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Top DNN Ecommerce Modules 

Posted on Wed Mar 14, 2007 by Tom Kraak
In: DotNetNuke, Ecommerce, SEO | 274 Comments

Sorry, I know this is mean, but the above title is pure search engine bait to help jump-start a discussion on the topic of running a shopping cart in DotNetNuke.

In my humble opinion, DNN and ecommerce is still a marriage made in hell.

Major players such as CATALooK.netStore and Portal Store are plagued by complex install and upgrade procedures, poor documentation and lackluster support. I like to argue that none of the currently available shopping cart modules enable you to professionally run an online store even if you only offer a handful of products.

The prevalent problem I see is that all of these solutions have been architected by programmers instead of marketers. While these modules may function as advertised, shoppers are confronted with lengthy checkout processes and a subpar user experience overall. For instance after adding an item to your card, by default CATALooK refreshes the page instead of showing the contents of the cart on a separate page. Usability shortcomings like these cause a great number of abandoned carts and have a direct impact on the bottom line of the store. Further problems arise due to the ignorance towards search engines. Portal Store has improved in this area, whereas CATALook is still totally oblivious to Google and company.

There is light at the end of the tunnel though. AspDotNetStorefront is currently working on an implementation for DotNetNuke. From our experience, ASPDNSF is a flexible and feature-rich shopping cart on all fronts. If things come together as planned, this combination of ASPDNSF and DNN should finally deliver the marriage in heaven we’ve all been waiting for.




Comments

Rob Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 7:27 PM Rob says:

The "programmers instead of marketers" problem plagues my every step with DNN and its related components. Funny (and pleasant)to finally see someone else mention it.

Tom Kraak Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 10:05 PM Tom Kraak says:

Yes Rob, hopefully we'll get more marketers into the mix soon.

BrianJ Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 1:33 PM BrianJ says:

What about http://www.emerald-solutions.co.uk/WebWarehouse.aspx

Tom Kraak Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 2:32 PM Tom Kraak says:

Thanks Brian. I was not aware of Emerald Solutions. I'll take a look.

Rob Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 8:54 PM Rob says:

Webwarehouse is the revised DNN store project that was given back to the community a while ago. There's a deailed thread in the Store forum on it. I feel the better alternative for that level of cart right now is to wait for the new core release. It's not far off.

Marvin Kane Tuesday, August 21, 2007 at 3:04 PM Marvin Kane says:

Speaking of the new core release, it looks as though the core store module is available for download. Tom, any thoughts on this module? Does it address the marketing problems you referred to earlier? Is it worth using?

Tom Kraak Tuesday, August 21, 2007 at 3:11 PM Tom Kraak says:

I have not been able to look at the latest release of the store project yet, but hope to do so in the next week or so.

Rob Wednesday, August 22, 2007 at 6:32 AM Rob says:

And to update this thread a little further.. Emerald turned out to be developing a commercial version of their module and that was looking excellent in the first RC, but is now back in development after much feedback. Another new one turned up in the announcement forums recently under the name Ali Commerce or similar. That is also undergoing a lot of additional devlopment after much forum feedback. Both of these lower mid-range carts look very promising I think.

Tom Kraak Wednesday, August 22, 2007 at 9:01 AM Tom Kraak says:

Thanks for these additions Rob. I've seen them announced myself and they do deserve a closer look.

Jeff Sunday, October 07, 2007 at 11:16 PM Jeff says:

The Core store module is showing signs of promise and may very well be released within the next month. If you know of the release tracker on DNN, check it out. It has also been recently blogged on DNN showing some feature comparisons. All this said, it still won't be a robust ecommerce solution but well suited for entrepeneurs, personal websites, and perhaps small businesses.

Tom Kraak Tuesday, October 09, 2007 at 11:19 AM Tom Kraak says:

Thanks for the update Jeff.

I've read Will's latest post over at the DNN blog and I'm looking forward to what the new "core store" team came up with.

AliCommerce Monday, November 05, 2007 at 7:02 PM AliCommerce says:

Thank rob for mentioning us here. We released Alicommerce 1.0 final a couple of weeks ago. Please take a look at it and let us know what you think. Here is url:
www.alicommerce.com

Thanks,

Frank

Rob Monday, November 05, 2007 at 8:10 PM Rob says:

Hi Frank, It has certainly turned out to be an excellent product from what I've seen, and I was was very much looking forward to its release, but I'm afraid that the final pricing and feature structure effectively killed it as an option for my services. I do however think it's probably the best cart out for people who are building one-off mid-range carts. I'll detail my own service scenario to you in an email if you think you might be able to offer further pricing variations in future.
Also, a note about the Emerald cart for everyone reading the thread.. after a good release candidate and loads of feedback provided, it went awol.. I don't know where or why, but it's a shame because it was looking like a very good low to mid range cart.

AliCommerce Tuesday, November 06, 2007 at 3:02 PM AliCommerce says:

Rob, I'd like to know your option on pricing. Please contact me at fwang@alicommerce.com. Many thanks, Frank

Tom Kraak Wednesday, November 07, 2007 at 9:31 PM Tom Kraak says:

After talking to my good friend Mitchel Sellers here at OpenForce 07, I recommened AliCommerce to a client and will implement it in the next week or so.

Keep an eye on this blog for a review of the module.

Jeff Saturday, November 10, 2007 at 8:26 PM Jeff says:

Just an update that I'm sure everyone is aware of. The DNN Core Store module has been released for a few weeks now. One of the most interesting aspects of the new release is the flexability of skinning. Although it still has it's querks and is by no means a strong e-commerce candidate, it is well suited for starter sites and a good intro for small biz websites as previously stated.

Luca Thursday, January 31, 2008 at 3:12 AM Luca says:

A very good e-commerce for DotNetNuke (DNN) is SDN Store, easy to set up and not expensive at all, you can find it at: http://www.sysdatanet.com . It has an excellent Guided Tour: http://www.sysdatanet.com/sysdatanet/dotnetnuke/GuidedTour/Default.aspx with a very popular forum: http://www.sysdatanet.com/forum where they reply almost instatntly. Most of the features are already built, however they can always add new ones for you, including installation and configuration at very competitive prices.

Emerald Solutions Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 4:03 PM Emerald Solutions says:

For those wondering we (Emerald Solutions) have now released eTailer, which is the new ecommerce module refrred to above.

It's available for purchase from our site (where there is also a full demo). Take a look and give your thoughts - all feedback is welcome.

http://www.emerald-solutions.co.uk/etailer.aspx

Tom Kraak Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 6:42 PM Tom Kraak says:

Since all eTailer products live on one page (URL), how do you ensure that your catalog get's spidered and indexed by Google and company?

Anthony Thursday, October 16, 2008 at 12:29 PM Anthony says:

If you are looking for AspDotNetStorefront please friends look somewhere else, is the worst support we ever had in the live of our company and make us lost a lot of money... we are looking for another dnn solutions like the ones mentioned here but AspDotNetStorefront definitively is NOT an option!

Truthstone Saturday, October 18, 2008 at 3:43 PM Truthstone says:

Ok, this thread is now 1 year old. So what is the consensus? Which one is the best DNN e-commerce solution available? (We will need the source code either way)

Tom Kraak Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 5:01 PM Tom Kraak says:

Since I still have not been able to publish my review of ASPDNSF, I’ll give you my bottom line here.

My initial excitement and public support for ASPDNSF has taken some heavy beating lately as I’ve consulted on several real-world implementations of the cart.

Mostly due to the lack of good documentation, you’ll need a comprehensive understanding of DNN and ASPDNSF to make them play nicely together. Integration shortcuts such as separate user profiles make for a lousy user experience. While numerous bugs have been addressed through module updates and patches, advertised key-features such as “Is a DNN Role” and proper PayPal integration are still not working. Ecommerce will never be “easy,” but there is definitely room for improvement here.

Once the setup and configuration pain has passed, it surely is a feature-rich and flexible platform. And to give credit where credit is due, my support calls to the ASPDNSF team have always been answered in a timely and thorough manner.

So what’s the verdict? The only alternative in my mind is AliCommerce, but so far I’ve only dabbled in it and therefore can’t really compare the two. For now I’ll stick with ASPDNSF. What about you?

Steve Friday, October 31, 2008 at 1:48 PM Steve says:

This is a great discussion. I am blown away by the fact that DNN is so great but there seems to be a missing component in eCommerce. Why can't someone create a package as sophisticated as Magento? When I see this system, it makes me want to give up on the MS world and go back to the Linux world.

mark Stevens Tuesday, November 04, 2008 at 4:46 PM mark Stevens says:

we're only sticking with ASPDNSF because we're basically stuck. they are another great example of programmers who could use a marketer. Their condescending geek speak for support is hardly helpful and the fact that there is no phone or chat support makes paying for the support package almost worthless. sure it's feature rich, but it's not user friendly on the admin or end user side. Expect endless headaches unless you are an expert programmer...and if that's you, write your own cart.

Rob Tuesday, November 04, 2008 at 8:44 PM Rob says:

I'm 3 years into DNN now and am still using PHP carts for ecommerce. It was great to see a flurry of cart module activity this past year, but the net result is that there is still no cart option in my DNN system. If eTailer was visible to Google I'd be using that for something small, and if AliCommerce had a workable and reliable license I'd possibly use that.

Dwayne Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 2:14 PM Dwayne says:

I bought ASPDNSF 20 months ago for three reasons: DotNetNuke, DotNetNuke Marketplace and VISA PAPB compliance. To this day, I have not been able to get ASPDNSF working properly or reliably even with the source code. It is just one problem after another.

Condescending tech support is an understatement. Just read the forums to see the attitudes of the ASPDNSF staff. I have never seen so much finger pointing by any support team.

Yesterday I posted an issue and was told to issue a support ticket. I did so and discovered my forum thread was deleted within hours. It exposed a flaw with DNN integration with a security related side effect. In my support ticket I explained how to reproduce the disclosure in simple steps only to be told not to do so.

The staff really need to lighten up and understand the people who are attempting to use their product are trying to help them as well.

Do not be teased by the marketing efforts either. You will not find DotNetNuke or DNN in any testimonial on the DNN marketplace. From what I have gathered from the forums I can only find a handful of live ML/DNN sites other than marketplace.dotenetnuke.com (Note that the product review feature on marketplace does not seem to work.)

Announced September 26, 2006
http://www.dotnetnuke.com/News/MediaReleases/AspDotNetStorefrontforDotNetNukeMarketplace/tabid/993/Default.aspx

As of today, the most current version of ASPDNSF (7.1.0.1) simply does not work with any version DotNetNuke.

Robert Anderson Friday, November 14, 2008 at 4:41 PM Robert Anderson says:

Contact our support. comments here don't seem to match our own feedback, but we'll dig into it. Also this site is a perfect, world-class example of e-commerce running just fine on ML/DNN: http://www.zonediet.com

VERY nicely done site...

Dan Van Kuren Friday, November 14, 2008 at 5:41 PM Dan Van Kuren says:

Agreed. This is not typical behavior. Our support team is made up of highly qualified individuals who take a lot of pride in their work, and work very dilligently to get issued resolved in a timely fashion (well above industry standard). Regarding the application not workiing in any version of DNN, that is incorrect, unless you have some kind of third party module that is interfering with the installation. We've probably installed 7.1.0.1 internally 20 times this week ourselves, and have many customers running that release successfully.

erik Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 11:56 AM erik says:

Has anyone integrated the non dnn module version of ADNSF into dnn via some SSO method? The DNN module looks like it's full of holes and the demo here is awfull.
dnndemo.aspdotnetstorefront.com

Tom Kraak Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 12:05 PM Tom Kraak says:

@ Erik - not that I know of. What issues did you have with dnndemo.aspdotnetstorefront.com?

David Lee Saturday, December 20, 2008 at 3:50 AM David Lee says:

NevoWeb has just released their e-commerce solution as open source. We've tried to make it as friendly as possible,but the problems of making complicated software simple always prove to be difficult. But NB_Store is free and you can use it as you like.

You can find it at:

http://www.codeplex.com/NBStore

Rob Saturday, December 20, 2008 at 4:21 AM Rob says:

I can't wait to test your store and give you feedback David. It looks like it'll nicely fill the gap that eTailer very nearly did. I'll have to wait until January at this point though.

Tom Kraak Saturday, December 20, 2008 at 11:09 AM Tom Kraak says:

@ David Lee -- thanks for making a note here. I'll take a look myself.

David Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 11:37 AM David says:

If you are looking for a great DNN shopping cart that is easy to use check out the Smith Shopping Cart Module(www.smith-consulting.com). We have been adding new features each month. The next release will have the following: 1) Add a user to a custom role after purchase. 2) authorize.net recurring billing 3)Enhanced coupon feature to allow percentage discounts. And many other cool features

Abdu Monday, February 02, 2009 at 12:17 PM Abdu says:

Tom: I don't know what blogging software you're using but comments without timestamps is just bad. I have no idea how "fresh" these comments are. Yesterday or a year ago? So I have no idea how old the issues mentioned here are.

Marketers don't make good user friendly software. People who are knowledgeable in user experience and usability do. Marketers are interested in selling software and many don't even know how their software works!

Tom Kraak Monday, February 02, 2009 at 1:03 PM Tom Kraak says:

Thanks Abdu, you are absolutely correct in regards to the missing time stamp for comments. It baffles me why I never noticed, but it's fixed now.

Dimitris Papadimitriou Thursday, February 05, 2009 at 3:35 PM Dimitris Papadimitriou says:

@Tom Kraak
You are asking what issues you Erik had with dnndemo.aspdotnetstorefront.com. I don't about him but I cannot checkout! See this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H-k6fn9r78
@everyone
Core Store DNN module currently does not work on DNN5! And they call this a bug! This is not a bug. This is very bad software! See this thread http://tinyurl.com/aut4sf.

Somehow I'm convinced that aspdotnetstorefront or any other module is not the problem. Its DNN itself. I'm working with it for many years and every version is unstable in its own way.
To put it in another way, I don't believe there is any other piece of software with a new release every two months!

Tom Kraak Thursday, February 05, 2009 at 4:10 PM Tom Kraak says:

@ Dimitris - as this post including comments has clearly established, ecommerce on DNN is still painful to say the least.

Hats off to the guys that are trying to revive the core store project, but that's the last place I would look to get a professional cart up and running.

Tracy Dryden Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at 11:40 AM Tracy Dryden says:

I think you're giving CataLOOK.netStore short shrift. It can be a daunting to install and set up, but is incredibly feature-rich and powerful. Just about anything you want to do with a storefront, anything you want to sell, and any way you want to sell it can be accomodated. Of course with that much power and flexibility comes complexity, but I think they manage very well. Their support is also first-rate. My emails are usually answered with 2-3 hours. Not bad considering the time zone difference. It's also one of the least-expensive, especially for all the features you get.

Tom Kraak Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at 11:49 AM Tom Kraak says:

@ Tracy - besides features and functionality, what about "skinability?" It is a nightmare to make Catalook look good and maintain the UI across upgrades.

Dax Davis Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 3:04 PM Dax Davis says:

Tom, any chance you can do a new blog post on this topic? I'd love to see what the last 2 years has change in your opinion.

Dax

Tom Kraak Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 3:12 PM Tom Kraak says:

@ Dax - good timing as I just thought about that myself after following this thread on LinkedIn.

Rob Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 8:09 PM Rob says:

Here's a couple years worth of assessments from me in one post:
The core store is going nowhere... great open source effort, but no useful result in years and none on the roadmap. Catalook remains the Titanic behemoth it has always been - massive featureset, great licence, massive dll, frightening install, and slow as pants. I've run it bare-bones on my dedicated quadcore server just to see if it really is as slow as it always comes across, and it is. I think they should trim their featureset down, and employ their skill and experience (and all those providors) in building a new cart from scratch. In the meantime, use a PHP cart for the same functionality and without the dramas. aliCommerce, slick cart, predatory licensing. Storefront, same but worse and it worries me that DNN is basically headed down the same path. eTailer - beautiful little cart, good price, but fatally flawed SEO and not going anywhere fast. Yandestore - this has changed name to DNNShop - needs a proper development strategy, good license. Gumbo's cart - great for selling a handful of items or a service like a B&B. Portal Store, good license, similar experience to Catalook, but without the nice support. Dotnetjedi PP storefront, paypal cart on steroids, multi-store license expensive for what it does, lacks attributes, incredibly antique looking, much more so than catalook and portal store. Smith cart - no payal, no attributes, no point, license soso. And the last one is the one I mentioned some time back and I'm now totally sold on for my own purposes. NB Store hit a hole in one with the first release. Auto image resizing, extensive product attributes, extremely flexible templating, and a true free open source project - like has been going out of fashion in the DNN scene lately. It's not feature complete, but has some essentials already in place that others still lack... and it actually works without any great dramas. None of these carts are as powerful or fast as a PHP cart e.g. Zen Cart, and therefore my sights are set lower for DNN. For me, a DNN cart just needs to be easy to set up, easy to use (image resizing ffs!) and in particular not have predatory licensing or ridiculous activation systems. NB Store takes the cake at this point. I've found no fatal flaws in it, and I'm getting involved to help it along as best I can. If on the other hand I was going to build one cart on one DNN portal system with only one portal, for a well-healed small business, then I would probably give aliCommerce another assessment. Oh, and there's Active Purchase, which started off strong and will make a good one-page cart, but has been totally dead in the water since. So, that's where I'm at with DNN ecommerce. Rob

Tom Kraak Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 6:43 AM Tom Kraak says:

@ Rob - wow, you've actually tested / used all these ecommerce modules?

Could you shed some more light on what you consider "predatory licensing?" Thanks.

Rob Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 8:36 AM Rob says:

Hi Tom,
Yep, I've looked long and hard for a decent ecommerce option for my DNN portal system and have tested most of them first hand apart from Yande, Smith and the Jedi store, which I've only checked out as online demos, and ASP Storefront which I've followed and examined regularly since it was announced - I don't feel the need to test that one locally. In any case, I have spent uncountable hours on these and hundreds of other modules and I have kept records of assessment for all of them. I consider it part of my value-offer and am giving some of that away here.

