I am a fairly experienced webmaster about to take on my first e-commerce
site in a big way.  It will essentially be an online catalog of 23000+
products for a local office supply company.  Their suppliers have
provided us with a CD containing what is described as a "huge flat
file" of all their products along with Content Data Structure and
layout specs - but no support or recommendations to help with the
installation.

The only online payment option will be PayPal since they prefer to
invoice their customers.  We're looking for an "easy-to-implement"
shopping cart that can handle such a large product line as well as any
other program or advice you may suggest for this endeavor.

Thanks!

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Clarification of Question by dotw-ga on 20 Dec 2002 17:24 PST

I use Dreamweaver...

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Request for Question Clarification by tar_heel_v-ga on 20 Dec 2002 17:28 PST

Do you have a preference regarding a language such as PHP or Perl? 
Also, are there any other features such as catalog, etc., that you are
looking for?

dotw,

Thank you for your question.  As I am sure you are aware, there are
literally 100's of various shopping carts available.  I have
researched and found what I feel will be best option for you and for
your client.

Dansie Shopping Cart is designed for exactly your needs.  With no
limit to the number of items it will support, it will work for your
customer now an as their offerings grow.  Some additional features of
Dansie:

Thumbnail images of products
Built in search engine
Volume Discount options
Coupon/Gift Certificate feature
Multiple shipping rate options
Cookie or IP address identification
Supports flat file as well as SQL databases
Supports multiple online payment options as well as PayPal.
Plus much more.

I experimented with the demo and found it very easy to navigate.  It
is customizable using standard HTML forms and tags.  Overall, I was
very impressed.  It requires Perl and the price starts at $150.

If you read the testimonials on their website at
http://www.dansie.net/testimonials.html, you will see many satisfied
customers.  Even more impressive, though, is if you do a search on
"Dansie Shopping Cart" there are over 3,000 results returned, a large
majority of which are using the product on their site or are ISPs that
are offering the product as part of their hosting plans.  There are
also many unbiased testimonials.  From
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=dansie+shopping+cart&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=aqvnq4%24ckb7%40news01.netobjects.com&rnum=1
:
"I have been using a cart called DANSIE CART ( www.dansie.net ) for
almost 4
years now. i have never had any problems, well actual one.. but that
was not
the cart. my isp got bought out by another isp ( they say they
"merged" )
and they moved all the sites to a different server. when that happened
it
screwed up my secure server information and i contacted Dansie's tech
support. within no time at all they found the problem and told me how
to fix
it. they have great tech support there. but the cart is very easy to
configure and works great within netobjects. it is a perl script so it
will
run on both unix servers and nt server. you can easily change the
language
file to customize it to any language you want. also for web designers
they
have a mall version so you can run multiple shopping carts for
different
clients. works with MySQL and PHP databases as well as flat database (
all
of which are optional ), but it has a built in search engine, so if
you put
a database online your customers can search for that item. i have over
1000
items online and it works great.

Best of all it supports all sorts of payment options. i personally
accept
visa and master card as well as checks and money orders, but also
Paypal and
the cart is set up where when the customer checks out they can chose
their
choice and if they choose paypal, the information gets sent to paypal
and
boom you get your money ( :) )

there are many more features that i have not mentioned so if you are
looking
for a inexpensive and more important RELIABLE shopping cart, i
recommend you
check them out."

From http://groups.google.com/groups?q=dansie+shopping+cart&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=a4uasj%249or%241%40forums.macromedia.com&rnum=7
"Besy one I've used is at http://www.dansie.net/cart.html. All config
is done
from plain text files. You have complete control over the look and
feel of
the site/cart via HTML."

and from http://groups.google.com/groups?q=dansie+shopping+cart&start=10&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=gn4mutgflu05r54elffpah4fa30cj0oac1%404ax.com&rnum=14
"I'd highly recommend Dansie.  They'll even install for you if you
want.
Dansie Shopping Cart http://www.dansie.net

>Looking for an easy to use but powerful shopping cart 
>program or add-in.
>
>Must be for use with FP of course :-)"

Those testimonials combined with the features, I don't think you can
go wrong.  You can find the script, and additional information, at
http://www.dansie.net/cart.html

Thanks again for your question and if you need any additional
clarification, please let me know.

