EOL of Miva 4.x

[BrettBGS]

Re: EOL of Miva 4.x

Leslie, Rick,

Thank you for listening... here's what I'm concerned with/about...

Leslie, item 2, for example this:
http://www.corecommerce.com/
or this:
http://www.bigcommerce.com/

Right now Core is PCI ready, Big is working on it...

Rick, I'm using ECHO-Inc (Quicken) merchant account/gateway, so it seems I have to move to another merchant/gateway is that right?

Here are my other concerns... I run about 20-30 modules, I'm not sure the functionality is there even in 5.5, for example I run Viking Coders Affiliates, I run Weilands Coupon Manager, and his Order Manager (which is superb) and I have 6-7 years worth of orders saved by customer. I run Viking Coder Templates throughout my store, fully customized, including login by Email, full Customer Profile screens let users save custom data - on the product pages I pull that data for the customer to select and fill in forms automatically (using Javascript). I have custom coded single-page order forms that hide the navigation completely from the page and hide those products from normal product searches (instead filtering searches to cart based products)... can I do that with 5.5?

Will the Order Manager data move over to Miva Order manager, I really don't think it will... unless, you can write a converter? How much will it cost me to upgrade all of my modules? How long will it take me to re-code all of the customizations that I spent months on before? I think you see my concern, so - help me feel better, tell me how I can move forward in reasonable, cost effective manner. I'm on a limited budget too, my sales have dropped 40%-60% with the economy collapse...

I believe that Miva would be a great choice, but I have to know it won't take me 3-6 months and cost me hundreds of dollars to make the upgrade to 5.5. I think you can now see my predicament a little clearer.

Your thoughts?

Thank you,
-Brett

[wcw]

Re: EOL of Miva 4.x

If you have not deleted the orders/batches then that order data can be exported from 4x and then imported into your new 5x store.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: EOL of Miva 4.x

Rick, I'm using ECHO-Inc (Quicken) merchant account/gateway, so it seems I have to move to another merchant/gateway is that right?

That's a third party gateway (one we never supported), so yes you'll need to change gateways or get that developer to write/certify that gateway for 5.5.

Here are my other concerns... I run about 20-30 modules, I'm not sure the functionality is there even in 5.5, for example I run Viking Coders Affiliates, I run Weilands Coupon Manager, and his Order Manager (which is superb) and I have 6-7 years worth of orders saved by customer. I run Viking Coder Templates throughout my store, fully customized, including login by Email, full Customer Profile screens let users save custom data - on the product pages I pull that data for the customer to select and fill in forms automatically (using Javascript). I have custom coded single-page order forms that hide the navigation completely from the page and hide those products from normal product searches (instead filtering searches to cart based products)... can I do that with 5.5?

Anything you can do from a page template standpoint in 4.x you can do in 5.5, usually with very few modules (especially if you have Emporium Plus ToolKit). In fact that's one of the biggest upsides of 5.5 is the complete control over the look and feel and a far more robust system for doing it.

Will the Order Manager data move over to Miva Order manager, I really don't think it will... unless, you can write a converter? How much will it cost me to upgrade all of my modules? How long will it take me to re-code all of the customizations that I spent months on before? I think you see my concern, so - help me feel better, tell me how I can move forward in reasonable, cost effective manner. I'm on a limited budget too, my sales have dropped 40%-60% with the economy collapse...

Bill already answered this about migrating the data over. As for re-coding your customizations, etc... I have no idea. I've never reviewed your store and it can be as simple as 5 minutes with our tools or 50 hours or more of template updates. Without a deep dive into your 4.x store it's impossible to know the answers.

I believe that Miva would be a great choice, but I have to know it won't take me 3-6 months and cost me hundreds of dollars to make the upgrade to 5.5. I think you can now see my predicament a little clearer.

The stranger issue to me is if you have little budget and 20 - 30 modules, the odds of you being able to port to a competing solution, one that you're not deeply familiar with is odd. Those are competing goals. You could move to a new platform (5.5 or a competitor) and lose all of your customizations and do it on the cheap (for a few hundred dollars), or you could migrate the existing functionality and data, but unless you do it all yourself it would cost far more than a few hundred, regardless if you moved to 5.5 or a competitor.

Finally when it comes to PCI, I know for a fact we're getting our in house SaaS platform Service Provider certified, I'm sure some other hosts will do this as well and finally with our PA-DSS already complete, our cart if fully capable of being PCI Compliant today, not working on it in the future.

If cost is the true issue, why don't you go the PayFlow Link route for now and have your host set you up with a Dev store on 5.5. You have almost 18 months until the End Of Life on 4.x and if you did the edits yourself in 4.x, there's no reason you can't also do it all yourself in 5.5.