By predatory I mean a product that attempts to tax my success by passing additional and/or regular costs through me to my clients. It also covers drug-dealerware licencing where the license changes and I face ever-increasing costs with no workable way out of the deal... one moment you have a portal license, one patch later and you're facing the cost of a dozen licenses every 6 months. I've had this type of experience with several DNN modules and am now on alert for this behaviour. The "taxation" issue is when a seller considers my clients to be their clients and attempts to bill me for them. As far as I'm concerned, when I buy a product, and I don't pass the code and the license onto another person, then I'm the only customer in the equation. There's only one copy of the product, I'm the only person getting support, and whether I have 10 people or 1000 people using and browsing my portals has no relevance. The DNN multiportal abilities give suppliers the idea that they are selling a product many times over, when in fact they are not.

I had pretty much given up all hope for a DNN cart to suit my portal and then, on the very day I removed eTailer from my system, I stumbled across the NB Store announcement, it took me a while to give it a good going over, but now I'll recommend it as a first stop before moving onto to any others. I hope that helps some people with their decisions.
Rob

cameron burgess Monday, May 04, 2009 at 3:05 AM cameron burgess says:

i'm a marketer as well as an owner of a dnn development and hosting firm. we have fundamentally given up on using dnn for ecommerce at the moment - despite having built over 200 websites on dnn in the past three years.

we reached a point where the lack of user friendly, well supported, inexpensive but functional AND design friendly options left us frustrated.

we got tired of forcing a compromise between design and functionality, and pretty much just wanted something that would work out of the box without an inordinate amount of pfaffing about.

so we gave up (although, admittedly, we live in hope)

the promise of DNN won't be fulfilled until somebody, somewhere, gets their head around this.

thanks rob for the comprehensive breakdown - we've tested almost all of these modules as well, and for now, we're building dedicated ecommerce sites on another platform altogether (although we somehow managed to miss NB Store, and based on your recommendation, will be checking it out).

Tom Kraak Wednesday, May 06, 2009 at 10:18 AM Tom Kraak says:

Thanks for chiming in Cameron. "Tired of forcing a compromise between design and functionality" hits the nail on the head.

Rob Wednesday, May 06, 2009 at 8:09 PM Rob says:

I just realised I forgot to add Sysdatanet store to the list. This has been around for quite a long time now. I had made 3-4 attempts to check it out, but too many red flags were raised whilst reading the online user manual. I'm also not keen on stores that make use of dozens of modules and pages like this and like Catalook. If it has more than half a dozen modules then something's wrong. I was reminded about this cart after seeing this post in the DNN forums http://tinyurl.com/d5v4zo

Cameron, just a note about NB Store.. it's not going to compete with a dedicated non-DNN cart, but for my, generally low, DNN requirements it is shaping up to be just the stuff. In my view, if a site operator can use eBay or MySpace, they should be able to use my websites as well. That fails the very moment the person has to learn how to resize images in a separate application.

David Thursday, May 07, 2009 at 4:58 PM David says:

Smith Consulting offers a great cart thats very user friendly to use. We just recently added support for Paypal PayFlow Pro gateway and product variants like size and color. Our cart is very competively priced at 99 for unlimited portals on a single server. Check out our demo site at www.airsoftguns360.com. For more information contact www.smith-consulting.com

Allan - Emerald Solutions Wednesday, June 03, 2009 at 7:19 PM Allan - Emerald Solutions says:

Rob,

eTailer is now up to version 1.0.7, and you'll be pleased to know that an option for disabling the AJAX (and hence making eTailer SEO friendly) is the top feature in development for 1.0.8.

If you contact me, either though our support forum (http://www.emerald-solutions.co.uk/Forum/) or directly via email (http://www.emerald-solutions.co.uk/Contacts.aspx) we can cover off any other issues that you might have.

I'm very open to feedback on eTailer from any potential clients. While the primary goal of eTailer is ease of use and simple configuration, I'm very much in favour of adding functionality to address the flaws that you and others see as fatal.

Kind regards,
Allan

Rob Friday, June 05, 2009 at 6:12 AM Rob says:

Allan, that's great news about eTailer. I'll drop you an email with a couple of items that would really help the cart along.

And David, that's also great to see you've now got product attributes in your cart and an excellent licence to boot. I'll get in touch and check it out in more detail.

Pedro Friday, June 12, 2009 at 8:04 AM Pedro says:

Hi Rob,

Thats good to hear your advice you seem to be have a lot of knowledge in this matter. I'm definetely going to check NB store for my websites.

Anyway do you think ecommerce platforms such as magento or oscommerce are so much better than any option for DNN? In a way that it is worth the effort of having 2 platforms for one website (DNN for CMS part and eg: Magento for the shop)?

Cheers,

Rob Friday, June 12, 2009 at 10:26 AM Rob says:

Hi Pedro,
I can't pretend to have any great expertise in the field. however, the time and effort spent investigating carts has given me more experience with it than I ever wanted to have.

I'm not at all a fan of giving a customer different systems to run their website, and would probably try and assess (and predict) the client's needs more carefully. Store owners often have grand ideas about building large websites with lots of content, but at the end of the day, they're hard-pressed to do any more than update products and fulfil orders.

This may seem over-simpliflied, but it covers my audience:

Level 1: Fancy CMS
Level 2: Fancy CMS and simple cart
Level 3: Fancy cart and simple CMS
Level 4: Fancy cart and fancy CMS

1 is DNN
2 is DNN and NB_store (possibly eTailer in a future release)
3 is PHP cart (using zencart now)
4 is not on offer and I can't see it being offered any time soon.

Pedro, in my view, your suggestion for using two systems should only be considered if the client qualifies as level 4 in that list. I'll detail each type here and then bring it up again.

Exactly what makes a cart fancy and a CMS fancy is up to you to define, but for me it is as follows:

Simple CMS: Basic wysiwyg editing of text and images on pages that are essentially static.

Simple cart: Secure off-site payment processor (PayPal), Product attributes (option/variables), integrated image processing, shipping options, specials, tax, email-only order option, registration-optional checkout, and in the case of DNN, a successfully integrated account profile. Must be able to be used by anyone who can click around facebook or eBay. Must not require external apps for prep-work (images).

Fancy CMS: Defined by a requirement for a particular functionality- This could be anything from Property Agent to Active Social to Sigma Pro, or it could have to do with secure membership management or language requirements.

Fancy cart: Extensive integrated payment processing options, SSL, pricing groups, coupons, vouchers, complex shipping options, shipping zones, shipping processor, promotional tools, data export for accounting as well as integration with other selling services. this list goes on.

Now... if a client needs a complex cart, then try and figure out if they also need a complex CMS...what particular requirement made it so?

If on the other hand they need a complex CMS, then do they also need a complex cart..and which particular feature made it so?

If you can get good answers for these questions then you may very well be able to make a case for providing two apps.

And yes I do think apps like osCommerce (in the form of offshoots like zencart) are better in just about every way. This is based only on experience with a good dose of opinion, not because I want them to be better.

Hope that helps.
Rob

Pedro Saturday, June 13, 2009 at 7:59 AM Pedro says:

Thank you for the explanation.

It seems that I found the first barrier with NB Store as I can't have credit card payment option. Can someone confirm if this is right?

Thank you

Rob Saturday, June 13, 2009 at 8:31 AM Rob says:

By default it has generic paypal support, which means customers can pay using their credit card at paypal and they don't have to have a PayPal account. I find that works well and it solves (bypasses) ssl and other compliance issues. The cart also has a French or European provider called SIPS.
There are some other providers in development. I'm having DPS/PXPay sponsored by a friend and Authorize.net, E-Way, and one called Paybox are also in development. I understand that Authorize.net just needs some live testing.

Anthony Saturday, June 13, 2009 at 8:58 PM Anthony says:

ASPDOTNETSTOREFRONT IS A PIECE OF CRAP! DONT USE IT! SUPPORT IS THE WORST AND IT LACKS OF ESCENTIAL FEATURES!

Tom Kraak Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 10:20 AM Tom Kraak says:

Easy Anthony! You are certainly entitled to your own opinion, but let's try to keep this discussion as civil and constructive as possible. Thanks.

Abdu Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 11:29 AM Abdu says:

Rob, why do you put SSL as an attribute for a fancy cart? Most of the SSL set up is done on the web server not the cart. All the cart has to do is switch to https for the cc page. Any cart should be able to do this easily.

Abdu Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 11:33 AM Abdu says:

I was never able to check out Portal Store. Only today I noticed that a trial download is available. Before I couldn't find any online demo stores or trial downloads. I contacted the developer twice and he never bothered to reply. I equated his cart with vaporware + crappy customer service.

Also module developers who do not respond to posts on DNN's forums regarding their products are questionable. To me it means they don't care.

Rob Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 8:12 PM Rob says:

Anthony's experience seems to be fairly common in the DNN forums, though it'd be good if had more detail about the missing features. I only examined the spec sheet, the support forums, and the demo of asp storefront and it didn't impress at all for the price. It reminded me of the LaGarde Storefront product I purchased in 98... what a mistake that was... a very average cart, zero unpaid support, and a hard and expensive lesson to avoid activation at all costs.

I also concur with Adbul about the Portal Store experience. I've sent many requests to that developer, both via Snowcovered (which is based on Portal Store I understand) and his website. Not just his cart but also about several other modules he has on offer have great feature lists, but he is simply unavailable. It would obviously be a nightmare to be a customer.

I wouldn't necessarily judge it by responses in the DNN forums however, as the core forum module has been broken (2 years in November - let's celebrate) and doesn't send notifications, but certainly the developer's own support forum and other contact methods should show every post as answered, validated and followed up. This is not always easy to judge in cases like Active Modules where forums are private and posts are simply deleted if they aren't laced in gushing praise, but that's a customer-experience story for another day.

About the SSL... the real point is that the SSL requirement is not in my list under the simple cart specifications. The reason being that it is dead simple to run carts on a multiportal DNN instance if the payment processing occurs off-site (e.g. PayPal, PXPay or similar). This resolves a load of configuration, cost and current and future compliance issues simply by making that one easy choice. Therefore the simple cart option on my list does not specifically have to handle SSL and I and my clients don't have to think about it.

I should add that I run DNN primarily for the operational and cost efficiencies gained by the multi-portal abilities (one IIS website for all portals). If I were running individual applications per website I probably wouldn't use DNN at all, unless I needed a particular module that wasn't available anywhere else... and with carts that is of course quite the opposite situation.

However, I did put SSL in the fancy cart list because I do still provide it as an option in individual PHP carts. ZenCart has a very useful card payment method that accepts the purchaser's credit card details in two sections, then sends one section by email to the store operator and stores the other half in the db. This is an extremely convenient function for retailers who have real stores with stock, but do not use the website as their stock control application. It means that they can accept orders complete with credit card details, and before processing the payment in-store, they can make sure they have the desired items in stock. If they don't then they can get back to the customer and revise the order. Store owners love it and customers have virtually the same buying experience as they would if there were live processing on the site.
I have suggested this functionality in the past to more than one DNN cart developer (aliCommerce, eTailer, NB Store), but it hasn't turned up anywhere yet. Most carts simply offer email orders, but that is not at all the same thing as it moves the transfer of card details onto email or the telephone, and that is not acceptable.

The main point of that very long paragraph is that my version of a 'fancy' cart may require SSL functionality for this or other more conventional purposes, but that my 'simple' cart does not.

Hope that made sense :)

Abdu Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 10:07 PM Abdu says:

Rob, you need SSL for the cc capture page regardless whether you're going to process it immediately or not. The user needs to know they are sending the private info securely to the web site.

I don't understand the purpose of sending part of the cc info through email. What does the store owner do with that half? Is this for security reason so that the owner doesn't save the whole info in the database? If a cart supports a processing system like Authorize.Net, they should be using SSL.

Abdu Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 10:11 PM Abdu says:

Talking about SSL, was anyone able to set up and use a shared SSL for different portals? For cost savings purposes and lack of available ip addresses, I want to use a single cert for different portals but couldn't get it to work. I tried using Sembel's ssl redirect module and also couldn't get it to work. I need to spend more time with it when I have some free time.

Rob Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 10:24 PM Rob says:

Hiu Abdu,

In the case of an offline payment processor like PayPal or PXPay, no credit card information is entered or stored on the site and there is no SSL requirement.

The point of sending half the card details through email is exactly as you've guessed. It abides with rules about not saving the number in the db. The complete number is never known or stored by the system.

And yes, you're entirely correct that any other system where card details are entered on the website must of course use SSL.

The nice thing about using off-site payment pages for simple carts is the simplicity and the ease of use in a single-application multi-portal DNN system. The issue in your next post is the case in point. It gets messy fast, but I'm also keen to hear how and if others are successfully doing it.

Dan Van Kuren Monday, June 15, 2009 at 1:32 PM Dan Van Kuren says:

There are advantages and disadvantages to using hosted payment pages. PCI avoidance is the primary advantage of course. The disadvantage is that the checkout process is not nearly as seamless to the end user, which can lead to confusion and higher abandonment rates.

If I were shopping on www.JohnDoesShoeStore.com, and I clicked the checkout button and ended up on secure.authorize.net, I might be a bit concerned as a consumer, as I have never heard of authorize.net before and wasn't expecting to be on their website, especially to enter credit card numbers. We also see lots of cases where customers get a bit confused (especially in the case of PayPal) and never click all of the way through the off-site checkout process, which leads to the customer not really being sure if their order was placed or not. This hurts your ability to build confidence around your brand.

The last issue with hosted payment pages is complexity. It is often much easier to make a synchronous call to an XML webservice over HTTPS than it is to transfer the entire contents of the customer's cart to some third party web page and hope that everything comes back over the fence eventually. Since the process is async, there is a slightly higher risk of some failure occurring that the store is not aware of, leading to the customer being charged, but the callback failing, and thus the order is never created.

Along the lines of SSL, we really recommend having a certificate regardless. Any time you are expecting someone to enter personal details (account registration, name, address, username, password, etc.) it is becoming commonplace to protect that with SSL. Although it might not be required by a regulatory body, it does help show consumers that your company is taking measures to protect consumers' information.

Dan Van Kuren Monday, June 15, 2009 at 1:58 PM Dan Van Kuren says:

In regards to Anthony's post about AspDotNetStorefront "being a piece of crap" and "lacking escential features" (misspelling copied directly from the post), please send an email with details to my attention and I would be happy to have it investigated. We offer quite a few (hundreds) more features than other DNN-based shopping carts, so I really have no idea what the lack of essential features is, especially considering that we continue to expand the capabilities of the platform.

That being said, it is the most complex DNN application we have seen by orders of magnitude, and was meant for serious merchants with proper resources and expertise. DotNetNuke is complicated by itself without adding half a million lines of shopping cart code to it. If your goal is to take a DNN website (often with little understanding of how it works under the hood), install 30 different third party modules that affect core functionality on it, install AspDotNetStorefront, and have a live website taking orders in three days, please do not buy our product. Likewise, if you refuse to help our support team narrow down issues (that have never been seen before and cannot be reproduced) by setting up a clean sandbox so we can rule out external factors (eg. the aforementioned 30 third party modules), and expect to have complex issues resolved in 30 minutes or less (while you wait on the phone), please do not use our software. Those types of expectations are not realistic, and impossible to meet.

The VAST majority of unhappy customers we have had with the DNN platform had the following in common... Little experience with the DNN platform itself (from a development standpoint), short timeframe (bought the software on Friday and wanted to go live Monday), everything module plus the kitchen sink installed on DNN, and high "cost-sensitivity" with little concept of the actual cost, planning, testing, development, etc. that go into setting up a professional commerce site.

Abdu Monday, June 15, 2009 at 4:16 PM Abdu says:

Dan Van Kuren , Authorize.net is a gateway and the transactions are done through the web server. The user is still in the store and is unaware of anything happening with authorize.net. The browser's url is still the url of the store. That's better than using Paypal where suddenly the user is transferred to their site. That's why you have to inform the user on the page with the Paypal button, that the next page will be a Paypal page and it's only used for payment purposes and that they will be transferred back to the store. That's what makes it very safe for them. The store doesn't can can't capture their financial information.

The advantages of Paypal for the store owner is that Paypal does all the work for them including the fact you don't need an SLL cert (if they don't use any credit card processor. However it's more development work because there's a lot of data transferred between your site and Paypal including the confirmation protocol. Paypal has an advantage to the user because the user controls the payment and they have the assurance that the store owner has no access to their financial info. So there's no chance for credit card abuse and chargebacks.

Yes the fact the browser transfers the user to Paypal's site could be confusing so that's why the store needs to explain it upfront.

Accepting credit cards through a credit card processor and keeping the user in the site gives the store more credibility because it gives an impression that it's a big store and not a mom store put up by someone and they depend on Paypal only.

I know that opening a Paypal account is a lot easier than getting a merchant account with a bank and getting an account with a credit card processor. I have had a Paypal business account for years. I heard they have tightened the requirements for opening business accounts and now require proof of business and such. Do they?

Dan Van Kuren Monday, June 15, 2009 at 4:29 PM Dan Van Kuren says:

RE: "Authorize.net is a gateway and the transactions are done through the web server. The user is still in the store and is unaware of anything happening with authorize.net. The browser's url is still the url of the store."

This actually is only partially true. Most major payment gateways now (Cybersource, Authorize.NET, HSBC, Ogone, etc.) offer both hosted payment pages, and API integrations. Hosted payment pages work very very similar to how PayPal works (the user is taken off of the site to enter their payment information). That is actually what I was referring to earlier, as it makes it easy to do an apples to apples comparison (Authorize.net vs. Authorize.net for instance).

Regarding PayPal, yes, we have been informed by our contact there as well that they will be tightening their requirements a bit (bigger reserve amounts, etc.) due to the risk of fraud from illegitimate merchants.

Also, regarding risk, PayPal has a VERY high fraud rate in our experience. We know of many other merchants as well that do not accept paypal simply due to the amount of fraud.

Dylan Barber Monday, June 15, 2009 at 4:58 PM Dylan Barber says:

Very many years ago i started a thread on this in the old forums (when they were on asp.net) might not have much relevance now but might still apply if anyone wants to read them

http://forums.asp.net/t/717717.aspx?PageIndex=1 (i think this is it)

Abdu Monday, June 15, 2009 at 5:24 PM Abdu says:

What kind of Paypal fraud? I had thousands of Paypal payments and not a single issue. I accept payments where the Paypal user sends me money by email. Not the payment method where they enter credit card information. The only reason I do this because I am an early Paypal user and sending payments by email was the only way Paypal had. I didn't bother to expand my Paypal payment methods because what I had implemented worked fine. It seems it was a good choice.

