Online store + CMS

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  • Jaline

    Working on a few projects that involve online stores.

    I'm using Concrete5 with their eCommerce option for one of the sites. It's going pretty well so far.

    Another client is using Big Cartel. He's been having issues having a blog page (with comments by Disqus) within the store. Not very practical in the BC environment. And apparently you can't enforce the "limit 1 per customer" rule. I contacted BC about both of these things and received the "no can do" response, but that they would be working on these for the future.

    This same client's sale had many issues come up because of the number of customers he had accessing the store at the same time to buy items (timed release; and BC's inventory calculator couldn't re-calculate the number of items left in time, and items actually started to fall out of carts). Big Cartel wrote back that they've never had such a massive problem like that before.

    So my question is:

    Does anyone know what store can handle high traffic? Can it be combined with a specific CMS? I'm definitely keeping Shopify in mind but I need to know how robust it really is. And cheaper options would be welcome.

    Thanks.

  • lukus_W0

    I think most decent CMSs should be able to handle purchases using transactional database operations (basically, meaning that when a purchase is made, all the DB operations required to fully complete are made before another purchase is initiated). The fact that this Big Cartel system doesn't operate that way makes it sound like it hasn't been developed properly.

    I haven't got experience using a CMS which is placed under such heavy load. If I were you, I'd ask the question at stackoverflow.com.

    Explain the problem - someone who's more knowledgeable will be able to give you some good advice.

  • Jaline0

    This was their response:

    "When someone adds something to their cart, we check the database to make sure there are items left for them to buy (both in stock and not already reserved), we also do this same check upon checkout to make sure their cart is good to go.

    So if there is 1 left of an item, and someone adds it to their cart, that is entered into the database, and if someone comes later to add that to their cart, we check the database and see there are none left, and they receive a message saying the item is no longer available.

    However, we believe your store was having items added to the cart so quickly that some were happening within milliseconds of each other, and the database hadn't had time to record the first item added to the cart (which takes a few milliseconds itself). This means additional items were added to the cart that shouldn't have been, and those weren't caught until we validated the cart again on checkout. When that happened, it removed those items from their cart but didn't display a message explaining why.

    This would explain why people that checked out with only one item were succeeding, while others that had multiple were not, because those with only one item hit the checkout validation first, while the others took time to add other items and hit checkout later.

    We've never encountered this issue before because we've never seen items added to people's cart this quickly. So I apologize that your customers felt cheated when their items were removed from their cart, but it was just our system correcting the mistake it found from the initial "add to cart" validation failure.

    In the future we will be making some modifications to our system based on this experience to provide better feedback to buyers explaining why items were removed."

    etc., etc.

    So you see the problem.

    • tell them they can lock a record in mysql while it's being accessed, although I doubt it would do you much good : /mikotondria3
    • assuming they use mysql at all. and innodb. myisam can only lock a whole table. and they need to account for the condition in their codeacescence
    • ... condition in their codeacescence
  • lukus_W0

    Hmm.. well - I suppose, it's not really good enough.

    "[..] it removed those items from their cart but didn't display a message explaining why."

    Sounds like a quick fix would be to make sure a message _is_ added explaining why.

    I think this is a problem that's specific to paid-for (non-opensource) systems.

    They have a product which is supported by a small team, and because they have limited resources it's difficult for them to scale their operation as they build up a larger client-base. It's also difficult for them to explore all the relevant concerns of their client-base for the same reason.

    I've heard of similarly disruptive problems with Magento - where issues have been left for months without a reply; because users aren't contributors - and are dependent on the small Magento team to solve the problem.

    This is where (imo) an open-source system provides more benefit. All the people making use of it are generally committed to helping improve the CMS product - and solutions are worked on by the users. There's not so much dependency on a parent company to fix issues.

    • or it's possible they have issues for the opposite reason, everything is distributed and your store doesn't sit on one serveracescence
    • ... one serveracescence
    • interesting idea..... the distributed idea could probably be tested with a dedicated server + test codevaxorcist
  • spot130

    This might be a bit of a departure as it's Java based (open source) but I'm working on system with dotCMS & KonaKart right now which is very robost.
    http://dotcms.com/
    http://www.konakart.com/
    This on a dedicated server with a separate database server can handle very high volumes.

