In the moment I'm testing Xoops. Task: Replacing my old shop LibriVita (ASP based) by a PHP based shop. The problem I see is to convert the Access DB to SQL
It can be painful when switching shopping carts. I always try to let people know that free shopping carts can be great but they should keep in mind where they see their business going in the future and base their cart selection on that so they wont have to go through the painful process of switching later.
Most shopping carts come with the ability to import and export products to either an xml file or flat file that is seperated by a designated character like a comma, tab, etcetera. If your shopping cart allows you to export your users and products you will be off to a great start. This is usually a cleaner way to do it rather than getting into the SQL. Exporting the lists from the old cart and then using a spreadsheet you can fine tune your export if you want to change some products, categories or whatever. Once you're done there you can import your new lists in the new shopping cart.
If you decide on using the SQL method you will have to know the table structure of both shopping carts and SQL of course. Not particularly bad but not as easy as export and import. :)
Thanks for your opinion. You're very right that it can be painful. But I think I'm in a good position. I know my Access-Database very well. So I'll change my product table (renaming fields, changing the field positions, adding fields) to meet the requirements of the sql table. Then I export the modified Access table to CSV and import this to the SQL table. Small tests were OK. The only problem will be the categories (I need multiple). But I think I can procede in the same way. The PHP Shop I try to use ist 'Virtuemart' - it meets my requirements completely. Do you know some better shop (open resource)? The main need is to place a product in different categoeries at the same time.
Thanks for your opinion, Uwe
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It can be painful when
It can be painful when switching shopping carts. I always try to let people know that free shopping carts can be great but they should keep in mind where they see their business going in the future and base their cart selection on that so they wont have to go through the painful process of switching later.
Most shopping carts come with the ability to import and export products to either an xml file or flat file that is seperated by a designated character like a comma, tab, etcetera. If your shopping cart allows you to export your users and products you will be off to a great start. This is usually a cleaner way to do it rather than getting into the SQL. Exporting the lists from the old cart and then using a spreadsheet you can fine tune your export if you want to change some products, categories or whatever. Once you're done there you can import your new lists in the new shopping cart.
If you decide on using the SQL method you will have to know the table structure of both shopping carts and SQL of course. Not particularly bad but not as easy as export and import. :)
Best of luck to ya!
Thanks