I am interested to know why Paypal is riskier than using credit card processors.

Dylan Barber Monday, June 15, 2009 at 5:51 PM Dylan Barber says:

Abdu - I would say thats an old argument - in the past there was lots of problems with Paypal and they would kill acounts and sieze all the money in them if their was even a hint of problems - ever since they went legit (bought by eBay) its more like any other processor just better service

IMO

leazon Monday, June 15, 2009 at 6:14 PM leazon says:

I'm hoping either NB_store (prefered) or etailer mature quickly as I think those two modules have the most promise for the majority of DNNer's. Although I'm sure there is a market for the aspdotnetstorefront and Catalook type modules with larger clients.

I had to write mainly in response to Rob's comments about module licensing. While predatory is too strong a word in most cases the direction that licensing/activation is going is not good. Module prices have tripled and in some cases quadrupled in the last 24 months. Granted - the $5.00 - $20.00 pricing of modules available in 2005/2006 was way too low but you add the RIAA-like licensing methods on to the increase in price and the future looks less bright. I don't steal modules and I'm not of the typical opensource mind set that everything should be free but don't make it so hard on me that I want to look elsewhere either. Activation is a serious PITA even for those of us who don't steal modules.

I'm thinking this issue would make a good blog post Tom.

Greg

Dan Van Kuren Monday, June 15, 2009 at 8:24 PM Dan Van Kuren says:

There is nothing predatory (or even close) about our licensing. It takes five minutes or so to create a proper key, and that is it. Unfortunately there are thousands (maybe millions) of dishonest people that would steal our software if it were not enforced (we saw this quite often before we implemented licensing).

Regarding the cost of the license, it is directly related to the support and development cost of the product. We invested many hundreds of thousands of dollars in the ongoing support, development, qa, and documentation of the ML/DNN platform (not to mention costs hopefully soon to be associated with PA-DSS certification). If we charged $99 dollars for the software A) we would go out of business, and it would no longer be available, and B) there would be virtually zero capacity to provide ongoing support for the product.

If you are running a hobby store, or don't use ecommerce as a serious revenue stream, then AspDotNetStorefront ML/DNN is probably not the right product for you. There are less expensive platforms with less capabilities that will do the same job. On the other hand, if you are doing thousands (or hundreds of thousands) in sales every month, we give you the ability to be a serious contender and compete on a level playing field with the big boys. That being said, economics 101 teaches that there is no such thing as a free lunch. You have to make an investment and be realistic in your expectations. If you are going to make millions selling on the internet, then $1,495 for a software license really isn't a bad deal... especially if it saves you three man years of development time trying to write your own commerce engine.

Rob Monday, June 15, 2009 at 8:24 PM Rob says:

I totally agree Greg, prices are sky-rocketing and activation is a looming nightmare.

I have had serious outages caused by several activation systems: 5 weeks spent begging on the Active modules helpdesk while my forum was down, terrible support in the end. Every time I try and buy an Interactivwebs module and activate it, it fails and has taken 2-5 days to get working - also terrible support attitude from them. My system was out of action for a week when I transferred to 64 bit Server 2008, before I finally traced it down to baze's PDF module and then they traced it to their activation system - another huge waste of time for no benefit - at least that guy was apologetic, but still, in any other business these people would be sued, instead, I just have suck it up and act happy. LaGarde's Storefront has caused me days of unnecessary work and site outages the three times I had to move servers over the years - again, with terrible begrudging support (I'm rebuilding that site on NB Store right now and will say nothing good about Lagarde forever more). The whole thing is turning into a mess and hence my strong words about it.

I'm also very tidy and methodical with my system and I maintain detailed records of everything I do. This has helped me track down the problems, but I hate to think of the trouble someone setting this all up on a shared server without good records and procedures will have.

Microsoft and Adobe may very well have the resources to provide long term security in their activation systems, but random home and small business coders buying third party activation tools from more random coders should not fantasize that they do as well.

I just need to clarify that the "predatory" term refers to the way that I would buy a module licensed for the DNN instance with all sub portals, and then find after activation was added that it is now licensed per domain - meaning my customers are all of a sudden the developer's customers.. whether intentionally done or not, the choice was made by the developer and therefore it is predatory. This has happened with every module I own that has gained activation. The per-domain method is highly dubious when there is only one module running and one supported customer: me.

I have to give a rare good mark to Active Forums as this thankfully reverted the limitation for the enterprise version back to unlimited after a few months of what was still a fairly reasonable restriction of 50 module instances and cheap extra ones (but still a change from my original purchase). However, it remains activated and therefore remains the same risk.
In reality I only have three module instances of it in total on my portal, but the fact is, I bought into an unlimited license in the first place.

Ah well :)

Tracy Dryden Monday, June 15, 2009 at 8:40 PM Tracy Dryden says:

unsubscribe

Rob Monday, June 15, 2009 at 8:44 PM Rob says:

Dan is correct about AspDotNetStorefront licensing - it doesn't qualify as predatory in this regard and I wouldn't want anyone to think so.

Rob (ASPDNSF) Monday, June 15, 2009 at 8:56 PM Rob (ASPDNSF) says:

Current ML/DNN customers demonstrate clearly the product we are providing, and the fact it's not a toy e-commerce solution (for DNN):

Subway
Indian Motorcycles
Zone Diet

Take a look...all world class e-commerce operations. If you want a $99 E-Com module, go write one (and give up in 3.4 hrs, after you're already burned $99 in dev time).

This is even BEFORE we add on VISA PA-DSS compliance/certification, which is almost a requirement now, and soon will be. DotNetNuke core team needs to respond to us on that subject, or there will be ZERO e-commerce solutions for DotNetNuke (period). Even our professional solution will go away. Shaun/Joe/Bill/Anyone?

Dan Van Kuren Monday, June 15, 2009 at 9:20 PM Dan Van Kuren says:

There are really only a few ways that you can license/activate products. That is A) by domain, or B) by hardware. We chose to take the domain route as it prevents the kind of nightmares that Rob was talking about (moving servers and knocking your website out for three days). Our staff can also generate keys if required, so provided that you can provide rationale for the switch, and it passes the "sniff test," I don't see any reason for a major licensing-related malfunction. Hopefully commerce providers are not willy-nilly changing domain names.

Abdu Monday, June 15, 2009 at 9:33 PM Abdu says:

Isn't activation a one time thing and once it executed successfully, you're good to go as long as you're using the same version?

The odd thing about DNN module development is that there are just a few free open source ones. Good news for commercial DNN vendors but not for DNN users.

Dan Van Kuren Monday, June 15, 2009 at 9:49 PM Dan Van Kuren says:

Correct. Provided you are using the same domain name, and same version, the software needs to be activated only once.

leazon Monday, June 15, 2009 at 11:42 PM leazon says:

I can't blame developers for wanting to protect their investment and the RIAA comment may have been a bit intense. I'm just saying the activation can be a PITA on the customer end.

Rob Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 8:42 AM Rob says:

This is good - eTailer has just made a comeback with a couple of fatal flaws finally fixed, which is great, but I'm specifically pointing it out in here because I've just noticed it has been put on sale for 23 bucks a copy on Snowcovered for a few days.
It's not as flexible as NB Store, nor as feature-rich as Catalook, but makes up for it in tidiness and shear ease of setup and use. I still wish it had an easier-to-manage portal license but at $23 each I'm not going to complain. (and no I'm not affiliated with eTailer.. I just spent a lot of time with it in the past and am pleased it's back and fixed, and cheap too)

fireworks Monday, June 29, 2009 at 3:28 PM fireworks says:

Good collection on knowledge in this thread. Seeing as there seems to be some very knowledgeable people here I'm hoping someone can help me out.

I have a brick and mortar store. I want to setup branded portals for clients that cannot afford to have a store of their own but would benefit from having the ability to sell directly to their clientele. For example, a user car dealer may not have a garage on site, but would like to sell windshield wipers, floor mats etc. Something like cafepress.com is pretty close to the idea.

I've been looking at various open source .NET (I'm also a .NET developer full time) that might fit my needs but I admit that I'm overwhelmed with the amount of information required to determine of one of them fits. Finding out if the product even does portals/multisite has been difficult due to no standardized terminology.

I've ended up looking at DNN because portals are a core feature with a number of ecommerce modules available. There are open source .NET carts like nopCommerce that look okay but they don't do portals.

Any one have any experience with what I want to do?

DnannyDev Wednesday, July 01, 2009 at 4:17 PM DnannyDev says:

Hi guys,
I do not think you have given CataLook the chance it needs. I have been working on many sites using application and find it very flexible and working really well. The problem is that it is quite complex and needs a bit of learning at the beginning.
The support is very good too. You can not compare it to Ali commerce as the difference is too big, on one side full blown dnn ecommerce solution with great flxibility but complex, on other very simple store application and yes we did use both.
all the best

AlienTechnology Thursday, July 02, 2009 at 6:56 PM AlienTechnology says:

After reading Rob's concerns about AliCommerce's license restrictions, I thought that I'd better read it. I can't find it on their site (even tried Googling license site:alicommerce.com). Now that I've downloaded, nothing there either.

Has someone been sneaking me LSD or is it just not to be found?

Abdu Thursday, July 02, 2009 at 7:23 PM Abdu says:

I got the weekly new releases email from Snowcovered. I noticed in the past two weeks at least two store modules which I don't recognize. Looks like brand new ones.

Maybe someone can review them and post their feedback.

Rob Friday, July 03, 2009 at 9:49 AM Rob says:

@AlientTechnology
I don't want to put anyone off a particular product, but I do want people to look around, even outside of DNN.

I also couldn't see the license on the alicommerce site right now, and Snowcovered seems to be spazzing at the moment, but I think alicommerce would probably be fine if one has a specific need that the product fulfills, and one doesn't run multi-portal, and one doesn't mind the risks associated with product activation, and the budget covers the fee for the full store - which is now essentially $500 USD for one shop unless one falls into the "pay by number of products" trap to try and save a little. They also do a free one with something like 25 products and branding on it, so that's an easy way into it. Alicommerce have a comparison chart on their site that lists the variations.

But always remember that the market is wide open at the buyer's (our) end, and we can shop around all of the alternatives, including non-DNN carts. I hate to sound like I'm hammering DNN and the DNN module scene, but the fact that my php carts have been ticking away flawlessly for three years, some even on a $5 Webhost4life account, is not lost on me. My DNN system on the other hand has cost me thousands to build and operate.

Rob Friday, July 03, 2009 at 10:58 AM Rob says:

@Abdu
One of those new carts will be the re-release of the old Yandestore as DNNShoppe, complete with a brand new look and a much improved image gallery.

The other is probably one that I've been expecting for a while now and that's the Edel Store. Edel has been putting out a catalogue module for quite some time and it seemed sort of obvious that it would eventually gain ordering and payment processing to become a full blown cart.

Quick take on both of these:

Yande/DNNShoppe
As mentioned, this has gained a whole new image.. but it has also gained product and portal restrictions. Anyone who had this on a multi-portal system running a few dozen tiny carts will be facing a rather large bill next time they want to update... and I'm relieved it won't be me. This cart has gone and licensed itself out of all consideration.

Edel Store
This appears to have a special Solpart menu to display categories, as well as a more conventional tree menu and a dropdown. It has a decent range of features, including good import/export support, what looks to be unlimited custom fields, and a 'related products' feature. The image processing is limited to only the thumbnail being generated - store owners will still need to work with an external image resizer. The module badly needs a designer's touch - The layout and finish is simply awful. However the license is good, allowing multi-portal and multi-domain use in the standard module and multi-application in the enterprise version - and no activation worries. The presentation is very rough, but the overall strong point appears to be in the extensive system of custom fields, allowing for a detailed but standardised catalogue to be created. The sort of thing that would suit someone retailing thousands of detailed items... like an electronic parts supplier.

Just a side note.. developer Dave has recently added custom fields to NB Store as well and although I haven't checked it out yet, it may be very similar to what Edel has done.

And another quick note about Smith Consulting's cart.
I've had another look at it since the developer mentioned it again in the thread further up. The license for this is generous with unlimited portals on one server - presumably so long as they are still managed by the same module purchaser. It has quite a few payment gateways, including a manual one that stores the card data for later manual processing. It doesn't appear to support basic PayPal payments however.
In fact, the feature list looks rather good overall; although one weak spot is that there appears to be no image processing at all.. it looks like you have to create thumb and large images offline first. I'm reading the documentation PDF which is also well presented and informative with good detail on how to obtain and configure the payment gateways.
At the very end of the document is a section on PCI compliance and according to Smith Consulting it is compliant. (I recall that the ASP Storefront chap further up told us that DNN was at fault for their cart not being compliant... which seems to be at odds with this cart here)
In any case, this very tidy cart remains one to examine more closely - I can't find a trial version, but perhaps someone has installed it already and can tell us more. There isn't a support forum on the site either, which is a shame.
Rob

Cody Flanagan Sunday, July 05, 2009 at 12:14 PM Cody Flanagan says:

My Take on the Ecommerce offerings..

Great topic guys! Like many of you I have struggled with finding a decent ecommerce solution that is affordable, has a good feature set, is easy to install and easy enough for my customers to use.

I will also echo the comments of several of you who have said that many of the ecommerce packages out there were obviously written by programmers, NOT marketers (or usability experts - Some of them are downright unfriendly and unintuitive - i.e. Catalook).

Marketers know you need to keep the user in the sales funnel, bouncing users to the shopping cart page is a major no-no. At the very least, the site administrator should have the option to disable that feature.

I kid you not, I have tried EVERY ecommerce solution available via SnowCovered and feel i'm in a pretty good spot to offer my personal opinions on some of the more popular ecom solutions:

ASPDOTNETSTOREFRONT - Top of the line, Very professional and very complex and expensive. This would only be an option for customers with a significant budget both for install, configuration and training. Rating: 5 Stars

Catalook - Loaded with features but EXTREMELY difficult to set up and configure. My customers would NEVER figure this out and I sure as heck don't want to have to explain it to them. I know it seems to be popular among DNN developers but I was not impressed. Rating: 2 Stars.


Etailer - Decent low end solution but doesn't have a great feature set. IMO - Missing some of the basics. Rating: 3 Stars

Gumbosoft - Low End, Ok for VERY basic PayPal integration. Not a super interface though - Overly "Manual" . Rating 2.5 Stars

Alicommerce - My top pick for the criteria mentioned above. Easy to install, easy to configure, very good interface (Though an initial setup "wizard" would be nice) The codebase is very solid, excellent feature set compared to other similar solutions and it's straightforward enough that your typical non-techy can use it.
Rating: 4.9 Stars (Nobodys Perfect ; )

* I hear Frank is working on an affiliate add-on which is great news.

When choosing a solution, remember that it has to work for our CLIENTS who tend to find these things difficult. So unless you're adminstering the site for your client, pick something THEY can use or you'll spend a lot of time "off-the-clock" supporting your customers who can't use the ecommerce solution YOU recommended!

Cody Flanagan | www.irazorstrategies.com


David Sunday, July 05, 2009 at 1:33 PM David says:

The following new features have recently been released in the Smith Cart DNN ecommerce module:

1. PayPal PayFlow Pro
2. Paypal Website Payments Pro
3. Custom Product Attributes - Unlimited
4. New module setting to require login during checkout or allow anonymous checkout.
5. Bill me Later option during checkout
6. Coupons/Discounts by product. Includes option to discount shipping. Option to limit the number of times a customer can use the coupon.
7. Printing mailing labels and postage using Endicia
8. New module settings to show/hide Prices, Quantity, Sku, Add to Cart button
9. Enhanced category/product import from xls file
10. Canadian province dropdown

Items in development:

1. Enhanced Store Admin Dashboard module. Allows add/update/delete of all customer/order/orderdetail data. Enhanced store reporting.

Rob Sunday, July 05, 2009 at 7:50 PM Rob says:

@David
Can you address my comment about image processing in Smith Cart - It appeared to me as if one has to create image and image-thumbnail files in advance. Image manipulation is a major stumbling block and resizing-on-upload and auto-thumbnailing is a requirement.
Regards,
Rob

David Sunday, July 05, 2009 at 8:09 PM David says:

You are correct, the Smith Cart will not auto resize your images when you upload. When you upload images it uses the size of the images that you upload. Allowing the store admin to size their own images seems the most flexible allowing for any size and quality of images to be used in the store catalog.

I understand the time saving benefit of auto resizing images but not if it comes at the expense of flexibility and quality. We found that auto resizing images smaller or larger distorts the images. We will continue to look into different techniques to auto resize photos while maintaining image quality.

David
www.smith-consulting.com

Rob Sunday, July 05, 2009 at 8:31 PM Rob says:

Hi Dave,
The usual built-in asp thumbnailer implemented in many modules is definitely of very low quality, but there is some high quality asp image resizing code available here: http://www.glennjones.net/Post/799/Highqualitydynamicallyresizedimageswithnet.htm

This is implemented in Ventrians' modules and recently also in eTailer where it has really made all the difference between can and can't use it.
Hope that helps
Rob

Paul Monday, July 20, 2009 at 10:57 AM Paul says:

While I understand that people want free or low cost e-commerce modules, I think we should at least ask the following questions when choosing a DNN cart:

1. How long has it been around in DNN market?

2. Is this a part-time or full-time developer/team?

3. Do they have a support forum? Is there any activity?

4. When was it last updated? How often do they publish a major or minor release?

5. Is this only product they develop or they have other 10 modules to take care of?

6. How often does it breaks on a new version of DNN?

7. Is there a trial version?

8. What is the refund policy?

I made a stupid mistake choosing Catalook. It's clumsy, bloated and hard to use for average users. It will go nowhere unless it's started from scratch.

I were excited when nbstore was first released as open source. After waiting 5 months for authorize.net support, we gave up on the project.

The first beta of eTailer was released 2 years ago. Its current version is 1.0.9. No major release in 2 years is simply a joke.

Based on the questions above, I recommend AliCommerce. It's full featured and easy to install, configure and use.

It was said that the integration between DNN and ASPDOTNETSTOREFRONT was much more stable now. You may want to give it a try if you have proper budget.

