Help with making purchasing decisions please?

I need help deciding which version of Freeway and actions I need to buy to develop an online shop. (Looking at various help pages I’ve a pretty good idea but need to make sure I’m doing the right thing.) I’m new to Freeway as I wanted an easier than Dreamweaver app for the client to eventually take over site maintenance and now I’m a convert. Yay! I started in Freeway 4 Express but in order to have shopping cart actions (already signed up to WorldPay) and not very straightforward shipping calculations I needed to upgrade to Freeway 4 Pro. Correct? So I bought this with the free upgrade to Pro 5 (haven’t converted the site from Express4 yet). I opted to go with Mal’s commerce because of the actions available and opened an account. I now see that shop actions are available with Freeway 5 Pro AND Express5. Do I still need to buy Mel’s shop actions or is it the same action? Can my client use Express5 to maintain a site created with Pro4? What is the best way to go from here? The site has been kept very simple and easy to use - the only complication arising so far is from shopping cart integration. Actions seems to be the way to go but did I need to upgrade to Pro? Would greatly appreciate the benefit of all your experience with this. Thanks in advance, Neil.

NB. I was test purchasing with some of the featured shops on Freeway site and if on the cart page you hit reload (one of the images wouldn’t load) the purchased item is added and calculated again. Now, you could say don’t hit the reload button but this doesn’t seem right. Does it?


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On Apr 9, 2008, at 10:54 AM, NeilH wrote:

I need help deciding which version of Freeway and actions I need to
buy to develop an online shop. (Looking at various help pages I’ve
a pretty good idea but need to make sure I’m doing the right
thing.) I’m new to Freeway as I wanted an easier than Dreamweaver
app for the client to eventually take over site maintenance and now
I’m a convert. Yay! I started in Freeway 4 Express but in order to
have shopping cart actions (already signed up to WorldPay) and not
very straightforward shipping calculations I needed to upgrade to
Freeway 4 Pro.

Not necessarily. You would if you wanted to use Tim Plumb’s Mals
Actions (which the Softpress Actions are based on, by the way) since
those are for Pro only. Tim’s Actions go quite a bit further than the
stock Softpress Actions, but you might be able to make the stock ones
work for you as well. It depends on what you mean by shipping
calculations here.

Correct? So I bought this with the free upgrade to Pro 5 (haven’t
converted the site from Express4 yet). I opted to go with Mal’s
commerce because of the actions available and opened an account. I
now see that shop actions are available with Freeway 5 Pro AND
Express5. Do I still need to buy Mel’s shop actions or is it the
same action?

Not the same, but depending on your needs, the bundled version might
be enough for you.

Can my client use Express5 to maintain a site created with Pro4?

No. Pro adds a number of configuration options and layout options
that are simply missing in Express. For that reason, as well as
honest profit motives, you cannot open anything except an Express
document in Express.

What is the best way to go from here? The site has been kept very
simple and easy to use - the only complication arising so far is
from shopping cart integration. Actions seems to be the way to go
but did I need to upgrade to Pro? Would greatly appreciate the
benefit of all your experience with this. Thanks in advance, Neil.

NB. I was test purchasing with some of the featured shops on
Freeway site and if on the cart page you hit reload (one of the
images wouldn’t load) the purchased item is added and calculated
again. Now, you could say don’t hit the reload button but this
doesn’t seem right. Does it?

Nope. Although I am hard-pressed to say what you could do about this.
Reload is not a browser event that you can trap in JavaScript, as far
as I know.

Walter


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On 9 Apr 2008, at 16:15, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

Nope. Although I am hard-pressed to say what you could do about this.
Reload is not a browser event that you can trap in JavaScript, as far
as I know.

What about those ‘Are you sure you want to send a form again’
messages; would they apply here?

best wishes

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com


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Hi Neil,

Neil here!!

I was asking these questions a year or so ago when I was still using Freeway
3.5. As Mals was included with Freeway 4.0 I upgraded and produced this
very simple little eShop site for a lady in Wales who produces home made
preserves and marmalades as a little cottage industry - as I have mentioned
once or twice before, sorry guys - and while I was extremely pleased with
the end result as a very “pretty” little site, my client is delighted that
she has in fact sold a fair few jars of jam and marmalade directly from her
WebSite. Have a look here. http://www.mirandas-preserves.co.uk/ There was
some amount of a learning curve using Mals, but once you’ve registered it’s
fairly straightforward, and even the Shopping Cart page can be customised as
you can see.

So far I haven’t updated Miranda’s with Freeway 5, but while any Site
opened by today’s version of Freeway will open yesterday’s version, any
changes made would only be saved in today’s version, and I can’t answer as
to whether Express 5 will successfully open Pro 4. My understanding of Mals
is that it is included as part of the Action suite in Freeway, and there is
no additional fee to pay, unless you upgrade Mals itself to his pro version,
which allows of a greater variety of payment options amongst others.