    • huh. TIL Java doesn't run on iPad or iPhone. I 'd always assumed it was just Flash.specioussmith
    • Runs on server side, not client sidespot13
    • server side java can be cool, or rather locked-up depending on environment...vaxorcist
  • Jaline0

    Thanks, I will keep that option in mind.

  • Centigrade0

    Call the guys in Shopify (there are in your O-town). Always very helpful chaps. I use them and I can't complain. The store does have some limitations but good experiecne so far

  • chilamont0

    http://templatic.com/category/ec…
    http://tokokoo.com/blog/2010/09/… (dig into the demo from there)

    one click install with wordpress

  • vaxorcist0

    The row locking concurrent order and inventory management is something that separates big budget/big volume e-commerce from lunch-money solutions....

    Oracle's back end made it's name on this sort of thing some time ago, others have caught up, but I'd be curious who these days...

    • ...there MAY be some good open-source system that rocks ... haven't done e-commerce like this for yearsvaxorcist
  • vaxorcist0

    There was something at UW-Madison that we called the "fuzz test" where you write a test script to bombard your system with what looks like millions of users all at once typing random shit and clicking on random links.... and then see what happens.... There are probably some test scripts like this already out there you can use before your system goes live... I am VERY surprised that BigCartel hasn't done stuff like this if we did stuff like this in college....

    • As you said yourself, "lunch money solutions." Ship, ship, ship, and test later. That whole BS web 3.0 mentality has fucked software.dMullins
    • software.dMullins
    • stability.dMullins
  • dMullins0

    Concrete5/BigCartel are the problems to begin with. When you go cheap/free, you get what you pay for.

    Try some of the more standardized/fully-supported/non... source options. Sometimes it's worth migrating over to save yourself this kind of headache:

    • Magento
    • PinnacleCart
    • Lemonstand (haven't used it yet, but looks killer)

    If you're on the .NET side of things:

    • Sitecore
    • Silverstripe
    • Kentico5

    • open source. The Qube seems to be messing up posts today, eh?dMullins
    • it's funny you say that, then link a bunch of things built on free / open source technologies. which is it?acescence
  • Jaline0

    Hmmm...I believe the client will end up choosing something free or on the cheaper side, but thanks, I will relay some of this information to him.

    What CMS has a great tagging system to easily search through posts? I'm sure this would be a standard plug-in or native feature in most, but I want to make sure.

    I'm still very open to more suggestions regarding online stores.

    • Make sure you have a FAST server with TONS of ram, dedicated box may really helpvaxorcist
  • Jaline0

    Good news: he's up for paying monthly fees and a change in hosting.

  • Jaline0

    I need the store to be fully customizable (custom template) and that the process is relatively painless. I know it's not that easy to find, but perhaps Shopify or Foxycart are the best to go with in that type of situation. Calling some places soon to see what's up.

  • Ruffian0

    LemonStand looks pretty good: http://lemonstandapp.com/design/…

  • spot130

    ^ I'm going to install LemonStand and give it a spin, looks interesting.

  • adev0

    I just installed LemonStand. This is actually really nice. Much easier to figure out compared to Magento, ZenCart, XCart, CubeCart, etc.

    I for sure want to try this out on my next ecommerce project.

  • Jaline0

    Lemonstand looks good, but requires a lot of external development for my client's needs. It's more of an eCommerce site with built-in blogs/pages. Very promising for other projects though.

    I think I'm going to try out Wordpress and Foxycart plug-in to see where it goes. Client seems to like WP quite a bit, and we can always change up FoxyCart if it doesn't work out for us.

  • adev0

    Haha ok doing a bit more looking around.. Lemonstand is missing a few things. Gift Certificates, FedEx shipping, limited gateway support. Might need to wait a bit longer for more features to show up.

  • Jaline0

    I'm currently using http://dukapress.org/ for a site and I really like it. Yes, it's free, but it's quite easy to integrate into a site (with some fiddling, depending on your client's needs). If the next sale is too slow, we'll have to look into a better server for the actual web site to be hosted on.

    And I'm still looking around for something that effectively offers a "limit 1 per customer" option while still being easy (and not bulky) to integrate into a WP site. Duka doesn't offer that limit feature, but I'm inquiring about having someone make a custom plug-in for me (they have great customer service). I tried Foxypress (WP + Foxycart, but you have to add code to individual product pages; I'd rather have that more automated). Shopp is the next step if the client is too particular / not flexible enough about what he wants.