Allan (Emerald Solutions) Monday, July 20, 2009 at 11:13 AM Allan (Emerald Solutions) says:

Paul,

eTailer is indeed on version 1.0.9 but there have been four major releases in the last 4 months (including major new additions such as coupon codes), with 1.1.0 planned in August (including features such as anonymous checkout).

This information is clearly available on our website support forum. Since an active support forum is on your list of requirements, I'm surprised that you are not making use of ours to collate correct information before posting such critical remarks.

Kind regards,
Allan.

David Monday, July 20, 2009 at 11:22 AM David says:

Hi Paul,

The Authrise.Net beta provider for NB_Store has been produced by Oliver Hine, but we still need to proof test it before we release it onto codeplex. If you want a pre-release copy email me through codeplex/nb_store and I'll email it to you.

When something is being devloped for free you have a couple of choices...wait...do it yourself and donate it to the project..or do the unthinkable and pay to sponsor a feature..

Regards,
Dave.

Roy Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 10:33 PM Roy says:

Hi guys,

I am a newbie to this sort of stuff, created a few dnn sites and one of my mates asked me to do a shoping cart. We used aspstorefront. Basically she wanted to get a good cart that alot of ppl used and we assumed because of the price tag it would be everything you could need and easy to set up.

I guess we shoudlnt have assumed the later. It was not easy to set up, the main issue was setting it up to be used in Australia and not America, while there is support provided, you only get 5 tickets and then you have to purchase more. 5 tickets for a module as complicated as this is no where near enough nor reasonable cosidering the price tag. The forums are useful but sometimes things like CC settings and shipping are not as simple as trusting a forum post. I guess I would have thought there would be unlimited support tickets during the set up process.

There isnt much on the aspstorefront webpage that indicates you need to have experience in xml coding to be able to customise the website. I had done some html coding before and so i JUST mangaed to get by... it probably took us a week to get up and running.

Having said that it turned out ok.. www.designerbydesign.com.au, well so far... but we only went live yesterday so if we end up having lots of issues/bugs ill keep you all posted.




Tom Kraak Thursday, July 30, 2009 at 9:57 AM Tom Kraak says:

Thanks for sharing Roy. Looks like you put a lot of work into the site. Do keep us posted.

ASPDOTNETSTOREFRONT Customer Friday, July 31, 2009 at 6:30 PM ASPDOTNETSTOREFRONT Customer says:

Rather than make inflamitory statements, let me just share my experience.

The support staff at ASPDOTNETSTOREFRONT are slow to respond to me. I've had soooo many issues. The common answer (when I get one) is that the feature hasn't been fully developed. Wish I would have known prior to purchase.

I've also tried to use PortalStore. That one never even made it to production. The checkout process is nonsense. I just couldn't get past it. Customers ought to pay BEFORE they get a receipt. The source is provided, but its painfull dealing with that clunky system.

Now that the DNN Core team is involved in the store module, I doubt that we'll see many new players join the race for a solid e-comm solution.

David Friday, July 31, 2009 at 6:45 PM David says:

The following new features have recently been added the Smith Cart DNN module:

1. Paypal Website Payments Standard
2. Optional radio button payment option displayed on checkout to stay on website and pay with credit card or checkout using paypal standard.
3. In product admin setup, added checkbox called "Active" that allows the store admin to deactivate a product from being displayed to the user in the product catalog.

For more information visit www.smith-consulting.com

Dan Van Kuren Friday, July 31, 2009 at 7:55 PM Dan Van Kuren says:

ASPDOTNETSTOREFRONT Customer, please feel free to forward any support issues you feel were not adequately resolved to me and I will ask our support manager to look into it. Unless you were trying to use some very developer-oriented features, "it isn't fully implemented" does not sound correct.

Chris Chodnicki, R2integraterd (r2i) Saturday, August 01, 2009 at 10:30 AM Chris Chodnicki, R2integraterd (r2i) says:

Tom - tnx for refreshing this debate on twitter.

my 2 cents...

At r2i we have done dozens of enterprise level as well as many more simple commerce sites. I whole heartedly agree with Dan that the integration requirements of any of the store modules, commerce gateways and DNN alone are not trivial. Add on top of that client business requirements such as workflow, style and format changes, associated search of a product catalog, etc... and you typically have a complex situation.

So - for those that need something quick - we usually say use the commerce side for the transaction and at times product selection (ie: PayPal). You lose certain control and have the redirect but it is proven and can be accomplished quickly.

On the other hand if you need full control over look, feel, flow, businness rules, etc... ASPDotNetStore front and Catalook provide good solutions. Know what you are getting into though. Support may be slow at times (especially if your need is urgent) but we have found both vendors quite helpful, committed and responsive. R2i is a service integrator and module vendor (OpenWebStudio) we understand both sides. for our own product we are amazed at how many questions are not unique and the answers if the customer takes a bit of time to research is typically available in documentation, samples, or forums.

Declan Tuesday, August 04, 2009 at 5:58 AM Declan says:

I have been looking for a simple cart recently. I had previously purchased Catalook but consider it far too complex in this instance. ASPDOTNETSTOREFRONT is too expensive, apart from the poor press it seems to be getting, and the DNN Store module threw errors from the start :(

A friend pointed me towards eTailer, which he had looked at but not used yet! So far eTailer has done all I asked of it and any support emails I sent were responded to within the hour. All I need to do now is integrate eTailer with Realex Payments.

Will Paccione Tuesday, August 18, 2009 at 10:40 PM Will Paccione says:

You know, this Blog was written March 2007 and it's really sad that we STILL don't have a good eCommerce module. I've struggled through certain not-to-be-named eCommerce modules and their cryptic directions.

I might try AliCommerce next, possibly eTailer. I've also heard ActivePurchase's next one will be great.

Also, what's wrong with AliCommerce's license?

Thx,

Rob Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 12:12 AM Rob says:

I'l put in another update...

Be clear about what you need the cart to do and everyone can help point you in the right direction. They are all very different products.

I bought Active Purchase a year ago after it had been out for a year and was supposedly on the verge of getting an update. A year later and my years' worth of enterprise license updates has expired , my feedback gone into a black hole, and still no update is in sight. I won't be holding my breath, but I'll still probably use it if it ever is updated. I'm not using it live anywhere, but it currently works well as an order form, and if it gets some sort of image handling or rich text fields, then it'll make a nice one-page cart. It will probably also work in some useful manner with Active Social one day.

If you're building a single cart in a single portal for someone with a reasonable budget then there's nothing particulary wrong with alicommerce. I count the license as predatory because it of the hefty price increase since release, the 'tax' per domain and 'tax' by number of products. There is also no instance or server license. It's basically licensed for the end-customer rather than web developers and so I've personally had no opportunity to use it. If you're sure about your needs then check it out. There's also a same-spec free version, which is great, if you don't need a lot of products and don't mind the branding.

eTailer is also licensed per domain, but has a good price point, has always had that same price, and has no other restrictions... and so I think the license is fine, even for developers supporting multiple sites. I've bought two copies and am in the process of working them up. I have had some serious client-dramas over a couple of items however... eTailer is as simple in specification as it is to set up and use, so again, be clear about what you need your cart to do... the devil is in the details.

I suggest also taking a good look at the smith consulting product mentioned in the thread, with the caveat of there being no image processing at all in it. If there were a trial or if mr Smith would send me a copy to test, I'd provide some further feebdack on it.

And there's still my favorite.. NB Store - for anyone already familiar with typical DNN token-templating, it is not hard to set up and it is really unique in the way it breaks out of the single-cart-page configuration that cart modules tend to require. I suggest checking out the 1.1.7 beta as that has quite a few additional features over the current stable release. I'm running it live. The project is open to sponsorship and contributions and development remains active regardless... I have to plug it here because it's so cool. Anyone looking at the core store should take a u-turn and get NB Store instead. I've just this week been through the whole PCI compliance stuff (hooray for hosted gateways) and fired up my sponsored DPS gateway... all only possible because NB Store's developer has been so 'on the ball'.

And above all.. one should always look at non-DNN carts... there's a huge number of carts around, and unless one specifically needs some other DNN-only feature, there's no excuse to not look elsewhere.

David Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 12:31 AM David says:

The Smith Cart now has a trial version availible just email sales@smith-consulting.com to get the trial.

The following items are in development and will be released in September:

- My Accounts module - users can login and view their orders and print an invoice.

- Adding download link to manage orders screen

- Discounts by percentage

- Member discounts

- Associated/Required products - If a user adds product A to their cart product B is automatically added.

- Encrypted download link for soft goods (AES 256 guid)

- Enhanced Store Admin Dashboard module. Allows add/update/delete of all customer, order, and order detail data.

- Enhanced store reporting

www.smith-consulting.com

Annie Elgert Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 2:05 AM Annie Elgert says:

@David,

I might give your cart another try if you don't post your development roadmap here. This blog is getting TOO long.

If I'm not wrong, these features are already included in Catalook, alicommerce and aspdotnetstorefront.

Matthew Elgert Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 12:39 PM Matthew Elgert says:

When choosing a DotNetNuke shopping cart module it is my opinion you should only consider “AliCommerce shopping cart” http://www.alicommerce.com.

I searched thoroughly, reviewed and tested many DotNetNuke shopping cart modules. Only one module passed as the best choice "AliCommerce shopping cart”. What is excellent about this module the rich features, simple to deploy, shipping and credit card API.

To see a complete list of features visit http://www.alicommerce.com/Features/tabid/54/Default.aspx. The support is very responsive with an excellent forum http://www.alicommerce.com/Forums/tabid/56/Default.aspx. “Frank Wang” Software Architect at AliCommerce.com responds to email promptly and added one of my requirements for transparent buttons for the next release.

If you are a novice, intermediate or an expert DotNetNuke developer I would recommend this module. The module comes with easy to use customizable “ASPX source pages” email, invoices, shipping labels code templates and much more. This module is adaptable to virtually any type of ecommerce site.

To see a recently developed showcase site with this module visit http://www.jcgreeninc.com/Store/tabid/56/Default.aspx.

AliCommerce has posted several other showcase sites at the following link http://www.alicommerce.com/Showcase/tabid/69/Default.aspx and has a WIKI at the following link http://wiki.alicommerce.com/.

http://www.vessea.com/Blog/tabid/58/EntryId/16/AliCommerce-shopping-cart-module.aspx

Roy Thursday, September 03, 2009 at 3:52 AM Roy says:

Well after a month of going live with aspstorefront we are having a lot of issues that have restricted our use of the shopping module. We are having checkout issues where customers are complaining that it does not always work. We have found the integration of the dnn login/register feature and the Storefront VERY poor. We have ended up disabling alot of the features to enable the module to work correctly (which it still doesnt consistently). After spending all this time and money we are actually considering starting all over again and using a different shopping cart module as it is causing a loss of sales and customers.

Rob Thursday, September 03, 2009 at 8:11 AM Rob says:

Hi Roy.. that's a shame it's not working out.

I've had a browse through it just now. I read the "placing an order page" first - which didn't seem to require anything out of the ordinary, and then I tried it out as far as the checkout - which appears to combine the DNN account creation, the addresses and the Card payment details all in one page... that part at least looks pretty good for a DNN cart. Most of them simply route you back to the stock DNN registration page and leave you to find your way back to the cart from there.

It has left me on a dead page at the moment however - I just clicked the address link without typing anything else in and I don't think it liked it.
Rob

p.s. For the thread here - I have discovered yet another up and coming cart for DNN... this time by Presstopia, a chap who had some odd modules a while back (like a whole different forum module!). Now he's working on a cart that has nothing nice like product attributes, but it does have one of the cleanest checkouts I've yet seen in a module. The biggest failing on my first run through it appeared to be that it made no distinction between administrative users and store operators... things like SQL query windows, bare HTML templates and orders are all mixed together. I'll keep an eye on it.

Abdu Thursday, September 03, 2009 at 12:39 PM Abdu says:

When I have some free time, I might volunteer to work on NB Store.
So I wanted to know from everyone:

1- What is in NB Store which you don't like currently?
2- What is missing in NB Store which you like to see implemented?

I want to work on an open source DNN cart and make it better.

Shelly Z Thursday, September 03, 2009 at 1:54 PM Shelly Z says:

We have been using DNN for awhile now in addition to a completely separate, full-featured eCommerce product (http://www.bvsoftware.com/). I have looked at most of the DNN carts, but like someone mentioned above, it really comes down to the client.

If they want a shopping cart first, and other features second (common DNN stuff like events, announcements, etc), then we go with BVCommerce.

It seems like developing a DNN site with a substantial eCommerce component is really like developing two sites. You've first got to build and skin the DNN site, and then you've got all the complexities of an eCommerce system to contend with - products, categories, order management, usability, blah, blah, blah.

I would still love to find a "mid" range eCommerce option for DNN for certain clients, but no eCommerce modules have even touched the features available in bvcommerce. ESPECIALLY with all the PCI compliance stuff to worry about.

(FYI, we are not affiliated in any way with BVSoftware, and the system and the company are not *perfect* but it's the system we know, use, and trust). One thing that helps is that we use a hosting company (resposio.com) who ONLY hosts eCommerce sites built with BVCommerce. They know their stuff and and are a huge reason we've stuck with this system.

Rob Thursday, September 03, 2009 at 6:44 PM Rob says:

Abdu,
I'm working up the roadmap for NB Store to help out with the project (a task that has slipped somewhat due to work pressures) but if you get in touch over on nbstore.codeplex.com, I'll pick you up from there. Assistance will be well-received! There's a long list of good stuff already on the map and plenty to enhance or improve.
Everyone else.. as Abdu says, please state what's important to you and importantly, to your cart operators and shoppers.
Rob

Reto Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 1:49 AM Reto says:

I just want to share our expiriences with DNN carts.
After a long evaluation of virually every DNN cart we found on the net we ended up using AliCommerce for all our customers.
I second Cody Flanagan's product rating in an earlier comment.

Why did we choose AliCommerce:
- Easy to set up, basic stores running in no time
- Supporting all major features needed for "real" e-business
- Easy to understand (customer)
- Easy to skin
- Reasonable Pricing
- Forum and Email Support are top notch
- Development team is very responsive to wishes from the community

Until now we never had an Issue with AliCommerce that could not be fixed within hours, sometimes minutes (!!!) as the vendor has a really quick response time.

Carl Wagar Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 8:56 AM Carl Wagar says:

I have had a long experience with shopping carts starting with
writing my own, using Microsoft Commerce Server 2002 and implementing sites with PHP carts such as oscommerce or zencart.

I cannot vouch for all of the current DNN e-commerce modules out
there but I have to say, that for the price ALICOMMERCE is
fantastically fully featured(products,orders,cart,sales,customers,emails,payments)
and works great for us.

I have to say that our contact Frank Wang has been VERY
responsive to our support issues (upgrading a license, changing
the domain name when our customer's needs 'evolved'.
He modified his cart to handle the federal/state tax jurisdiction we have in Canada.

I am amazed at the number of man hours that have clearly been put
into this product, to make it equivalent to software that cost >$20k just 5 years ago.

For the price, this is ALICOMMERCE is excellent and works!

Carl

Richard Thursday, October 01, 2009 at 6:47 PM Richard says:

As for NB store, one thing I really miss is the ability to configure as many payment options as needed. There are basically only two options possible - cheques and bank. But what if the merchant will need to offer to pay by simple bank transfer (i.e. simple sending emails with transfer details) or in cash at the delivery time ?

Rob Thursday, October 01, 2009 at 8:23 PM Rob says:

Hi Richard,
That's exactly how I'm using it on one site. The site owner has their own offline invoicing system and they don't need the site to process anything other than take the orders. You don't have to use any payment methods. The store will email the order to customer and store owner and you can include the bank transfer details in the email. Start a thread over on nbstore.codeplex.com if you need any help setting it up.

What the store doesn't have at this point is the ability to enable several different credit card payment systems at the same time. That hasn't been a problem thus far for me as none of my site owners have more than one payment processor anyway.
Rob

Richard Thursday, October 01, 2009 at 8:59 PM Richard says:

Hi Rob,
yes that is what I also wanted to implement. I.e. If I'm satisfied with just one payment method (cheque) I can naturally customize it with transfer details. The drawback in this case is that even there is actually the only possible payment method (i.e. offline bank transfer) the payment option screen is still displayed and has to be clicked. But this is not the point of my last comment.
What I was referring to is that there are just two hardcoded ways only between which one can choose (and also the providers for them two are setup in the store). But what I would like to is to let the user simply to choose between whole list of possibilities (that should be ideally defined dynamically) - like cash, transfer, whatever; and both cash and transfer might use the emailer provider like cheque option. I will have to change this in the code - fortunately, I'm a programmer, however, with a possible future versions of NB store I will have to re-code this.
This was just to point out the possible functionality to build in - I will develop it for me by myself.

Rob Thursday, October 01, 2009 at 9:18 PM Rob says:

I see what you mean.
Dave (the NB store guy) is very keen for people with programming skills to help with improvements, so do please check in over at codeplex if you are looking at making changes.
Rob

Abdu Sunday, October 04, 2009 at 2:35 PM Abdu says:

What's the prospect of taking a free active open source asp.net shopping cart and making it DNN compatible? Would it take too much work? I looked at some of the existing ones and it seems NOPCommerce (http://nopcommerce.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=31763) is the most active. There's dashCommerce and dotShoppingCart but these went commercial.

I haven't looked at NB_Store but from what I have read, it seems to be lacking in many features. Checks only for payment method? So instead of extending NB_Store, why not take a more mature cart and make it work as a DNN module? The work progress on NB_Store and the core store are very slow.

Which is the more productive approach, extend a current one which lacks the features or take an active asp.net cart where other developers are extending it and DNN developers just work on make it work inside DNN?

Comments?

Richard Sunday, October 04, 2009 at 2:49 PM Richard says:

Abdu,
well I'm now in the middle of customizing the NB store for my needs. I needed to add bank transfer and cash gateways, letting use them all, adding some further data on orders in backoffice and also sorting combos in the product list. Now I find it however quite fine for me.
What store solutions are you referring to ? What I need is as complex and rich as possible and free one, under DNN of course. What would be you recommendations ?