HTH

Neil Carter
Oxford UK

On 9/4/08 15:54, “NeilH” email@hidden wrote:

I need help deciding which version of Freeway and actions I need to buy to
develop an online shop. (Looking at various help pages I’ve a pretty good idea
but need to make sure I’m doing the right thing.) I’m new to Freeway as I
wanted an easier than Dreamweaver app for the client to eventually take over
site maintenance and now I’m a convert. Yay! I started in Freeway 4 Express
but in order to have shopping cart actions (already signed up to WorldPay) and
not very straightforward shipping calculations I needed to upgrade to Freeway
4 Pro. Correct? So I bought this with the free upgrade to Pro 5 (haven’t
converted the site from Express4 yet). I opted to go with Mal’s commerce
because of the actions available and opened an account. I now see that shop
actions are available with Freeway 5 Pro AND Express5. Do I still need to buy
Mel’s shop actions or is it the same action? Can my client use Express5 to
maintain a site created with Pro4? What is the best way to go from here? The
site has been kept very simple and easy to use - the only complication arising
so far is from shopping cart integration. Actions seems to be the way to go
but did I need to upgrade to Pro? Would greatly appreciate the benefit of all
your experience with this. Thanks in advance, Neil.

NB. I was test purchasing with some of the featured shops on Freeway site and
if on the cart page you hit reload (one of the images wouldn’t load) the
purchased item is added and calculated again. Now, you could say don’t hit the
reload button but this doesn’t seem right. Does it?


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I’m going to go into a quiet room now to think about this but I suspect that in the morning I’ll just dive right in and move the site up to Pro and see if the bundled actions meet my requirements. The shipping calculations need to cover different values for weight and value of order so I suspect it’ll get complicated. Although, I know that I do sometimes look for complication where there is none.

Thanks for your help Walter, but I’ll probably post again!


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Hi Neil

My wife’s a marmalade junkie so I’m going to have a closer look at that site! My problem (if it is one) is that the client would like to eventually take over site maintenance so I’m trying to keep everything simple. I thought I could get away with doing it all in Express but I didn’t look too far into the postage and payment limitations.

Neil


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The thing is, you’re not sending a form again – you’re just
reloading the page. There isn’t a trap available for this.

Walter

On Apr 9, 2008, at 11:41 AM, Paul Bradforth wrote:

What about those ‘Are you sure you want to send a form again’
messages; would they apply here?


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On 9 Apr 2008, at 17:36, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

The thing is, you’re not sending a form again – you’re just
reloading the page. There isn’t a trap available for this.

Ah, I see. I thought as it was a commerce thing that it might have
been a form.

best wishes

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com


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That would make sense, but in this case it doesn’t work that way. Too
bad, really, since one of the cardinal rules of form processing is
“Never use GET to do anything destructive.” Otherwise the Google
Toolbar will order everything in your store (or delete everything in
your CMS).

Walter

On Apr 9, 2008, at 12:45 PM, Paul Bradforth wrote:

On 9 Apr 2008, at 17:36, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

The thing is, you’re not sending a form again – you’re just
reloading the page. There isn’t a trap available for this.

Ah, I see. I thought as it was a commerce thing that it might have
been a form.

best wishes

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com


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Hi Neil
If you open a Mals account - free - you can nose about the cart set up and
see the range of shipping options available. Some of it does my head in -
but that is where the set up is - not in the web site or actions - though
of course some of the actions parameters can be used such as price weight
quantity etc.
hope this helps

regards
Brian

NeilH said recently:

I’m going to go into a quiet room now to think about this but I suspect that
in the morning I’ll just dive right in and move the site up to Pro and see if
the bundled actions meet my requirements. The shipping calculations need to
cover different values for weight and value of order so I suspect it’ll get
complicated. Although, I know that I do sometimes look for complication where
there is none.

Thanks for your help Walter, but I’ll probably post again!


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Hi Brian,
I realise my last post lumped two different areas together - FW actions and shop cart shipping calculations. Just my brain in melt down after trying to absorb all this.
And yes, Mal’s cart is free but only up to a point. If you need instant third party credit card payments and shipping calculations (not one postage cost covering all items) you need a premium account. Now, this is not expensive and a lot less hassle for me but, I had to look quite far into the site to find this out and I just wanted to make sure I’m setting the shop up in the right way and not spending needlessly.
I’ve worked in advertising and I know why Mel’s home page is the way it is (no mention of fees, looks like you can do it all free, how do these guys make money?) but you’d feel less suckered into it if they just had a features and price list. I’m happy to pay up - it’s less than £1 a day but it took most of my day to discover that. I’d better get on with some work now. Thanks for all the help, Neil.


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Strike that last post - I’ve just gone back to take a fresh look at Mel’s site and the premium account info is there at the bottom of the second page. I think I’d been looking at other sites, linking from different pages and not realising the premium account info is pretty obvious. Apologies all round.

Neil


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