Once the 5.5 store is ready to go, you export the old order history and import it into your new store and flip the switch.

Finally, while I haven't looked at your site (and if you'd like to email me a link, I'll take a quick look) we often find radically improved sales upon a redesign and upgrade to 5.5. What was delivering sales for you 6 - 10 years ago when Miva Merchant 4.x came out, has almost certainly evolved and my hunch without looking at your store is that the weakening economy simply accelerated a long term trend you were up against. I know we'd love to do what we can to help you rebuild your business as would the members of this forum and I think you'll find the there are A LOT more tools on 5.5 to help you increase sales that were never viable on 4.x.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: EOL of Miva 4.x

Secondly, after reviewing all of the hosted eCommerce/cart options, it's getting harder and hard to stand by Miva, I can buy a nice hosted solution for less than I am paying now just for hosting services, and with that solution I do not have to every worry about upgrades, etc, etc...

That is a valid point, however, if memory serves, many of the free shopping carts (things like zen cart and oscommerce) have had problems with being hacked - I don't want to swear by it, but I am fairly certain of this, so please double check).

If google comes along to spider your pages and discovers that a hacker has put malware on your site, you can kiss your tuchus goodbye, because you will then have to:

1) find the malware and remove it

2) Wait for the software to be patched by the developer / hosting company

3) Send a reinclusion request to google telling them what happened, and how you have remedied the problem

4) Twiddle your thumbs as you wait for google to come back to your site and decide whether it is trustworthy or not, and if so, wait for google to give your your search engine rankings back

5) Hope, pray, and hope some more that none of the private information was stolen from your site as you could be liable to civil penalties / lawsuits

Again, I ain't a lawyer, and I don't have much experience with the free shopping carts, so you should look into it more thoroughly.

Miva Merchant might be a "luxury" among shopping carts, but it is a luxury I can't seem to live without.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: EOL of Miva 4.x

I have to interject one thing here:

...we often find radically improved sales upon a redesign and upgrade to 5.5....

On the other hand, if your sites sales are primarily driven by search engine traffic, there is a POSSIBILITY that your search engine traffic can tank - it is not likely, but is possible. See these threads:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4160203.htm

and

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4172161.htm

Having said that, if you want to minimize any chance that moving your site to Merchant 5.5 will have negative effects, then I suggest that during the transition, you alter ONLY the design / back end. I would suggest keeping your URL structure the same, your H1 tags, your content - all of your on page SEO should remain the same. Eventually, you can make changes to other areas (such as changing over from long urls to Short URLs).

Look into this more though.

but as Rick said, all other things being equal, Merchant 5.5 SHOULD give sales a boost because it will be easier for you to update / maintain / freshen up, will be FASTER (and faster is gooder than slower, as my dad always says), and will allow you more features than Merchant 4 ever could.

[BrettBGS]

Re: EOL of Miva 4.x

Rick, Bill

If you have not deleted the orders/batches then that order data can be exported from 4x and then imported into your new 5x store.

Bill, I'm running with 6-7 years of order data, how about a converter that would rip through that and drop it into Miva Wombat Order History, pretty please? All that saved data, I'm sure my customers find it useful as I link to their Order History from their main account screens. 5 years of it is gone as I flush it from time to time, as you know though the order items are still saved in your Order Manager.... and I can still display them to customers.. that's what I hate to lose, ditto on my Ratings/Reviews, is there a converter to drop those in to 5.5?

Anything you can do from a page template standpoint in 4.x you can do in 5.5, usually with very few modules (especially if you have Emporium Plus ToolKit). In fact that's one of the biggest upsides of 5.5 is the complete control over the look and feel and a far more robust system for doing it.

So Toolkit has the 'seal of approval' for Wombat, I wasn't sure as I see the current version at 5.38, should I wait for 5.5 on it Bill?

I've read rave reviews and if Weiland coded it I'm sure it's great, that guy is a madman at coding. I've loved his modules from the start, especially his Contact Manager and Order Manager.

His 'follow on contact', reminder, and contact us support system are featured in my cart... I even wrote code on my account back-end to take birthdates entered and dump them right into Reminder's in Bill's system with a coupon. I'm telling you this because these are the kind of things I want to know I can continue to do in 5.5, is it true?

Rick, I wonder about this part, I need to build out Single Page Landing Pages that run as Miva Cart pages (no navigation), and I do that now by using Viking Coders and stripping out all of the nav system before the pages is displayed, can I still do that in 5.5? Those pages are separate from my cart, even though the products are the same, it's just that I found single page (no navigation) landing pages convert far, far better than dropping someone onto a Product Page in the store (there are just too many choices in the store to look at and ponder).

the odds of you being able to port to a competing solution, one that you're not deeply familiar with is odd.