Abdu Sunday, October 04, 2009 at 8:16 PM Abdu says:


I expect a good shopping cart to support at least the 3 top credit card gateways. Gateway support should be modular. Meaning you add support for gateways with changing the code. Maybe using a provider pattern. Support for Paypal, money orders, maybe Google checkout. Support for products, in categories and subcategories. Real time invetory. Easy to customize a product properties. So if a product comes in different colors and in different sizes, it should be easy to support this without customizing the code. Real time shipping rates and taxes. Powerful search functionality. Customers reviews is nice. Support for discount rates through coupon codes and time period. Support for sales.

I think these would make 80% of online merchants happy.

Then there's support for special kind of products like electronic downloads like ring tones, eBooks, music files.. etc. Support for custom built products like computers. For example. you start with a base computer and you have options to add specific CPU, memory, hard drives, gfx cards, power supplies, accessories so a user can mix and match between them and every time you select an option, the final price is updated so yo know how much the costs when you're customizing it. Like what Dell does on their online store.

Richard Sunday, October 04, 2009 at 8:26 PM Richard says:

I see but my point was rather if there is any free store codebase with all the mentioned features.
If not then I'm happy with NB store because it has 90% of my possible dev work done - the rest I will re-code. It also supports many of the features you mentioned, especially good it is in shipping methods and taxes.
If so please recommend such a store.

Abdu Sunday, October 04, 2009 at 11:03 PM Abdu says:

I don't know. I suggest you check nopCommerce site on CodePlex. They have a good list of features.
The other two carts, dashCommerce and dotShoppingcart went commercial so I think NOPCommerce is the only good option. eCommerce starter kit on ASP.NET is pretty basic. There's another one on CodePlex 'The Beer House' comes with a book and it's for educational purposes.
Anyone knows a better free open source cart than NOPCommerce?

I suggest that NB_Store's developer put up a more descriptive and informative list of features. Look at NOP's.

This is from the NB_Store page on CodePlex: "Order Admin, client Admin, Stock Control and Products support multiple models and options."

From that statement I still don't know what the features are. What is a model? What is an option and what are the available options? what do they offer? NB_Store doesn't support any CC gateway. NOP supports 18. Does NB_Store support shared SSL? Does NB_Store

I am interested in a store where non technical users can make the store customizable themselves and not mess with the code every they need something.


Abdu Thursday, October 08, 2009 at 1:05 PM Abdu says:

I noticed a DNN cart called CMDNNShop (http://www.snowcovered.com/snowcovered2/default.aspx?tabid=242&PackageID=15738) and wondered if anything has any goo/bad feedback about it.

There are also some Paypal carts like the one from GumboSoft (http://gumbosoft.com/DotNetNukeModules/PayPalShoppingCart/tabid/123/Default.aspx).

What I like to see is a comparison matrix on carts. Is there any available?

cameron burgess Thursday, October 08, 2009 at 1:10 PM cameron burgess says:

This is probably sacreligious to admit, but after developing on DNN for five years, we've finally given up trying to get it to play nicely with ecommerce.

So we've moved to magento - seems to be the easiest way forwards - especially when DNN is such a pain to get working with ecommerce.

(and yes, we've tried pretty much every ecommerce solution available for dnn - am tired of wading through hell)

Abdu Thursday, October 08, 2009 at 1:17 PM Abdu says:

DNN is just an ASP.NET and eCommerce (shopping cart) can be written in any language and in DNN's case, can be developed as a DNN module. I am no module developer but AFAIK, a DNN module can do anything as long as it's can be done using ASP.NET.

So what is it about DNN that is making eCommerce that much painful? There are hundreds of successful DNN modules out there but for some reason eCommerce modules get a lot of bad rap.

Richard Thursday, October 08, 2009 at 1:31 PM Richard says:

2 cameron: I'm just customizing NB store for my needs; there are, however, some serious bugs in there like not counting shipping on some page, not transferring data from one to another page etc; and last but not least, it's really only open-source - such serious programming amateur mistakes and unnecessarities... shame to talk about it; but as as codebase for further improvement it saved me a lot of time

to abdu: nope, programming language granularity goes down to each file in asp.net; in fact, you should be able to develop each control in a language of your choice - provided you let it compiled by aspnet itself

there's no real relation between possible ecommerce module and DNN... DNN is no obstacle to develop a great ecommerce... it just didn't happen so

Abdu Thursday, October 08, 2009 at 1:44 PM Abdu says:

Richard: are you sending your fixes and enhancements back to the NB_Store developer? NB_Store won't advance quickly enough if it's depending on it's original developer only.

Cameron: A DNN module should be able to do anything you want it to do. If DNN is seriously in your way, you have the source to modify and you can send your contributions to the support.dotnetnuke.com

Rob Thursday, October 08, 2009 at 7:46 PM Rob says:

@Abdu,
CMDNNShop is the old Yandestore with a new name, a new look and I'm not sure, but possibly a new owner as well given the major repackaging it has been through. It used to be licensed per application but is now sold per domain - potentially a nasty surprise for some original purchasers looking for updates. The main appeal was that it had a good number of features and good licensing, but I found it was always quite flakey every time I played with the demo. It has had several very different image galleries over time.

Gumbosoft's Paypal cart is pretty cool. I use it and it's probably the fastest way to get a very small number of items up for sale in a manner that allows for product options. The product module is basically a text/html module with half a dozen tokens for the various features. You have to have page edit rights in order to be able to add more products - unless, as I have done, you are using the options function within a single product to provide many similar products. This works well for books and DVDs and posters... you can describe them all, and then let the buyer choose the one they want off a dropdown and add it to cart. The cart is a special page provided by Paypal.. the buyer is directed back and forth to this page until they've got enough, and then they just checkout. License was/is? per DNN instance and updates have been regular and free since day one. This also allows for role purchases.

P.s. In the best community project fashion I've written up a feature-list for NB Store and am just waiting for it to be checked for accuracy before it is published on Codeplex.

@Richard
I've reported a bug in the shipping methods that affects the per-product pricing. If that is the problem then it is being fixed at the moment.

Please also submit any good developments or fixes to the project... it doesn't work if people dont contribute.

Richard Thursday, October 08, 2009 at 10:10 PM Richard says:

and also, if you choose 'featured first' option in the product list you cannot go to the product details... weird... perhaps it was a feature but I got rid of it :-)

David Friday, October 09, 2009 at 2:56 AM David says:

@Richard
NB_Store doesn't have a "featured first" option?..It has a display feature option....It sounds like your trying to use it as if it's the same as the DNN Store. Please send me any bugs you find, I'm concerned that your finding data missing between pages..I can't recreate this issue, so please pass me some details..[I'll ignore the "programming amateur mistakes" comment. :-)]

Richard Friday, October 09, 2009 at 6:41 AM Richard says:

@David
I was surprised where my large comment went off...
sorry I changed featured only to featured first in NB store - as I find featured only unnecessarily and I really missed featured first (i.e. featured sorted at the top of the list)
there were, however, plenty of bugs - the one you are mentioning was that in some checkout stage (I think payment select stage) the cart always shows shipping of 0; not sure already, however
I'm not finished with my changes yet - many of them are my specific customizations that you couldn't easily take over to the generic solution but some of them are bugfixes and some are features that might be beneficial (I added some new replacement tokens for instance) - but it's up to the developers to play with it; will send it over as soon as I finish my changes

Richard Friday, October 09, 2009 at 7:03 AM Richard says:

btw the documentation is also a poor stuff, there are in fact other replacement tokens like TAG:FROMPRICECURRENCY or TAG:CURRENCYSYMBOL or TAG:STOCKPERCENT that are undocumented (at least in the wiki documentation -> replacement tokens)

David Friday, October 09, 2009 at 7:58 AM David says:

@Richard,
The shipping thing could be the free limit is set to "0.00". The wiki is out of date..the latest version is always packaged with the NB_Store module under the documentation directory..documentation.html (Still very poor I'm afraid!).

Thanks for getting back to me on this, if you could post the bugs on codeplex disscussion that would be great and allow me to answer properly.

Rene Friday, October 09, 2009 at 11:46 AM Rene says:

Based upon the vast array of experience here, I’m hoping that one of you can recommend an appropriate cart for the following set of requirements. My requirements are focused around Event Registration and not product purchases per-se. I’m not aware of any event registration modules that would fit my requirements directly so am trying to fit myself into a cart solution.

Do you know of a cart solution that would fit my requirements?
Perhaps you know of some event/membership registration modules that would do a better job?

All feedback appreciated!

Requirements are;

*Event Registration
- categorized events
- 1 registration per user
- gender aware (e.g only men can sign up to event)
- payment
- nice to have – waiting lists

*Expiring Discount Card
- expiring (e.g. annual) discount card that would provide $$ discount to event registration
- discount set on a per-event basis.

*Expiring Packages of Tokens
- package of x tokens
- 1 token can be used at event registration time in place of payment
- packages of tokens expire (can only be used up until a certain time).

ZMS Friday, October 09, 2009 at 1:05 PM ZMS says:

@Abdu
RE: So what is it about DNN that is making eCommerce that much painful

Developing a full-featured, performant, secure ecommerce package is expensive (Magento is (partly) an open-source project with free community edition, but to get the full-featured product requires a subscription that costs $11K and then $8,900 per year for starters!).

On the other hand, developing a DNN module is relatively simple, which encourages one-man shops and hobbyists.

IMHO, the DNN ecommerce landscape is like a 3rd world nation ruled by regional warlords. If all the open-source DNN ecommerce teams and 1 or 2 of the commercial module companies pooled resources they might be able to come up with something like Magento.



Jim Begley Friday, October 09, 2009 at 3:57 PM Jim Begley says:

(Warning...I am a marketer, not a developer so my comments are based on feature/function not development!) I think for a basic shopping cart functionality you can build out a DNN module, but for deep ecomerce functionality it gets real complicated real fast. You have integrations into payment providers, accounting systems, shippers, inventory systems, sales analysis, license key generators and on and on. Many times we need to switch carts based on what a client needs. If you have a couple of items you want to bang out online and real-time inventory is not an issue then several of the existing DNN tools will work. For deeper functionality we have typically ended up going with a side by side installation of DNN and products lke ASPDotNetStorefront and let each product shine for what they did best. It is amazing that we have been able to survive with virtually no integration between the islands. Now if you were able to drive both components off of the same skinning engine like the PHP players have done with Smarty and such would be SWEET!

Rob Friday, October 09, 2009 at 9:14 PM Rob says:

@Rene
If you're also still keen to be able to have it integrated with a timeline/calendar functionality, I can recommend Invenmanager's Events Calendar. The developer responds very positively to suggestions, and the module is very feature-rich and solid. The suggestion I'm making here is to post your requests in his forum and see what he says. Much of it can already be done, but some things might need to be added or sponsored.

Some of your requests such as tokens and gender can, I'm assuming, be handled with roles. You might use a separate module to sell roles as if they were coupons. The calendar would then allow or disallow or grant discounts to various roles.

You could use most of the carts in this thread to sell roles. Even the Gumbsoft PayPal cart will do that, or AllDNNModules' Logon Combo, which is a unique and useful tool (except I've got a feeling that their developer has gone awol or something because they haven't had any releases lately and the new support person doesn't seem to have a clue about DNN).

You also need to be able to create the roles that represent the discounts, and if your site operator is not an administrator account, then you need a separate role manager - WorkControl's User Manager is the pick.

Jim Zamichielli Monday, October 12, 2009 at 2:48 PM Jim Zamichielli says:

I came across this posting and had to chime in on AliCommerce's shopping cart module.

I had purchased three other modules and tested before buying AliCommerce's module. I found with the other modules that they suffered from either poor performance (page load times that were unbearable) and/or lacked basic functionality. Now when I say "basic functionality," I'm talking about the ability to run an eCommerce site that has the minimal type of complexity, e.g., selling a t-shirt and allowing the shopper to pick the size.

My favorite experience was when I tried to use one of the newer shopping cart modules on the market that couldn't handle taxation at the state level. When I inquired about this to the developer, he gave me a quote to modify the code which would have been twice the price I paid for the module. IMHO this is a core feature his product needs to compete with the others, so providing an hourly rate to modify the module seemed a little off.

I finally bought AliCommerce's shopping cart module and all I can say is "WOW!" It has all the bells and whistles of the leading competitor who has been around for years, but AliCommerce's modules runs 10X faster, utilizes DIV layouts, and provide fantastic support. I ran into a situation with a piece of functionality that I felt was missing in which some fellow developers seemed to concur. AliCommerce stepped up and modified the code and released the update for all to benefit from and in an incredibly short period of time.

The site I'm running their module on is www.customsnuggie.com. Now for anyone who lives in the states, you are probably familiar with "the blanket with sleeves" - it's a cult hit, so this site is getting slammed all day long with shoppers. So not only is the module robust in functionality, has great customer support, but their product stands up under heavy usage.

I typically don't take the time to advocate products unless I feel like the value and service I get is exceptional and in this case, it absolutely is! The pricing of the module is very reasonable, the flexibility of the module is awesome (which probably took me all of two hours to figure out all of the configuration settings), and they are constantly asking their customers on how they can improve it. Hats off to these guys...hats off.

Developer/Designer/Chief Cook & Bottle Washer
Jim Zamichieli

ZMS Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 2:08 PM ZMS says:

It's ashame that AliCommerce requires full-trust enabled hosting accounts. Especially since this means AliCommerce will not work on shared hosting accounts such as GoDaddy and WebHost4life. We usually host our clients on our own servers, but not always and can't justify specializing in a product that has a limitation that most other carts do not.

Frank Wang Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 11:01 PM Frank Wang says:

I think it won't harm anybody if I make some clarifications here.

First AliCommerce is licensed per portal, just like DotNetNuke professional edition, if I'm not wrong.

Second our free version has the same feature set as standard edition ($199) and supports up to 25 products. That's all. There is no branding limitation or whatsoever. It will always be free. So please make your judgement based on facts, not comments from someone who happened to post a lot on this blog.

Third regarding pricing, all I can say is you get what you pay for and good ecommerce software is not cheap. Also I want to make it clear that our prices haven't been changed since June 2008 and the upgrade has been free in the past two years (3 major and 11 minor releases). We don't have any plan to change this policy at the moment.

Fourth AliCommerce uses PayPal API (PayPal Pro and PayPal Express Checkout) and other payment components, so it will require full trust. So does any asp.net shopping cart, which uses PayPal API. They are plentty of good DNN hosts that support full trust, such as IHostASP, CrystalTech, WebSecureStore and PowerDNN, just name a few.

This blog is a great discussion on DNN carts and I don't want to turn it to a topic on AliCommerce. So please post your questions in our forums or send us an email. I'm sure you will be taken good care of.

Thanks,

Frank Wang
Software Architect
AliCommerce.com
The best DNN eCommerce, shopping cart and store modules. 100% satisfaction guaranteed.

Will Paccione Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 11:21 PM Will Paccione says:

I've tried 3 ecommerce modules and I have to say that this excellent thread made me try Alicommerce (as the 3rd one).

Without a doubt AliCommerce is head and shoulders above all the rest. The others (one in particular) is so complicated that I hated getting into the back-end to adjust the settings. How am I supposed to tell my client how to change something when I can't stand trying to figure it out myself?

Alicommerce is the first one that's easy to use for me and my client. My client LOVES it (it's almost live) and it has a lot of functionality.

Had a couple of small things in the setup (most were in the Host settings) but Frank was like a full-time support and I can't express how much I appreciate him doing the best to help me along.

I'll no longer cringe when someone mentions they want sell online. Frank truly stands behind his great product and I've already recommended it to all my colleagues.

Thanks!

Rob Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 12:23 AM Rob says:

Hi Frank, nice to have some facts squeezed in amongst all the testimonials.

Just to clarify... the free version used to have Alicommerce branding visible on it. Is this no longer the case?
Rob

Robert Bravery Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 4:56 AM Robert Bravery says:

WO wow wow
What a thread.
I have been batling for months with ecommerce systems. Finally had a look at NB_Store. Looks good, and what I like about it is it can be customised, if one had the time to play with the source.
My biggest problem with NB_Store, David help please, is that it does not work with iFinity URL Rewriter.
Trying to add a product, category, or anything via the back office module just gives me a 404 error.
This because the module uses a query string to set the store skin
Problem is that this is not constant.
Eg. When accessing any submenu on the back Office module we get the query string to look like this:
SkinSrc=%2fDesktopModules%2fNB_Store%2fSkins%2fStoreAdmin%2fNB_StoreAdmin
This works, but try to add a product, category etc and you get a query string that looks like this:
SkinSrc=/DesktopModules/NB_Store/Skins/StoreAdmin/NB_StoreAdmin
This gives me a 404 error
Why the difference.
If David or somebody can help me solve this or fix it, I'd be eternally grateful.

Thanks

Marcus McConnell Friday, October 23, 2009 at 1:29 PM Marcus McConnell says:

It has just come to my attention that AliCommerce is actually BV Commerce, the asp.net e-commerce application that I have spent the last 8 years building. Frank Wang purchased two copies of BV Commerce Versions 4 and 5 and stripped our branding and repackaged them as his own software. This is totally illegal. I am shocked and disheartened. I do not know how many of 'his' customers have been lied to and stolen from.

I have put together a web page displaying all the evidence, including receipts that Frank Wang purchased BV Commerce two times right before new versions of AliCommerce was released. BV Software has many reputable references and clients who can back up this claim.

http://www.bvsoftware.com/alicommerce/default.aspx

I have no intention of prosecuting anyone who is using AliCommerce. They are also victims. But please contact me at www.bvsoftware.coom at 1-804-282-4455 or at marcus@bvsoftware.com so we figure out how many people have been affected by this and what to do next.

We hope that we can use this very unfortunate situation in a positive way and generate interest so we can release an official version of our software for the DNN community. Even if you are not personally affected by this, please come join our community and help us create something great.

Sincerely,
Marcus McConnell
President and Founder
www.bvsoftware.com
1-804-282-4455
marcus@bvsoftware.com

Carl Wagar Friday, October 23, 2009 at 2:02 PM Carl Wagar says:

I will be very angry if having invested in AliCommerce which I legitimately purchased and licensed
via snowcovered.com , this situation forces me to look for alternatives, and this seablick forum
gives me very little warm feeling about the alternatives.

