Business Site Transfer

[TCH-RobertM]

Hi everyone, I have a friend that I am helping with the design and setup of her business website.

I have a few questions as I have never done this before with the exception of setting up my own little website as a playground for me to learn with.

 

What are some of the concerns I should be aware of prior to transfering her site to TCH

I would think that setting her up on a Starter plan would be the way to go for now, and monitor the bandwitch and status and upgrade as needed.

I am interested in learning more about setting up her Shopping cart. how this works ( is it a template based system ? Is it simple to implement within an already designed site ? )

I noticed in previous posts that a lot of folks are using Oscommerce ? Was this because of ease of use or functionality of it over other shopping cart systems ?

 

when choosing a Credit card processing company to be used what might some things I need to be aware of using such a company ? Costs, Address Verifications / fraud checks etc ? any recommendations on this would also be helpful

 

I know that the servers are shared, and that there is a Shared SSL how would I go about utilizing this or would it be best to get my own pros/cons here would be great.

 

Also any thing I might be overlooking ?

 

Thank you all for helping me out with this....

Robert

[TCH-Rob]

Ready? Ok,

 

What are some of the concerns I should be aware of prior to transfering her site to TCH

I would think that setting her up on a Starter plan would be the way to go for now, and monitor the bandwitch and status and upgrade as needed.

That is a good approach. I would get the hosting plan and upload everything first and then change the name servers to minimise any possible down time.

 

I am interested in learning more about setting up her Shopping cart. how this works ( is it a template based system ? Is it simple to implement within an already designed site ? )

 

That all depends on the cart, you can customize most of them.

 

I noticed in previous posts that a lot of folks are using Oscommerce ? Was this because of ease of use or functionality of it over other shopping cart systems ?

I use OSC any the answer is yes, Zen is a good option as well.

 

when choosing a Credit card processing company to be used what might some things I need to be aware of using such a company ? Costs, Address Verifications / fraud checks etc ? any recommendations on this would also be helpful

 

Due to my relationship with TCH and not to make it sound like I am representing TCH in my response I will refrain from recomending a specific company but I would look into costs in setting up, monthly fees and how they deal with things like fraud.

 

I know that the servers are shared, and that there is a Shared SSL how would I go about utilizing this or would it be best to get my own pros/cons here would be great.

 

I would stay away from shared SSL if you want to keep things professional. Nothing like going to pay and have the address display www.serverxx.hostingcompany.com/~username instead of the hosted domain.

 

Good luck Robert.

[Jaxx]

Hi Robert,

 

First off, I'd look at what kind of site your friend is building. Is it primarily a storefront where she's selling lots of products? Or does she have a small number of services or products (or even a single product)? Does she plan on having a newsletter, and how large of a list does she intend to build?

 

Getting a starter plan is a good choice, especially since TCH allows you to upgrade/downgrade your plan as needed. Since you mentioned transferring her to TCH, I assume that means she has a site already in existence. I'd go with Rob's recommendation of getting the host first and testing before moving the nameservers.

 

About shopping carts. I've used OSC and think it's great. There's lots of support and extensions, and packages like Zen that package a lot of the most popular extensions, making it easier to set up your cart. I recommend that you be pretty comfortable with HTML and PHP if you decide to play with OSC. It's fun to tinker with, but can get a little hairy for beginners based on the feedback I've seen on the forums.

 

That being said, if she's only got a handful of products, or don't want to be bothered, you might consider a different solution such as 1shoppingcart.com. The benefits to using a cart service is that it can be easier and faster to set up, their order forms usually are already secure so you don't need your own SSL for order support, and there are additional useful bells and whistles such as ad tracking support, autoresponders, newsletter/email broadcasting, and other niceties beyond just a cart system. Of course, there's a monthly fee involved (1shoppingcart starts at $29 for their basic cart). The downside is that you don't get as much customization as you could with a solution like OSC.

 

As far as SSL vs. shared SSL goes, if you're using a service they will usually have their own SSL server to do transactions on, and there's not a need to have your own in most cases. If you use a solution like OSC, then I'd recommend getting your own cert since they're not that expensive. If you really have a shoestring then I suppose you can always use cloaking with a frameset to mask the shared cert address. I played with it once and it seemed to work ok.

 

One thing to keep in mind is newsletters and broadcast email. If your friend is planning on building a large email list I do recommend using a service. Most ISPs and Web Hosts place limits on the amount of mail traffic that goes through their servers to control traffic and spam, among other things. Services like 1SC (which also feature a great autoresponder service) specialize in high volume mail. If she's planning on building a big list then having this type of service is a must.

 

About Merchant accounts. From his response Rob sounds like he like 2CheckOut, which is who TCH uses. Technically they're not a merchant account provider, which is why they're easier to get set up and are a bit more flexible in some ways than a typical merchant account. Plus, they have no monthly fees and have a low setup fee. The major downside is that you don't have a virtual terminal and can't take phone/fax orders, and they don't support recurring transactions from certain shopping cart services like 1shoppingcart.

 

For a regular merchant account, you can find reputable places that don't charge setup fees and still have reasonable monthly rates. One place I've found with good reviews is charge.com.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Chris

[TCH-Rob]

From his response Rob sounds like he like 2CheckOut

 

For the record, that is not who I use.

[Jaxx]

For the record, that is not who I use.

 

Ah. I stand corrected.

 

-Chris

[TCH-RobertM]

Rob and Chris,

 

First off I would like to thank you both for giving me some insight as to what to look for and what to expect. One of the Big reasons I came to TCH is exactly this kind of support both the Staff and Users of this Hosting service provide.

 

Also this is the reason I have reccomended TCH to my friend.

 

As far as how her site is going to be constructed, and layed out is something that she and I have been working on over the past few weeks. There is at this time a set number of products which will be offered. They are One of a kind products so I will need to make sure that when an Item is purchased it no longer will be displayed as a option for another shopper to add to the cart. Her business volume is not very high at the moment and she currently does not have anytype of shopping cart system yet.

Making the move to a TCH hosted plan should not be a very big deal and will probably require Little downtime if any at all.

 

I have been playing with Html for just over a year and have recently started playing with PHP since joining TCH about 3 months ago. So my skills are not the best but I dig and dig until I get something working. Which is why I like to ask upfront what might be some pitfalls I might encounter.

 

I do think that based upon some of the info presented here so far I will probably persue the Oscommerce route becuase it is more so customizable then the other product.

 

I will have to do some reading and find out more about it as we work this site into its infancy stages.

 

Thank you again for the information I am sure I will be posting more questions as I work the tasks to get this project into production.

 

Robert

[TCH-Rob]

Robert,

 

FYI, setting each item as 1 in OSC will remove it from display after the item is purchased, though it will stay in the database until removed.