Regards,

-THV

Search Strategy:
shopping cart flat file paypal
Danise Shopping Cart

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Request for Answer Clarification by dotw-ga on 20 Dec 2002 18:40 PST

Thanks THV - I was actually responding to your clarification request
when your answer came in.  I will take a look at the Dansie Shopping
Cart.  Sounds good.  Please review below and reply if my clarification
changes your answer in any way.  Otherwise, I am happy with the
information you have provided.

--------------------

Re: Perl or PHP -  No preference as I am equally illiterate in both at
this stage.  (Our host does support both, though.)

At the risk of sounding even more inept, I'm not sure what you meant
by "features".  We are only looking for a basic layout and features
for each product such as picture (+ larger image option), description,
ability to customize some orders, quantity and, of course, a shopping
cart.

In case I misunderstood your request, maybe the note that came with
the CD will help:

The CD is organized in two main folders called "Full Catalog" and
"Select Only".  The "Full Catalog" folder is further broken down into
"Complete" and "Changes" folders.  In the "Changes" folder are Add.
Change, & Delete files for each file supported.  In both folders are
files divided into "Flat File", "Images" and "Tables" folders.  The
"Flat File" folder contains a file with all of the data in a flat,
spreadsheet type format.  The "Images" folder contains transparent
.GIF images in two sizes, 75 pixels x 75 pixels & 225 pixels x 225
pixels.  The "Tables" folder contains 7 files providing the same
catalog information as the flat file in a more normalized, relational
database structure.

The "Select Only" folder has the same structure as the "Full Catalog",
"Complete" section, but contains information specific to the items in
the Select Catalog.

All files are tab delimited ASCII text.

File layouts are attached.

Thanks again...

---

Clarification of Answer by tar_heel_v-ga on 20 Dec 2002 18:46 PST

dotw..

You "illiteracy" in Perl gives even more reason to go with Dansie in
that you don't need to know Perl AND they will even install it for
you, for a fee of course, though minimal.  Regarding your flat-file
database, you can configure Dansie to accept the layout of your flat
file database, so it won't be a problem at all.  I think we have found
the one for you!

-THV

I am no longer "happy" with the answer.  This was my first time using
Google Answers and I thought it would be expert advice and not just
someone doing the same basic searches I had already done.  I gave a
favorable rating because, at the time, I felt it was my fault for not
being clearer and I didn't want to be a "pain".  After sleeping on it
and based on what I found out about the "recommended" program (see
below), I am requesting a refund.

Reagarding: "If you read the testimonials on their website at
http://www.dansie.net/testimonials.html, you will see many satisfied
customers.
-- The first site to make a recommendation is "...shut down for
remodeling"
-- The second recommendation ( http://www.stormerwebdesign.com ) is
actually Dansie themselves!  I checked WHOIS for dansie.net and their
tech contact is the exact same person who wrote the testimonial!!!
-- The third recommendation is by a company that is out of business.

Regarding: "Even more impressive, though, is if you do a search on
"Dansie Shopping Cart" there are over 3,000 results returned..."
-- That is because Dansie REQUIRES that their name and link to their
website be on every single page of the cart.  Of course their name
will come up thousands of times!  Also, I don't want my customer
seeing how much I paid or where I got it from!

Regarding: Other testimonials...
Read, for instance, http://www.cgi-resources.com/detail/01711.html
-- Not a rating higher than 1/2 star (out of five) for all of 2002!

There's more if you need it...

To sum up, I think Google Answers is a fantastic service and the
person attempting to help last night probably felt they were really
helping us, but in retrospect this was not the "Advanced" assistance
we were looking for and would appreciate a refund.

Hello dotw-ga 
if you go with the Perl and the flat file option, you may want to test
out the performance as flat file databases tend to creek and groan at
around 15,000+ entries. If you could port your flat file data from the
CD into the Dansie MySQL option using PHP, performance will be better.
Seasonal wishes,
lot-ga

Thank you lot-ga.  That's more the kind of assistance I was hoping to get.