We finally found a shopping cart which will handle our two-tax situation in Canada and now, based on this information, it looks like we are going to be thwarted.

I also do not see that you are selling DotNetNuke based versions of your software
and I can tell you that $1498 is so highly priced that we would never ever buy your software.

So I hope some resolution to this issue can be arranged.

Carl

Marcus McConnell Friday, October 23, 2009 at 2:08 PM Marcus McConnell says:

Carl,

Thank you for writing. I understand your situation and anger. I'm angry too.

We are working on a plan for AliCommerce customers. We will be offering an official DNN store module in the near future. The price will be significantly lower than $1499 and will probably have a free community edition similar to AliCommerce.

In the meantime, I appreciate your patience while we finalize details. If you have any suggestions as to how we might best serve the DNN community I would very much like to hear your thoughts.

(I will repost this information in the forums too so that more people will see it.)

Marcus

Will Morgenweck Friday, October 23, 2009 at 3:39 PM Will Morgenweck says:

I know of at least 5 other products on Snowcovered that fall into this same category. Not the category of e-commerce, the category of stealing intellectual property and violating third-party license agreements. This is why we stopped selling source code for our products, but that still doesn't prevent it from happening.

Marcus, I wish you the best of luck with this battle. I can't imagine the legal costs involved dealing with this as an international dispute. Fortunately, Snowcovered and a larger portion of the customers are based in the U.S. Hopefully, you will be able to find a reasonable resolution to this outrage.

Marcus McConnell Friday, October 23, 2009 at 4:02 PM Marcus McConnell says:

Thanks Will. Would you mind emailing me what information you have about similar situations at snowcovered? I'd like to make sure that the DNN folks can help resolve this so that no one else has to experience it. marcus at bvsoftware dot com

Will Paccione Friday, October 23, 2009 at 7:07 PM Will Paccione says:

Well, looks like the saga continues. As of this writing the AliCommerce website is down for the past few hours...

Guess I'm gonna give Etailer a shot.

David Friday, October 23, 2009 at 7:17 PM David says:

Don't forget to take a look at smithcart.com, 100% developed from the ground up in dnn and been in production for over 2 years. Free support, trial version availible and friendly developer licensing!

Brought to you by Smith Consulting

Frank Wang Friday, October 23, 2009 at 7:44 PM Frank Wang says:

Marcus's claim is not true. While both have some similarities in USER INTERFACES, AliCommerce is written from Scratch and has completely different architecture. The following are some code snippets from core to data access layer and business layer.

1. At core

using System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging;
using System.Web;
using NHibernate;
using NHibernate.Cache;
using NHibernate.Cfg;

namespace AliSuite.Core
{
///
/// Handles creation and management of sessions and transactions. It is a singleton because
/// building the initial session factory is very expensive. Inspiration for this class came
/// from Chapter 8 of Hibernate in Action by Bauer and King. Although it is a sealed singleton
/// you can use TypeMock (http://www.typemock.com) for more flexible testing.
///
public sealed class NHSessionManager
{
#region Thread-safe, lazy Singleton

///
/// This is a thread-safe, lazy singleton. See http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/singleton.html
/// for more details about its implementation.
///
public static NHSessionManager Instance
{
get
{
return Nested.NHibernateSessionManager;
}
}

///
/// Initializes the NHibernate session factory upon instantiation.
///
private NHSessionManager()
{
InitSessionFactory();
}

///
/// Assists with ensuring thread-safe, lazy singleton
///
private class Nested
{
static Nested() { }
internal static readonly NHSessionManager NHibernateSessionManager =
new NHSessionManager();
}

#endregion

private void InitSessionFactory()
{
sessionFactory = new Configuration().Configure().BuildSessionFactory();
}

///
/// Allows you to register an interceptor on a new session. This may not be called if there is already
/// an open session attached to the HttpContext. If you have an interceptor to be used, modify
/// the HttpModule to call this before calling BeginTransaction().
///
public void RegisterInterceptor(IInterceptor interceptor)
{
ISession session = ContextSession;

if (session != null && session.IsOpen)
{
throw new CacheException("You cannot register an interceptor once a session has already been opened");
}

GetSession(interceptor);
}

public ISession GetSession()
{
return GetSession(null);
}

///
/// Gets a session with or without an interceptor. This method is not called directly; instead,
/// it gets invoked from other public methods.
///
private ISession GetSession(IInterceptor interceptor)
{
ISession session = ContextSession;

if (session == null)
{
if (interceptor != null)
{
session = sessionFactory.OpenSession(interceptor);
}
else
{
session = sessionFactory.OpenSession();
}

ContextSession = session;
}

Check.Ensure(session != null, "session was null");

return session;
}

///
/// Flushes anything left in the session and closes the connection.
///
public void CloseSession()
{
ISession session = ContextSession;

if (session != null && session.IsOpen)
{
session.Flush();
session.Close();
}

ContextSession = null;
}

///
/// Invalidate the session immediatly after rollback.
///
public void InvalidateSession()
{
ISession session = ContextSession;

if (session != null && session.IsOpen)
{
session.Close();
}

ContextSession = null;
}

public void BeginTransaction()
{
ITransaction transaction = ContextTransaction;

if (transaction == null)
{
transaction = GetSession().BeginTransaction();
ContextTransaction = transaction;
}
}

public void CommitTransaction()
{
ITransaction transaction = ContextTransaction;

try
{
if (HasOpenTransaction())
{
transaction.Commit();
ContextTransaction = null;
}
}
catch (HibernateException)
{
RollbackTransaction();
throw;
}
}

public bool HasOpenTransaction()
{
ITransaction transaction = ContextTransaction;

return transaction != null && !transaction.WasCommitted && !transaction.WasRolledBack;
}

public void RollbackTransaction()
{
ITransaction transaction = ContextTransaction;

try
{
if (HasOpenTransaction())
{
transaction.Rollback();
}

ContextTransaction = null;
}
finally
{
//Actually the change was commited into the DB no matter that Rollback was called
//CloseSessionOn uses sesion.Flush(), so nHibernate persists the changes in the DB
//Using session in any way after Rollback is not recomended
//CloseSession();
InvalidateSession();
}
}

///
/// If within a web context, this uses instead of the WinForms
/// specific . Discussion concerning this found at
/// http://forum.springframework.net/showthread.php?t=572.
///
private ITransaction ContextTransaction
{
get
{
if (IsInWebContext())
{
return (ITransaction)HttpContext.Current.Items[TRANSACTION_KEY];
}
else
{
return (ITransaction)CallContext.GetData(TRANSACTION_KEY);
}
}
set
{
if (IsInWebContext())
{
HttpContext.Current.Items[TRANSACTION_KEY] = value;
}
else
{
CallContext.SetData(TRANSACTION_KEY, value);
}
}
}

///
/// If within a web context, this uses instead of the WinForms
/// specific . Discussion concerning this found at
/// http://forum.springframework.net/showthread.php?t=572.
///
private ISession ContextSession
{
get
{
if (IsInWebContext())
{
return (ISession)HttpContext.Current.Items[SESSION_KEY];
}
else
{
return (ISession)CallContext.GetData(SESSION_KEY);
}
}
set
{
if (IsInWebContext())
{
HttpContext.Current.Items[SESSION_KEY] = value;
}
else
{
CallContext.SetData(SESSION_KEY, value);
}
}
}

private bool IsInWebContext()
{
return HttpContext.Current != null;
}

private const string TRANSACTION_KEY = "CONTEXT_TRANSACTION";
private const string SESSION_KEY = "CONTEXT_SESSION";
private ISessionFactory sessionFactory;
}
}

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using NHibernate;
using NHibernate.Expression;

namespace AliSuite.Core
{
public abstract class AbstractNHibernateDao : IDao
{
///
/// Loads an instance of type TypeOfListItem from the DB based on its ID.
///
public T GetById(IdT id, bool shouldLock)
{
T entity;

if (shouldLock)
{
entity = (T)NHibernateSession.Get(persitentType, id, LockMode.Upgrade);
}
else
{
entity = (T)NHibernateSession.Get(persitentType, id);
}

return entity;
}

///
/// Loads every instance of the requested type with no filtering.
///
public List GetAll()
{
return GetByCriteria();
}

///
/// Loads every instance of the requested type using the supplied .
/// If no is supplied, this behaves like .
///
public List GetByCriteria(params ICriterion[] criterion)
{
ICriteria criteria = NHibernateSession.CreateCriteria(persitentType);

foreach (ICriterion criterium in criterion)
{
criteria.Add(criterium);
}

return criteria.List() as List;
}

public List GetByExample(T exampleInstance, params string[] propertiesToExclude)
{
ICriteria criteria = NHibernateSession.CreateCriteria(persitentType);
Example example = Example.Create(exampleInstance);

foreach (string propertyToExclude in propertiesToExclude)
{
example.ExcludeProperty(propertyToExclude);
}

criteria.Add(example);

return criteria.List() as List;
}

///
/// Looks for a single instance using the example provided.
///
///
public T GetUniqueByExample(T exampleInstance, params string[] propertiesToExclude)
{
List foundList = GetByExample(exampleInstance, propertiesToExclude);

if (foundList.Count > 1)
{
throw new NonUniqueResultException(foundList.Count);
}

if (foundList.Count > 0)
{
return foundList[0];
}
else
{
return default(T);
}
}

///
/// For entities that have assigned ID's, you must explicitly call Save to add a new one.
/// See http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/reference/en/html/mapping.html#mapping-declaration-id-assigned.
///
public T Save(T entity)
{
NHibernateSession.Save(entity);
return entity;
}

///
/// For entities with automatatically generated IDs, such as identity, SaveOrUpdate may
/// be called when saving a new entity. SaveOrUpdate can also be called to update any
/// entity, even if its ID is assigned.
///
public T SaveOrUpdate(T entity)
{
NHibernateSession.SaveOrUpdate(entity);
return entity;
}

public void Delete(T entity)
{
NHibernateSession.Delete(entity);
}

public int Delete(string query,object value,NHibernate.Type.IType type)
{
return NHibernateSession.Delete(query, value, type);
}

///
/// Commits changes regardless of whether there's an open transaction or not
///
public void CommitChanges()
{
if (NHSessionManager.Instance.HasOpenTransaction())
{
NHSessionManager.Instance.CommitTransaction();
}
else
{
// If there's no transaction, just flush the changes
NHSessionManager.Instance.GetSession().Flush();
}
}

///
/// Exposes the ISession used within the DAO.
///
private ISession NHibernateSession
{
get
{
return NHSessionManager.Instance.GetSession();
}
}

private Type persitentType = typeof(T);
}
}

2. At data access layer

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using AliSuite.Commerce.DomainModel.DataInterfaces;
using AliSuite.Commerce.DomainModel.Orders;
using AliSuite.Core;
using NHibernate;
using NHibernate.Expression;

namespace AliSuite.Commerce.DataProvider
{
public class ShoppingCartDaoNH : AbstractNHibernateDao, IShoppingCartDao
{
public void BulkDelete(int portalId, DateTime dateTime)
{
IList objCartList = GetCartListBy(portalId, dateTime);
foreach (ShoppingCart objCart in objCartList)
Delete(objCart);
}

public int GetItemCountByProductIds(List productIds)
{
ICriteria objSearchCriteria = NHSessionManager.Instance.GetSession().CreateCriteria(typeof(ShoppingCartItem));
return (int)objSearchCriteria.Add(Expression.In("ProductId", productIds))
.SetProjection(Projections.RowCount()).UniqueResult();
}

public IList GetCartsByProductIds(List productIds)
{
return NHSessionManager.Instance.GetSession().CreateCriteria(typeof (ShoppingCart))
.CreateAlias("CartItems", "CartItem")
.Add(Expression.In("CartItem.ProductId", productIds))
.List();
}

public int GetItemCountByAttributeId(string attributeId)
{
ICriteria objSearchCriteria = NHSessionManager.Instance.GetSession().CreateCriteria(typeof(ShoppingCartItemInput));
return (int) objSearchCriteria.Add(Expression.Eq("AttributeId", attributeId))
.SetProjection(Projections.RowCount()).UniqueResult();
}

public IList GetCartsByAttributeId(string attributeId)
{
ICriteria objSearchCriteria = NHSessionManager.Instance.GetSession().CreateCriteria(typeof (ShoppingCart));
return objSearchCriteria.CreateCriteria("CartItems")
.CreateCriteria("CartItemInputs")
.Add(Expression.Eq("AttributeId", attributeId))
.List();
}

public IList GetCartsByAddressId(string addressId)
{
ICriteria objSearchCriteria = NHSessionManager.Instance.GetSession().CreateCriteria(typeof(ShoppingCart));
return objSearchCriteria
.CreateAlias("ShippingAddress", "ShippingAddress")
.CreateAlias("BillingAddress", "BillingAddress")
.Add(Expression.Disjunction()
.Add(Expression.Eq("ShippingAddress.Id", addressId))
.Add(Expression.Eq("BillingAddress.Id", addressId)))
.List();
}

private static IList GetCartListBy(int portalId, DateTime dateTime)
{
ICriteria objResultCriteria = NHSessionManager.Instance.GetSession().CreateCriteria(typeof(ShoppingCart));
return objResultCriteria.Add(Expression.Eq("PortalId", portalId))
.Add(Expression.Le("UpdatedDate", dateTime))
.List();
}
}
}

3. At business layer

using System.Collections.Generic;
using AliSuite.Commerce.DomainModel.Base;
using AliSuite.Commerce.DomainModel.Common;
using AliSuite.Commerce.DomainModel.Customers;
using AliSuite.Commerce.DomainModel.Orders;

namespace AliSuite.Commerce.UserCaseControllers
{
public class CheckoutCaseController : UseCaseControllerBase
{

public static void ConvertCart(ShoppingCart shoppingCart, out Order order, List messageList)
{
//CONVERT CURRENT SHOPPING CART TO AN ORDER
order = shoppingCart.ConvertToOrder();

if (messageList.Count == 0)
{
//CREATE/UPDATE CUSTOMER INFORMATION
Customer objCustomer = CustomerController.GetByUserId(order.UserId);
UpdateCustomer(order, objCustomer);

//SAVE ORDER FIRST TO GET ITS ID FOR FURTHER USE
order.CustomerId = objCustomer.Id;
OrderController.Save(order);
}

}


private static void UpdateCustomer(Order order, Customer customer)
{
customer.PortalId = order.PortalId;
customer.ShippingAddress = order.ShippingAddress;
customer.BillingAddress = order.BillingAddress;
customer.UserId = order.UserId;
customer.FirstName = order.BillingAddress.FirstName;
customer.LastName = order.BillingAddress.LastName;

CustomerController.Save(customer);
}

public static bool EmailExists(int portal, string emailAddres, out string message)
{
bool boolResult = false;

message = string.Empty;

if (ServiceLocator.GetMembershipService().EmailExists(portal, emailAddres))
{
boolResult = true;
message = ServiceLocator.GetLocalizationService().GetSharedString("AnonymousCheckout.EmailExists");
}

return boolResult;
}
}
}

Frank Wang Friday, October 23, 2009 at 7:50 PM Frank Wang says:

If you have found any ecommerce system on this planet desinged and implemented in the same way, please let me know.

Thanks

Marcus McConnell Friday, October 23, 2009 at 8:03 PM Marcus McConnell says:

I can't believe your audacity!

I never claimed that you posted my software directly but I have posted evidence that you purchased the software not once, but twice from me. Do you deny purchasing the source code to my software from your likedotnet@hotmail.com account?

Even assuming that you did nothing but copy my layout, html and tab names is copyright infringement.

But, it is clear from my evidence and assessment that you did far more than that. I will assume that your denial of wrong doing constitutes an unwillingness to meet the demands I sent over earlier.

I will fight you to the bitter end because I know that I am 100% correct and this is my life's work. You have been stealing from my family for the past 2 years and defrauding DNN users.

Rob Friday, October 23, 2009 at 8:04 PM Rob says:

Marcus, please avoid firing a pile of code back again at Frank here. An ongoing code comparison just isn't going to work in the blog comments.

I suggest updating your page at bvsoftware.com with any further details or responses and post a notice here. If Frank has a page to dispute the claims, then that would be appreciated as well.

We're all very keen to see the outcome of this, but it'd be great to keep the thread semi-focused.
Rob

Marcus McConnell Friday, October 23, 2009 at 8:10 PM Marcus McConnell says:

As far as I'm concerned there is no need to post code or prove anything beyond what I have already posted except in a court of law. It is insulting that equal weight is being given to a thief who stole from me and anyone who purchased AliCommerce.

I've been in business for eight years. We are licensed in the state of Virginia and I personally have been building ecommerce software for more than 15 years for clients like EddieBauer.com, Godiva.com and more.

This is not a spurious claim and I will not back down when I am right.

Still have doubts? Download a free 30 day trial of BV Commerce 5 from my web site. I'm sure that you will come to the exact same conclusion after working with the software that Frank has stolen my product.

In the AliCommerce forums earlier today, Vinny posted a question asking about variant limits. I know the answer because I wrote the code. The variant cap is artifically limited to 100 variants for performance reasons. You can change that in the AppSettings table in the database.

I can talk all day long about my code if you want....

Rob Friday, October 23, 2009 at 8:51 PM Rob says:

@Marcus,
It's obviously not a spurious claim, but it is an extremely serious one, as it affects the business of a lot of DNN users, many of whom are probably feeling a bit ill right now. I suggest handling the affair in a suitably sombre manner and please keep us all informed of developments.

Regards,
Rob

Marcus McConnell Friday, October 23, 2009 at 8:57 PM Marcus McConnell says:

Rob,

I appreciate your response and I understand your request. My hope is that this will be resolved quickly and rest assured that I am very much considering the merchants using the software. I will not leave those merchants without a cart.

It is very important to me that the DNN community understands the situation clearly. I have to "undo" two years of propaganda by Frank Wang and I want to be extremely clear that there is no doubt about what has happened.

Carl Wagar Friday, October 23, 2009 at 9:23 PM Carl Wagar says:

While I am very much against the pirating of software,
it is not clear to me that you even sell a DNN version of
this cart, and that at a whopping $1500, you are targeting
a much different customer base.

Why would you be suprised that a programmer who obtained
your source code would adapt it to a purpose/market you
were not covering? Sneaky and underhanded yes but it
seems he 'adapted' it to a different purpose you were not covering.