How so? I'm only dealing with a handful of products, customization on the backend doesn't scare me too much. I'm all ears though...

but unless you do it all yourself it would cost far more than a few hundred

Ahh, there's the rub...

You're right, I'm doing it all myself, I'm a coder for a living with a degree in CS from the late 1980's... I have way more time than money right now, and that's what's holding me back - sure if I could find a coder that would take this move on, and upgrade the modules with it for a few hundred and I would know it was done right I would run with it... know anyone?

If cost is the true issue, why don't you go the PayFlow Link route for now and have your host set you up with a Dev store on 5.5. You have almost 18 months until the End Of Life on 4.x and if you did the edits yourself in 4.x, there's no reason you can't also do it all yourself in 5.5.

Once the 5.5 store is ready to go, you export the old order history and import it into your new store and flip the switch.

Yes! I'm really intrigued by this suggestion. Are you saying my host can set me up on 5.5 separate from my 4.24 account at no extra charge? If that's a possibility and giving me 18 months to work in all of my hand-coding - I think it's the best suggestion I've heard yet, thanks a million! I just hope my host goes for it... is that how it's working for others making the 4.24=>5.5 transition?

are A LOT more tools on 5.5 to help you increase sales that were never viable on 4.x.

I'm sure there are, thanks again for taking the time to cover the details with me, all of them, I really appreciate it... look for an email from me shortly, I'd love to get your take on if I can fit all of my coding changes into 5.5.

Thank you again - I greatly appreciate your help!
-Brett

[wcw]

Re: EOL of Miva 4.x

You will only have the orders in your main orders database. The brief order data in my order manager only gets moved to a 5x store if you had the 5x module (which I have discontinued when Wombat was released). However, even if you had that data, it is not converted into Wombat as it is not possible. The brief data that was retained in the order manager is not enough to recreate real orders with items, attributes, shipping methods, payments, coupons, discounts, fees, etc. Hence, the only data that can be pulled into the Wombat order status system is those orders which still exist in your store.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: EOL of Miva 4.x

So Toolkit has the 'seal of approval' for Wombat, I wasn't sure as I see the current version at 5.38, should I wait for 5.5 on it Bill?

Yes and Bill's version numbers have nothing to do with ours, so you don't need to worry about that.

Rick, I wonder about this part, I need to build out Single Page Landing Pages that run as Miva Cart pages (no navigation), and I do that now by using Viking Coders and stripping out all of the nav system before the pages is displayed, can I still do that in 5.5? Those pages are separate from my cart, even though the products are the same, it's just that I found single page (no navigation) landing pages convert far, far better than dropping someone onto a Product Page in the store (there are just too many choices in the store to look at and ponder).

Yes you can add all the Page templates you want and do this kind of thing.

How so? I'm only dealing with a handful of products, customization on the backend doesn't scare me too much. I'm all ears though...

I should expand what I meant, you talked of having 20 - 30 modules and what sounded like a custom store with lots of history in it. From my experience in and around this industry for 11 years now, that is expensive to move and maintain, especially if you're paying someone to do it for you.

You're right, I'm doing it all myself, I'm a coder for a living with a degree in CS from the late 1980's... I have way more time than money right now, and that's what's holding me back - sure if I could find a coder that would take this move on, and upgrade the modules with it for a few hundred and I would know it was done right I would run with it... know anyone

I would suggest doing it yourself then since Time is the commodity you can more easily afford currently. Most people who build ecom sites charge anywhere from $80 - $150 an hour, so you would get nowhere with a budget under $4000+

Yes! I'm really intrigued by this suggestion. Are you saying my host can set me up on 5.5 separate from my 4.24 account at no extra charge? If that's a possibility and giving me 18 months to work in all of my hand-coding - I think it's the best suggestion I've heard yet, thanks a million! I just hope my host goes for it... is that how it's working for others making the 4.24=>5.5 transition?

This is precisely what I'm saying. I don't know who your host is, but yes as long as they're a partner in good standing you can do this. And if ECHO isn't hassling you about PA-DSS yet, no reason to switch to PayFlow Link until they start bugging you.

I really appreciate it... look for an email from me shortly, I'd love to get your take on if I can fit all of my coding changes into 5.5.

Happy to do so.

[BrettBGS]

Re: EOL of Miva 4.x

Rick,

Thanks, I appreciate it... just about ready to make the move.

Bill

The brief order data in my order manager only gets moved to a 5x store if you had the 5x module (which I have discontinued when Wombat was released). However, even if you had that data, it is not converted into Wombat as it is not possible.

