cart features and integration

[Peter]

Hi,
We’re planning to add a shopping cart to our existing site very soon. We have a hosting company already.
I had a look at the Shopsite cart features and would like to get further information, please.

Is it possible to keep some of our existing dynamically (PHP) generated pages (the information ones) and add the cart to our site as a sub-directory as some of those pages are already known by Google?

It seems Google prefers to crawl mainly html pages. I saw that Shopsite can generate product pages in html format. We would like to be able to alter not only the file name, page title and content of each product page, but also to add/change H1 tags, meta tags, alt tags etc. on each page so that each product be SE optimized individually. Also, are there any limitations on using keywords in the product file names? Can all these things be done through the standard cart? If not, are there add-on modules for this?

Is it possible to make changes to the cart thorugh the code directly or has it to be done through the CMS interface only?

Many thanks in advance.

[Jim]

ShopSite generated pages would not interfere with other pages on your site unless you happen to give a page the same file name, in which case ShopSite would over write the page during a publish. If you put your ShopSite generated pages in a subdirectory this would remove that posibility. ShopSite maintains links between pages that it generates so any links to your non-ShopSite generated pages would have to be manually added.

You can specify whatever file name you want for your pages. If you don't specify a file name ShopSite would give the page a generic name like page1.html or product1.html. The layout of pages and products is controlled by templates and the settings for each page and product. The layout and formatting is entirely customizable using the templates. You can create your own templates so pages will look just like you want them to or you can use the standard templates that ShopSite provides.

There is no limit to the number of keywords you can assign to a product. All the features are include in ShopSite without having to buy extra modules.

By "changes to the cart" what do you mean? The layout of the shopping cart screens are controlled by template and you have control of the overall layout using the template. The functionality of the cart itself is controlled by compiled cgis so there is no way to edit the functionality. It is possible to add some functionality through the use of the shipping api and OrderApi if you need a special shipping configuration or you want to do post order special processing of the order data.

If you have not yet tried a demo I would highly recommend getting one and seeing the functionality that is available. You can get a demo at
http://shopsite.com/demo.html
You can get a demo that is pre-populated with data or a blank store so you can start from scratch. Demos last for about 4 days but you can extend the demo by requesting an extension when the warning email comes about the demo expiring.

[Peter]

Thanks for your prompt reply, Jim. I'll have a look at the demo store and see its functionality.

Can the cart be installed on our server or does it have to go through one of your hosting partners' servers, please?

Thanks for letting me know.

[Jim]

Most ShopSite stores are hosted by hosting partners but it is possible to purchase a store license directly from ShopSite to install on your own server. Here is a link to the server requirements

http://shopsite.com/help/9.0/en-US/inst ... ation.html

Stores hosted by partners generally are paid for on a monthly basis with support usually included in the monthly fee. License purchased from ShopSite are usually on an outright purchase basis and support charges are an additional fee either as an annual support contract or per incident charge.

For more information about getting a license for your own server you can fill in the form at
http://shopsite.com/ready-3.html and you will be contacted by a ShopSite sales rep.

You can find a list of ShopSite hosting partners at
http://shopsite.com/partners.html