If you can find a way to cover that market (DNN)
for much the same price as Frank was, and
add a fed/state tax capability, then I
will be willing to buy from you in future.
Otherwise I am stuck and angry.

Carl

Marcus McConnell Friday, October 23, 2009 at 9:28 PM Marcus McConnell says:

Carl,

I'm not surprised the someone wanted to adapt the software for other uses. I get calls every week from people who want to use the software for another purpose.

The price that I set and the customers I target are my decision and have nothing to do with someone illegally using my copyrighted software.

Whether or not you would purchase a $1500 software pacakge has nothing to do with Frank Wang's theft of my intellectual property.

As I explained to you via email, I plan to deliver a DNN module that will meet the needs and price point of the DNN community.

Jane...stop this crazy thing Friday, October 23, 2009 at 9:31 PM Jane...stop this crazy thing says:

Not to get off topic, but how do I stop getting notified of updates to this thread?

Obviously this is an extremely hot topic at the moment, however, I lost interest in getting notified every 10 minutes that there is a new post.

Will Morgenweck Friday, October 23, 2009 at 10:17 PM Will Morgenweck says:

@Marcus,
I'm sure the fact that alicommerce.com has been down for most of the day is a result of this dispute. If that is the case and you truly want to help the community members affected, you may consider opening a forum for users to seek basic help. I'm not sure how much help you could actually provide, but I'm guessing other community members would join in. I fear that we are going to end up with some pretty upset DotNetNuke users wanting to vent soon, which isn't good for anyone.

Tom Kraak Friday, October 23, 2009 at 10:36 PM Tom Kraak says:

Anybody who wants to unsubscribe from the comment email notifications for this post , email me (tom AT seablick dot com) and I'll get you off the hook. Thanks.

Rob Friday, October 23, 2009 at 10:42 PM Rob says:

@Jane
It's certainly a pain, but I'm afraid there's no unsubscribe system for this blog module yet - although it has been requested plenty of times and is no doubt on the developer's to-do list.

In the meantime, I'm pretty sure Tom here at Seablick would be able to find your address somewhere in the database and remove it manually. Try posting the request and the address to his contact form here http://seablick.com/contact.aspx
Rob

Allan - Emerald Solutions Saturday, October 24, 2009 at 9:09 AM Allan - Emerald Solutions says:

I'd be very annoyed if I knew someone was stealing the eTailer source code and re-selling it for their own profit, but I can't help but think that there would have been better ways of "outing" AliCommerce that didn't leave all the existing innocent customers high and dry.

They seem to have very few options now, as you don't have your competing software out yet and the AliCommerce support forums appear to have gone offline.

Isn't there anything you can do to license AliCommerce in some way at least in the short term (surely it's financially beneficial and far less risky for your business to take a cut of AliCommerce sales rather than create your own product) rather than pursuing this through courts or having such public disputes?

Or have these discussions already happened behind closed doors and this is the consequence of no agreement being met?

Allan

Marcus McConnell Saturday, October 24, 2009 at 10:38 AM Marcus McConnell says:

Allan,

First, I have offered to let anyone using AliCommerce continue to use it until I have our own official module available as long as they register at www.bvsoftware.com/alicommerce. The module that I create will be fairly priced and competitive in the DNN ecommerce space.

If you are an AliCommerce customer who needs support you can use the contact form at bvsoftware.com and we'll do our best to answer your questions.

I am working with DotNetNuke and they have asked me to refrain from posting anything on their forums until they have an official response ready.

I have contacted Frank Wang and received no response. My lawyers are working on the case now.

In the meantime, if Frank Wang posts messages attempting to defend his theft I will vigorously respond.

AliCommerce users should be angry at Frank Wang that he has left them high and dry by illegally using my software. I'm doing my best to not harm the merchants he has victimized.

George...It will get worse before it gets better Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 9:41 AM George...It will get worse before it gets better says:

Welcome to DNN world Marcus. It sucks but you're gonna love it.

"Xinshu (Frank) Wang's Purchase receipt of BVC 2004 Dated 7/17/2005, well before the first release of AliCommerce"

If I'm not wrong, Alicommerce was first released in 2007.

"Frank's Purchase receipt of BV Commece 5 Dated 9/2/2006, well before the second release of AliCommerce"

Alicommerce 2.0 was released last year.

George...It will get worse before it gets better Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 9:50 AM George...It will get worse before it gets better says:

By the way, I'll love to see you kick out aspnetstorefront too. It's a pile of crap.

Fireworks Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 10:55 AM Fireworks says:

With all due respect can we get back on topic? I understand that this is an emotional topic for all involved, but I don't think this is the correct place for this kind of dialog.

I found this thread looking for information on possible DNN carts, that is the threads real value to people researching carts.

Quite frankly, none of angst and finger pointing belongs here as it has nothing to do with sharing experiences with DNN carts. Stating that AliCommerce may be a perpetrator of intellectual property theft should have been enough to strike it off the list.

Lets continue to improve the value of this thread by providing objective comments with real world experience. "It's a pile of crap" is not a particularly enlightening comment.

Will Paccione Monday, October 26, 2009 at 12:59 AM Will Paccione says:

I think the talk about AliCommerce is extremely relevant to this Blog.

There are so many people in the community using this module who would like to be updated in a non-biased place as to what happens to them and their future experience with it.

While I agree that "Pile of crap" might not be enlightening, it's someone's opinion on that product. @George, maybe you can go into more detail to help us a bit further as to why you feel this way.

Fireworks Monday, October 26, 2009 at 8:49 AM Fireworks says:

Beyond saying that there is potential intellectual property theft and the dispute is on going, this issue is for the legal courts, not the court of public opinion.

Any discussion about AliCommerce or BV's claim is beyond the scope of the thread and only takes away from the value, which has been to provide a single point of contact for anyone looking for ecommerce module information.

While informing people of the dispute and accusations is relevant, the rest of the commentary isn't. It's simply chatter with no relevance to the thread. Just like this post, which will be the last.

Dylan Barber Monday, October 26, 2009 at 10:44 AM Dylan Barber says:

Okay well at least for now AliCommerce is out - so whats the options for someone with a limited set of products ?

Here is my needs - small amount of products (maybe 20) with additions each month of one or two new ones.

Need to keep some inventory - some items i dont keep on inventory (not a big deal)

Ability to offer diffent configs (think ladies shirt and mens shirts with sizes)

Rob Monday, October 26, 2009 at 9:19 PM Rob says:

Hi Dylan,

You'll need to have a think about how you want to accept payments, how you want to handle shipping, what countries you need to handle tax for and how detailed, and whether there is any particular function, other than those you've listed that you absolutely must have - e.g. image processing or loyalty points etc. The carts all differ greatly in the details.

Also important with DNN modules is how familar you are with building DNN sites and working with tokens and templates, and also whather you plan on using it yourself with plenty of technical skills, or if someone with no skills is going to use it.

Rob

Marcus McConnell Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 12:42 PM Marcus McConnell says:

Just wanted to give an update on the AliCommerce situation. Many users and readers of the blog have asked us what our plan is. Right now, we are waiting on the DNN Corp to provide us information about how many actual downloads and purchases of AliCommerce are out there. DNN appears to be dragging their heels on this and it's really confusing since anyone who purchased AliCommerce may have provided personal information like credit card numbers to someone who is in China and clearly doesn't respect intellectual property and US laws. I would have assumed that DNN would at least notify AliCommerce customers of the dispute so they can protect themselves but even that hasn't happened.

I have spoken to a contact at DNN who agreed that it was very clear our software was pirated by Frank Wang. The process of proving it in court will take a significant amount of time and money. My hope was that we could resolve this quickly with DNN's help but my hope is diminishing.

I can't post information about this on the DNN forums because they have moderated my posts and asked me to refrain from posting about this. I know that a few people feel this is off-topic for the blog post but I feel it is very relevant to the selection of an ecommerce module since at least one major application was sold illegally for more than two years.

If you develop modules for DNN or any other type of software and intellectual property I would take this as a warning. Be extremely careful who you work with and what you make available to your customers.

I am currently working on an official module from BV Software for DNN users. The coding looks fairly straightforward at this point. However, without the cooperation of DNN it will be much harder to create and distribute a great replacement for AliCommerce.

I am a US citizen, my company is licensed in the state of Virginia and, unlike Frank Wang, am available anytime to discuss this issue with AliCommerce users. I have nothing to hide.

Dude Walker Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 1:00 PM Dude Walker says:

Marcus, I understand your frustration on this, but legally don't you think that DNNCorp has to get into this a bit further before they just turn everything over to you?

While you believe that Alicommerce has stolen your code, and it "looks" like they may have, nothing legal has been proven yet, and if DNNCorp were to just bow down to your requests they open themselves up to a whole range of legal trouble if things are proven otherwise.

Calling out DNNCorp isn't going to win you any friends in the DNN Community, I sure wouldn't use your products after what I've seen posted from you as of the past few days.

A Long time DNN User (not an Alicommerce customer)

Marcus McConnell Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 1:25 PM Marcus McConnell says:

Yes, and I understand why DNN would not want to release the actual contact information of their users. They have a privacy policy and I'm not asking them to violate it.

I'm asking for "how big is this problem" and they have not been willing to even provide a range of how many people downloaded the software.

They have not been willing so far to even contact the AliCommerce users that they know about directly (without me) to let them know that their is a dispute.

chris Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 1:33 PM chris says:

I have been following this chain of events like many in the community. the customerr is always first and foremost. The piracy has victims including BV.

I do not understand DNN Corp. responsibility here though. Because they channeled the sale (via SnowCovered)? I do nto think the request for any registered user / customer is going to fly here and understand any/all DNN Corp. reluctance. The dispute is going to boil down to Ali and BV in my opinion and will require a legal route to get this type of information from DNN Corp.

Marcus McConnell Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 2:13 PM Marcus McConnell says:

DNN sold and profited from AliCommerce. They may or may not be legally liable for a portion of the copyright infringement. I really don't know yet as I have attempted to keep things friendly with DNN.

However, they have a responsibility to their community. They have a responsibility to let their users know a module they purchased is under dispute. They have a responsibility to ensure to their community that products purchased from their marketplace are trustworthy.

I am hoping that they are willing to work swiftly with me to resolve the matter. If they aren't willing to work in a friendly way then in my opinion I would start to wonder about their commitment to the community.

chris Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 2:31 PM chris says:

DNN should be able to set and enforce policy in terms of use of the commerce site itself. In your dispute I am sure they are considering their decisions and executing on those from the standpoint of the whole community and not an individual (vendor, module customer or other). It sounds like you have done all you can. The privacy rules are what they are - whether it was DNN or your phone company / facebook / etc...

In terms of modules and trustworthiness. that is another subject and one that many of us have opinions on. DNN did attempt (and others - do you recall FlatBurger) to 'certify' modules. this was not well recieved by the vendors nor did it show in sales. I think this is actually a great way though to add credibility to a module and authoring vendor. Otherwise it is up to the customerr to do the necessary due dilligence.

Do not mistake my opinion with all these related issues. For someone to use your work product AND profit from that is stealing and they should suffer all the legal (criminal and personal) consequences.

Abdu Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 2:33 PM Abdu says:


@Marcus: I think all you can do is wait for the word to go around that AliCommerce is gone. I suggest you offer a migration plan for AliCommerce users to move to your upcoming product. I suggest developing a tool to do this automatically. That would be a good decision if you want these users to use your product in the future. Otherwise they will will go to another product. I know you might have to support them even for free but the long term benefit is that they will be loyal to you and hopefully you can sell them upgrades. I am sure they are unhappy of the outcome from AliCommerce so try to accommodate them.

DNNCorp already took AliCommerce off from SnowCovered. There are posts in the forum notifying of had happened so AliCommerce users are not totally in the dark. Also I question DNNCorp's decision to remove your messages from the forum. It's an open forum and one module (I know you're not a module developer yet) developer should be able to voice their opinion if they think another module was a ripoff.

The sale of AliCommerce would have gone for a longer time had you not checked out a competing product.

I have read so many messages about DNN carts and the general trend is that most users are not happy with the products. I hope with your 8 years of ASP.NET cart experience you can fix this. Just make the price attractive.

Jim Begley Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 2:35 PM Jim Begley says:

Marcus, Why would DNN/SnowCovered be legally liable unless they had some prior knowledge of the IP issues? That comment is a fluff-ball that really makes you seem a bit off-base. What you really need to do is lawyer up and take him down or work out some arbitration. You can really keep all of us out of it except for the occasional update. We have courts and lawyers that handle IP issues everyday, (not always to everyones liking). You have a long haul ahead of you getting this done, especially internationally, but go do it and stop dragging it all out in the forums. In the meantime, ship a great product and keep your focus on your business. You will likely make much more money selling licenses then collecting on IP infringement.

Marcus McConnell Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 2:49 PM Marcus McConnell says:

Thank everyone for the comments.

@Jim - The problem with "lawyering up" is the Frank Wang is almost certainly in China where courts and intellectual property battles are extremely costly and never a slam-dunk.

I'm a small business owner and I'm trying to look at the opportunity here instead of dumping buckets of cash down a legal toilet. I just wish the DNN would get on board and help me move in that direction.

Joe Craig Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 3:08 PM Joe Craig says:

Marcus,

I certainly do wish you well.

I think your best bet is to spend your resources (should you so choose) creating a DotNetNuke version of your product rather than pursuing a legal process from which you are unlikely to recover much.

For now, Ali Commerce is dead going forward. It's not on Snowcovered, and the Ali Commerce website has disappeared. I'm also sure that you'll be on the lookout for them showing up an other venues, but Snowcovered is the important one.

Put me down as one who had installed the free version of Ali Commerce on a test site, following recommendations from folks I truse that it was a worthy product. I certainly will not be using it now!

Dude Walker Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 3:23 PM Dude Walker says:

Marcus why do you expect so much from DNNCorp? They owe you nothing but you expect them to roll out the red carpets?

Now you have your wife tweeting about how bad DNN is as well? That's really not good man. Grow up

Jim Begley Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 3:24 PM Jim Begley says:

Marcus, Having had a bit of experience on International IP issues, I agree, your chance of a satisfactory outcome would be slim. But relying on DNN Corp to tell you how many licenses were sold will not help you either. If the chance of renumeration is zip, than 1 license or a thousand, the revenue is gone.

I think your best recovery is to build a kick-ass DNN module, sell it in to all of the AliCommerce shops, (they are going to need a solution long term) and grow your product line. You are an aggressive marketer, (I know, I get enough marketing emails from you.). Put the bad energy to good use, size up the opportunity and code.

I really mean that as encouragement, not to knock you.

Marcus McConnell Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 3:35 PM Marcus McConnell says:

@Dude Walker - I expect that DNNCorp would realize how bad this looks for their community that such a blatant fraud was allowed to continue for more than 2 years.

If you think it would be better for me to file cease and desist orders with every AliCommerce customer and not offer my own ecommerce module, okay, that's an option. I would assume that DNN would rather have a solution to the problem.

My wife is an individual and can post online as she sees fit. I'm assuming that you're either not married or one of those guys who keeps his wife chained to a stove. Talk about off-topic!

Jim Begley Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 3:41 PM Jim Begley says:

Such a blatant fraud? If it was blatant, why did it take 2 years of the alleged IP owner to find it? I believe DNN took AliCommerce off the site the day it happened. You are losing the plot, Marcus. DNNCorp acted promptly and responsibly. They gave you your due. They are not responsible for verifying IP on every product they sell.

Stop lashing out are reasonable people and move on.

Dude Walker Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 3:45 PM Dude Walker says:

The "fraud" wasn't allowed to continue for 2 years, it was ONLY DISCOVERED LAST WEEK! No one at DNNCorp or the community had any clue that Alicommerce was a potential ripoff of your source code.

I think it would be better if you didn't go around trashing DNN, if you wish to do so I wouldn't expect to see any support from the rest of the community in your efforts.

As for my wife, I do keep her locked up in a cage, she only comes out to cook my meals. You want to rent her out for a while?

Greg Brown Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 3:47 PM Greg Brown says:

Marcus-

I agree with Jim & Joe. While I feel your pain I don't think bashing DNN is going to do bvcommerce any favors. I would pursue any and all legal routes within reason but just as important I would look to the future and see what kind of momentum you could gain by taking advantage of the fact that alicommerce has already started building a customer base within DNN for you. Think towards the positive. Think about things from DNN's point of view - they have a potential black eye (or at least some people might construe it that way) here too. If bvcommerce were to provide some support to the customers of alicommerce, develop a tool to migrate from alicommerce to your product, etc. and generally show DNN that you are trying your best to think about the end users and help the community you might find DNN more receptive. You know - "I'll scratch your back......"

Here is another question / potential issue - Did alicommerce sell direct to people from their website in addition to snowcovered? If so, and I were one of the people who gave my credit card number to someone like this, I might be very concerned right now.

Tom Kraak Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 3:54 PM Tom Kraak says:

Please keep it civil and on subject, otherwise I'll have to retire this thread. Thanks.

Marcus McConnell Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 3:56 PM Marcus McConnell says:

Greg, yes, AliCommerce did sell directly from their web site too. I would be very concerned if you purchased directly from them.

Joe Craig Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 4:04 PM Joe Craig says:

I just want to be clear that I said nothing about bashing DotNetNuke Corp.

I did spend a tiny bit of time reading the documents on their site regarding IP, etc.

IF BV's allegations are true (and I have no reason to disbelieve) a fraud was committed against Snowcovered/DotNetNuke. Presumably they also have legal recourse against the perpetrators of fraud. And I think that they could exert their legal rights, only if as a symbol of support.

My personal view is that the attacks on Marcus and his wife are a bit over the top. Can't that simply vanish from this discussion?

Cheers, guys!

chris Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 4:12 PM chris says:

retire it - please...

Abdu Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 4:13 PM Abdu says:

Marcus.. you're going off limit here. DNN has no responsibility to check every module. Plus how would they do that? Ask every module to submit source code and inspect every line? The IP holder is responsible for protecting their property. It's like getting pissed of at eBay because they don't have offices for inspecting every product in their listings!

