[thelist] Miva Merchant?

[Stuart Young]

My first gut reaction is avoid MIVA like the plague.

The main problems with MIVA are:

   - It is closed source and it is often difficult to add or change
   anything.


   - Many of the standard things that you would like to add to your store
   turn out to be MIVA modules, each of which costs 100s or 1000s of dollars to
   purchase. For example say you would like to have a breadcrumb trail, well
   this is an extra MIVA module you will have to purchase. Or perhaps you would
   like to have a mini "your shopping cart contains" box on every page. Again,
   this is an extra MIVA module you will have to purchase.


   - It requires a MIVA server software (as well as the store software)
   which means you are restricted as to which host you can use and you have to
   pay server licencing fees (as well as store software licencing fees).


   - The architecture of the admin system is rather difficult to find
   your way around. I had to prepare Word documents with screenshots to remind
   myself where to go to change things, (let alone tell the client where to
   change things if they are editing the site).


The MIVA sites I have been involved with use hostasaurus.com as the MIVA
host and they do seem to be good. It's only the software I have a beef with,
not them.

cheers

-- 
This is the gmail account of Stuart Young
Pt Chev, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand