NetBanx customer service and support have been fantastic.

Originally Posted by Zeph

PayPal is always widely useful, they offer a shopping cart service too

Pay Pal only will put many off, it requires you set up an account (if you don't have one), log into a second service, lose some online consumer protection as you are paying with paypal electronic money, not a credit card. It depends on what you are selling, if you are selling to generation TXT then PayPal will be fine, but most over 35s probably fall into the too much like hard work category.
You should also always have a telephone me for payment details option too, for those with an irrational fear of using credit cards on the internet. This one I find highly ironic as I then go and process the card through a web interface anyway.

Originally Posted by gary_580

Wonders what is on there!! Websense at work stops me going there due to sexuality.

Affordable "Leather Goods" , bit like affordable latex goods, principally clothing (in the loosest (or possibly tightest)) sense of the word.
Websense is stopping it for the correct reasons.

[Millay]

Thanks for the response, I agree with your thoughts on paypal, as I personally wouldnt use a site that uses pay pal as its payment gateway, although the site may be perfectly legitimate, you cant help but think there skimping on something when you see the pay pal logo... virtual stock is always scary, even though I say that as im about to go into using a drop shipping company for computer software... (ingram micro) anyone no any better drop shippers?

its interesting the comment you made about using the banks payment gateway, Barclays (one of my business accounts) is incredibly expensive, so we think it will be cheaper to get the merchant number through them and then use something liek secpay. for my software shop, im just about to phonew lloyds to se what they will charge me...

I hope i havent gone to

Ok, as requested by Mick, if anyone wants to help me out with the testing of the site, please can they drop me a PM and I'll give them the URL.

Alternatively (hopefully this won't cause problems, but if it does, Mick, feel free to remove this paragraph) visit the site from the link on my profile information and manually add /shop/ to the address.

I remind people that my site does contain adult content, so if anyone is likely to be offended, please don't go there.

Originally Posted by SMHarman

I'm using x-cart.

I looked at X-cart, but I wasn't happy with the cost for what I wanted.

Click Cart Pro is very affordable and has a free online discussion forum where you can get tech support from the programers or other users which is most useful.

There are a few bad (or, at least, less good) points to it, eg the documentation could do with work and when there's something you want to change it's not always easy to find which particular module it comes from, but they're fairly minor niggles.

I'm getting very frustrated with images at the moment, X-Cart (and probably many other cart softwares) like all their images to be the same width. Requiring a lot of work to make this happen. Ideally it would like them to all be the same size 150x150, but that is not possible as we sell many portrait shaped products and the images cannot be resized to squares.

If you can get hold of Adobe Photoshop you can set up macros to batch re-size images which saves a hell of a lot of time!

What I did was to set up two macros to resize them to 400 x 400 for the main images, I needed two options because one would size them by height to 400 px (ie a portrait shaped image) and the other would do the same but by width, I then clicked on the appropriate options.

Each would then resize the "canvas" for the other dimension to 400 px wide or high so they all ended up in the right format.

It took about 5 minutes to resize a couple of hundred images that way!

Originally Posted by Millay

what Payment gateways do you guys suggest? i think im looking at secpay at the moment..

Personally I wouldn't recommend any of them unless you've got a lot of orders to deal with.

I wouldn't touch Paypal because they won't deal with the Adult Industry.

Nochex is currently getting bad press because people who have used them have been ripped off by the source company and Nochex says "not our problem, we just pass on the money", and the credit card companies say "not our problem, you paid their agents, that's a completed transaction as far as we are concerned" and the customer gets stiffed.

Worldpay has a poor charging structure that means that if you sell a lot of small items you end up paying large percentage amounts as charges...

I currently do my credit card processing manually through Nat West Streamline "Cardholder Not Present" system. It costs me about fifteen quid a month for the terminal rental and has a good charging structure and it does all I need.

[Millay]

Out of interest how do you encrypt/collect credit card data from your site, not wishing you to comprimise your security are you encypting emails in pgp or something..