I'm having a hard time with this... you've always been a 'good guy' hero, but I don't understand why you cannot make a port of Order Manager to Wombat 5.5? I know that we don't have everything to bring over, but I've got years worth of customer data that I stand to lose! Look at Viking Coders, they have a port of their Order Manager, is there any way you will consider porting this to 5.5 even though it is limited data for those who need it? There is obviously still use in just having the Items Ordered, as my customers can review what they ordered previously... I don't care if I lose shipping (I sell services so no shipping), coupons (I don't need to see that history), but being able to lookup previous customers and how much they have spent in the last 6 years or so is valuable... So - what do you say?

Thanks,
-Brett

[wcw]

Re: EOL of Miva 4.x

The data in the "brief" order history is not complete data. It is simply the customer login, product codes (without attributes, price paid, etc), order, tax and shipping totals and tracking number. The only way you saw more data is if the order still existed in the store then you could click the link to see the invoice. It is impossible to port that to wombat orders because the essential files are not there to recreate a complete order. It does not contain customer (ship or bill to) info. It does not have attributes/options. It was intended as a brief history for shipment tracking purposes so you were not supposed to delete orders/batches if you wanted it to be anything more than that. You should still have all your orders and batches so you don't need a port from my module, even if it could be done (which it can't).

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: EOL of Miva 4.x

but I don't understand why you cannot make a port of Order Manager to Wombat 5.5

Look at Viking Coders, they have a port of their Order Manager

Just to clarify something, since Bill is SUPPOSED to be on Vacation...

There might be some confusion about "porting" orders over to Wombat. There is an (almost) entirely new order management system in wombat, and I believe it is being given greater abilities even now. while I don't know all the behind the scenes coding, I would imagine that it is really a radical departure from the way orders were processed before.

Neither the emporium plus Customer and Product admin module, nor the Viking Coders order manager modules, would allow you to take previous order information and integrate it (import it into) the built in wombat order processing system.

If know that Bill's Customer and Product Admin Version 5 module will work fine on a store running wombat. I think he just decided to stop selling it because the new built-in (as in free) wombat order manager is so good, you probably wouldn't need his module, and he probably doesn't want anyone to spend money on a module that they don't actually need.

So, maybe you can ask him nicely if he can sell that module, and you can import your orders into that store, but do understand that there wouldn't be a way to integrate it into the NEW wombat order processing system.

But realize that it would function much the same way as it does in version 4.X - as a SEPARATE order processing system that ISN'T part of the standard Miva Merchant system.

BTW: the new built in Wombat order processing is really nice. If it had the automatic price group function the way the Customer and Product admin does, it would be amazing.

[wcw]

Re: EOL of Miva 4.x

BTW: the new built in Wombat order processing is really nice. If it had the automatic price group function the way the Customer and Product admin does, it would be amazing.

The easy work around for the automatic price group function is to use the Emporium Plus Tool Kit. See #73 at http://www.emporiumplus.com/go/wcw/PROD/1AA/1AA00223 for one way of doing it. Or see #55 for another way. Once you have the total, you do simple conditionals to insert them into a price group.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: EOL of Miva 4.x

BTW: the new built in Wombat order processing is really nice. If it had the automatic price group function the way the Customer and Product admin does, it would be amazing.

Are you talking about when you pick a customer for a phone order, the price/avail groups working?

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: EOL of Miva 4.x

Hi there, Rick:

Are you talking about when you pick a customer for a phone order, the price/avail groups working?

Bill's Customer and Product admin module has a function that allows customers (with an account) to be automatically enrolled in a standard Miva Merchant price group that we set up in advance.

So, we could set up a price group for a 5% discount using the standard Merchant price group function, and then after the customer has purchased a certain amount of merchandise, they are automatically added to that 5% discount price group the next time they order.

Bill's module allows for setting up as many different threshold levels as you want, so as long as there is already a corresponding price group, they can be automatically entered into it.

I am 90% certain that Merchant WON'T do this by default (without the customer and Product admin module), but I have been wrong before.

Because it only works with accounts, I am guessing that you couldn't use the built in wombat phone order through the admin. If someone called in, they would have to give you their account info and you would have to place the order through the storefront, instead of doing it through the back end.

Of course, as Bill mentioned above, there is a work around for stores that have ToolKit installed.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: EOL of Miva 4.x

Just to clarify something, since Bill is SUPPOSED to be on Vacation...

Order History...in the context of an e-commerce application, should ONLY be for assisting customers (i.e., the outside world) with managing their recent orders. IT SHOULD NOT be for managing your business (aka Data Mining.) You'll want to eventually get historical data into another application, or even just access/excel/quickbooks etc.

If you then need to present this information to a customer (i.e., "re-ordering") that data could be pumped back up without having the over-head and headache of managing data that is not relavent to the world. Why you ask, well, if you did that to begin with, we wouldn't be having this conversation.