I don't appreciate you and your family attacking DNN and the corp on other venues and making noise.
You better watch out or DNN users will revolt with a backlash against your future BV Commerce module and consider your time wasted devloping it wasted.
DNN Corp did you a favor but taking down AliCommerce from SnowCovered which they acquired JUST RECENTLY. So for two years they had nothing to do with SnowCovered. Consider yourself lucky, otherwise you would have to deal with a single person, SnowCovered owner, and he could have just ignored you.

I think you're asking too much from DNN. You think because someone ripped off your product, the whole world has to side with you and be under your command?

Come on.. I am losing my sympathy for you. You're not the first person this happens to them. I wish this thread ends soon. We know what happened. The message has spread. Things happened. Let's move on.

Marcus McConnell Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 4:50 PM Marcus McConnell says:

Abu, I'm sure that I've let my emotions get the better of me in some of these posts. You might too if you had work work stolen for 2+ years.

Here's where I stand:

1) My software was sold without my consent for 2 years.

2) I have little to no chance of recovering money from the sales without spending a fortune on international legal fees.

3) Without the source code to AliCommerce I would have a very difficult time supporting it and can't legally sell licenses for it.

4) DNN and Snowcovered fulfilled their legal obligation to remove the software once they were notified but nothing more.

5) I still don't have any idea how many licenses were distributed or how large the infringement was.

6) If I attempt to stop merchants from using AliCommerce I will be hurting them more and it will make it impossible for me to sell a product in the DNN community.

7) DNN will not allow me to post about the conflict in their forums. Blogs like this and Twitter are my only avenue to reach users.

8) My only hope for recovering anything from this is to create a great DNN store module and sell it.

How would you deal with this situation if DNN was unwilling to provide assistance or even warn their users about the problem?

Abdu Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 6:46 PM Abdu says:


- You will not recover anything from someone living in China. Companies lose billions due to piracy there. People in China sell counterfeit DVDs on the streets in the open and even companies with deep pockets like Microsoft have little recourse.

- You don't have a competitive DNN cart module. So it's not a direct loss. There's no money coming out of your pocket. It's about you not getting license fees or something.

- I am not sure how knowing how many licenses were sold will help you. You're not recovering anything from him. Maybe psychologically, you're better off not knowing. Just assume it's a small number. If you knew it were a big number, you'll build up more steam and get more stressed about it.

- The best thing to do is to accept the loss of potential past revenue and salvage what's left. Like I said, build a path for current AliCommerce users to migrate to your own cart. You don't have to support AliCommerce. If you can offer an automated tool for them to use to migrate, you will win indirect customers. They might purchase upgrades. You can offer them the cart for free or at a big discount. Eventually AliCommerce will die away. It's to your interest to make this happen. The legal way is a lost cause.

Don't take it out at the corp. They haven't done anything wrong. Even if they decided not to support you, it's their decision. Plus I wouldn't depend on them. I would just forget about the licenses and concentrate in getting the module done. Also, it's not clear if you just started working on the module recently or for a while. Even if you have an ASP.NET cart done, converting it into a DNN module is a major task. If you read the posts here and the forums at DNN, you will notice that another similar competitor (ASP.NET app first, DNN module later) is still having technical issues.
I get the impression that your module won't be ready for possibly a few months?

Believe me, current AliCommerce users will find out about the problem. Someone posted on DNN's forum about the issue. If there isn't a direct link to here, people will still find out by Googling. They will be directed to here or your site.

Good luck.

Alejandro Quiroga Alsina Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 6:46 PM Alejandro Quiroga Alsina says:

@Marcus,

You have clearly stated where you stand. The word has spread and continues to. I have learnt from this issue just a few hours ago, and have read through all the information I found available.

As a long time DNN user and a DNN Solutions provider (also through Snowcovered) let me please add the following, maybe as a possible ending point everybody is asking for.

1. Chris asked Tom Kraak to remove the thread, I would ask Tom please not to do that, since the value of the thread remains intact and it has become as THE place in which Marcus' issue is clearly pointed out.

2. Marcus has -in many posts above- clearly stated that he is willing to:
a) Provide support to current AliCommerce users to the extent of his best effort.
b) Work on a DNN eCommerce Module (he said he is already at the task).
c) Put that module on sale, at a price targeted to the DNN market.

3. Marcus is rightfully angry and upset. All his comments should be looked under this fact. Please let's be patient with him. He was surprised by this theft just 4 days ago. His wife is also upset and sad. Completely understandable. But please, let's keep family and personal ad-hominem issues out of the comments.
a) Marcus: DNN Corp. has to work on this subject. Please, give them time. Besides, they have bought Snowcoverd just a few days ago.
b) Marcus: DNN Corp. has proven to be able to deal with difficult issues (such as when PE vs. CE was released) and has became stronger and smarter with each challenge it faced.
c) Guys: DNN Corp. is already grown up and they know how to handle the issue themselves ;-)

4. As I said before, I am a long time DNN user and I am truly PROUD of the DNN community. Let's remember that despite all differences we use to have, we continue to remain as one, and a solid one community. This is IMHO one of the main DNN strengths.

5. Back to the topic of this excellent blog post and thread by Tom Kraak:

I am interested in switching from my current custom eCommerce cart. It has 4500+ products listed (Language Packs). I need the new one to:
a) Upon a finalized purchase, call a batch program on my server (.bat).
b) Send some emails when the purchase process has started, and is progressing.
c) ...this may mean I may need to tweak the code.

My choices now are the following:
a) NB_Store (Since it is Open Source and maintained by a terrific team) and I may tweak the code and contribute at the same time to the project)
b) Marcus' new DNN Module.
c) I am leaving CataLook and other products out because I think they cannot handle my needs. Am I wrong?
d) Any suggestions from the community? Thanks!

Cheers,
Alejandro.

Abdu Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 8:28 PM Abdu says:

@Alejandro.. With Catalook you can get the cart with source for $200 and so you can customize it. $200 is a very good price as that's a server license which means it's for any number of stores on any number of DNN instances on the server. However it might be too intimidating for a beginner user because there are so many modules and some modules have a lot of options. With that, it also means it's flexible and offers a lot of functionality. When I look at their feature list, I am surprised at the number of CC gateways it supports. The balance between ease of use and availability lots of features is tricky. It depends on how comfortable the store admin is.

Any time one needs customization, the source needs to be available.

Note: I don't have any practical experience with Catalook

Alejandro Quiroga Alsina Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 8:57 PM Alejandro Quiroga Alsina says:

Thanks @Abdu, it is true what you say about the number of Gateways CataLook supports. And it is true also that I can tweak it's code.

However, the positions and experiences on this product are so divergent that it amazes me. Some love it and some others definitely hate it.

The facts: a) It is $200 the server license, b) Many, many eCommerce DNN sites around are using CataLook. If I had to bet, I'd say over 80%...

Anyone here has put their hands into CataLook's code?

Logic Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 9:06 PM Logic says:

Just offer to buy Ali Commerce for a nominal sum so they avoid the hassle of litigation (even by Chinese standards) and you get their customer base, snow covered account, URL, and source code. You'll come out ahead.

Rob Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 9:27 PM Rob says:

@Alejandro
Thaks for the summary of the other issues. Let's refrain from personal attacks and simply allow Marcus to update the thread with any positive developments in the coming days and weeks.

Regarding your ecommerce choices...

Looking at your requirement to trigger a thread of emails, presumably for further marketing and/or support, you might find a more powerful ready-made solution in combining Onyaktech's Axon with either the cart you already have - or a new one. All you need is to be able to add buyers to roles upon purchase (and most carts allow that). Once a buyer is in a role, Axon can fire up a threaded campaign. The module is purpose-built for handling this. Datasprings and Interactivewebs also have competing modules to check out, but I prefer the licensing of Axon, and Chris is so productive and positive about enhancements, it's almost like having your own development team employed.

Apart from that suggestion, I would still bias towards NB store for your specs there, partly because of the willingness to code and contribute and also because the cart is so flexible and the developer so open to suggestions and sponsorship - as has already benefitted me. However you need to make sure it can handle organising and listing your products in a suitable manner - not just when entering data, but more so at the other end - i.e. can people find the products easily.

All carts provide categories, but many only have very basic browsing and filtering capabilities. This doesn't matter when there are just a few pages of products, but 4500 items need to be able to be browsed quickly and easily.

Catalook has a massive amount of functionality, probably more than any other DNN cart, and it generally can do whatever you throw at it... but make sure you download and test the demo and you'll soon find out if you're up to it. Also have a good look through the demo sites and see if you can find one that works. I've tried several times over the years and did actually once find one that was very good - but the rest are generally garbage, or, amusingly, have transformed into non-DNN carts since being listed. (note that I haven't checked this again for a few months now and it may have changed)

I personally can't recommend eTailer for 4,500 products, although there's still no easier way to get a nice DNN cart happening, but for a _much_ smaller number of products. It's also in need of some updates, which I'm sure are coming along :)

I also feel that Smith Consulting's cart is worth a close look (I'm still trying to find time to give it a test) however in my view, not providing full image processing is simply a fail from the very start - It all depends on who is going to manage the cart of course, but I'm no longer interested in setting up image-processing batch-apps for clients.

Without alicommerce, there is nothing inbetween these base products and aspstorefront, and personally I'd be more inclined to use a PHP cart than blow over a grand on that - I've already made that mistake once with another non-dnn cart.

Final comment... As a web services provider, one has to have a very good reason to use DNN, before ever making the decision to use a DNN cart.

Regards
Rob

P.s. Not being able to code as a developer, I instead sat down and contributed a new homepage for the NB Store page on nbstore.codeplex.com - This now has a feature-list for anyone who needs to see what it's about.

Matt Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 10:10 PM Matt says:

Hi guys, I have experience with CataLook on small and large scale. We have e commerce solutions from 10 to 15000 products and I would not change it for any other dnn solution. It is very flexible and does what you want - however you do need to spend some time on it, I can create a working shop in minutes now when at the beginning it took me days. One thing we do not do is to work on the source, you will find that a lot of stuff can be done by just editing templates etc - this means that we can update it at any time without any additional coding and give credit to dnnsoft they have been keeping the product up to date. It is not an easy application to learn but once you get your head around it everything fits in place nicly. There are couple of things that can put people off - manual is quite hard to understand at first and their website unfortunately is not up to date at all times. However there are other resources like Nina Mayers CataLook support forum where you can find lots of info and examples of great stores.
One poit to make is that CataLook is a full blown ecommerce and other solutions like "famous" AliCommerce and similar are just a simple shopping carts in comparison.

Alejandro Quiroga Alsina Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 7:22 AM Alejandro Quiroga Alsina says:

Thanks Rob and Matt for your thorough comments (filled with tips, also), indeed you both point into the same direction I was heading to :-)

I will start to check closely and walk the paths that open up, meaning NB_Store and CataLook.

Guss Davey Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 5:10 PM Guss Davey says:

Frank Wang, from Alicommerce, you owe me R199 dollars, you're b8strad.
I will spread your name like wild fire on the internet till you pay me.

Alicommerce is build on stolen code. Search the internet.
Alicommerce is DOWN, it is removed from snowcovered.

Ask bvsoftware.com, its there code, and now all of us the bought is has unsupported, illegal stuff,...... or mr Wang, just send me the source code so that I can fix the problems I have myself. PLEASE.

Brian Friday, November 06, 2009 at 7:03 PM Brian says:

I am a past AliCommerce customer, but have since stopped using the store and transitioned to the very powerful and reasonably price Catalook store.

Having comunicated with AliCommerce to try to get the store running in the past, I received an email from Frank this morning.

His email is as follows:

__________________

Hi there,

We're facing a couple of major issues. One is related to our investors and another one is caused by the dispute with another company. Sorry I can't give you further details, but it's very likely that AliCommerce as a business will be cancelled in the near future. The only thing I can assure you at the moment is that your stores will be supported as usual no matter what happens in the future. We're considering making the source code available for purchase sometime in the future as well.

Best Regards,

Frank

_____________________

Light at the end of the tunnel or on coming train...
You be the judge!

Guss Davey Saturday, November 07, 2009 at 5:07 AM Guss Davey says:

Frank, when I bought Alicommerce, you had a 100% money back guarentee. I'm 100% dissatified because the product is off the market and I can't wait for your disputes with bvSoftware.com.

Please honour your guarentee, contact me and refund my purchase!

Engagement Rings Monday, November 16, 2009 at 11:00 AM Engagement Rings says:

This is a great discussion! There are so many issues with the current DNN ecommerce world. This doesn't mean that there aren't products out there that work for certain clients/requirements.

In our case, we needed too much custom work flow to use any of the canned carts that were out during that time. We've completed several catalook, portal store and aspstorefront implementations and customizations and have found custom workflow to be cumbersome.

I agree with everyone's frustration here, but think there are some leaps that are currently being made to handle these issues. I look forward to improvements with aspdotnetstorefront and see if any other commercial grade systems spring up.


Adia Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 4:10 AM Adia says:

I'm blank right now. I'm currently using AliCommerce module under trial version. I wanted to buy the module yesterday and looking for it in snowcovered but found this forum instead. I'm so frustrated as it was one of the best module for e-commerce web portal. Since it can't be used can anyone please give me suggestion which is the next best e-commerce module that excellent for me to buy.

Guss Davey Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 5:33 AM Guss Davey says:

Hi Adia, I was also blank...sorry not blank, sunken!

I've switched to an open source store called nbstore
http://nbstore.codeplex.com

You can see it in production on my site here:
https://www.bogey.co.za/OnlineShop.aspx

With nbstore I can do 99% what I did with AliCommerce.
Use beta NB_Store_02.00.04 Beta
http://nbstore.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=34542

Adia Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 8:53 PM Adia says:

Thanks Guss, It looks fine for me. Since u had experience in it I think I'll consider this store. How can someone do that. The one that suffer the most is of coz the user like myself. Dammit this people now i had to do all over again .... :(

Will Paccione Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 9:59 PM Will Paccione says:

Very nice. I know it's in the roadmap, but doesn anyone know when NBStore will work with Authorize.net?

Rob Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 10:50 PM Rob says:

The Authorize.net gateway the NB Store really needs some assistance to get it moving along, so if anyone has had experience implementing Authorize.net anywhere, please help out. The gateway apparently works up to the point of the ReturnURL. I've linked my name to the thread.

Abdu Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 12:00 AM Abdu says:

Why not look at other open source carts and see how the implemented it? CodePlex has some implementations.

Dave Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 2:21 AM Dave says:

The Authroize.Net for NB_Store has been completed and an Alpha is being tested...Although I've not got any feedback yet? Which is why I've not advertised the fact. However I'll post the alpha version on codeplex today, with a brief explaination of what needs doing to get it to work.

me Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 2:50 AM me says:

how can I cancel my email notification from this discussion?

Tom Kraak Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 8:41 AM Tom Kraak says:

As mentioned above, anybody who wants to unsubscribe from the comment email notifications for this post , email me (tom AT seablick dot com) and I'll get you off the hook. Thanks.

Dwayne Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 11:33 AM Dwayne says:

Originally I fell into your trap, but now I count on the notifications. Informative entertainment is difficult to find.

andy anand Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 11:49 PM andy anand says:

great thread, keep me posted

Will Paccione Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 9:09 PM Will Paccione says:

Wow. I just tried NB Store and had it installed and running in about 30 minutes- probably quicker next time. Very impressed with it's features, setup and easy to use back-end.

All I need is
- Authorize.net (which it looks like it's getting close)
- Getting it to say "Price" instead of "Prix". Ha, I'll look into that more later, but overall I think this will be a true contender.

Love to see Marcus' version when it comes out. Any update on an ETA, Marcus?

Dave Lee Saturday, November 28, 2009 at 5:50 PM Dave Lee says:

@Will
It's great that you like NB_Store, nice to know the hard work isn't wasted. The Authorize.Net gateway provider has been placed on codeplex.

http://nbstore.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=28920

For all the people who kept saying they wanted it, I've still got zero feedback on this...so please give it a try and get some feedback to me....anyone please...

Thanks.

Fernando Tuesday, December 01, 2009 at 12:25 PM Fernando says:

I was testing AliCommerce module under trial version. And I was buying this module today, when I found this forum.
I'm so frustrated because I lost a lot of time, but not money.
I hope Marcus can develop his module. I´d like to buy it if is similar to AliCommerce.
When I was testing module I haven´t any support from AliCommerce. They didn´t work.

Craig Sunday, December 06, 2009 at 12:12 PM Craig says:

Yep - I'm another AliCommerce customer that purchased directly from their website. Liked the software...

Registered at BV's website. Hoping for a good resolution from Marcus - hate to have to start all over again.

Thanks for keeping this thread - just found it after a search when trying to access AliCommerce's site and realizing it's gone.

Marcel Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 11:11 PM Marcel says:

Great thread, great site. After all these year I stumble on this sit and this thread encapsulates my living hell. One on DNNs major issues is the lack of a decent ecommerce module

I've used Catalook on a few projects but the client’s just spin out when they saw it and it just produced a river of complaints. From look and feel to work flow and gateways.

And that is another issue with the ecomm systems is the lack of payment gateways. In my dreams I wish at least one client would say "yay lets use PayPal” but no is got to be NAB, CommBank, Westpac,St George, eway etc.. You Guessed it my clients aren’t from the US

Now I would have thought that all gateways use similar methodologies that could be easily codified into an end-user form. But for some reason each gateway in an Ecomm solution requires its own build and associated dlls

As for PHP solutions well that just isn’t going to fly for a number of reasons but I won’t go into that but not all people are selling products and my clients are mainly sell memberships, subscriptions, events and course which need to activate functionality and roles etc in DNN

The funny thing I had previously suggested to Catalook to the tokens instead of the aspx skinning method they use but they told me it was impossible...to me it seemed rather simple. Anyhow and after much pain with Catalook and its spaghetti code and lack of meaningful documentation the support just lead from one frustration to another I ran into NB_Store.

Now there was a breath of fresh air plus it uses tokens, fantastic, can easily create displays the way the clients wants and without having the hack your way through undocumented coding.

But when I looked at it the payment gateway issue was still there. I now notice eway but from where I sit if it doesn’t support the big 4 Banks here in Australia it’s not a goer

I just can’t go near Ecommerce projects of any shade until there is a decent solution available, yes Catalook supports a vast number of gateways but I just don’t have time the spend hacking a poorly thought out application.

Last thought re AliCommerce, on bvsoftware finding out that the Ali product was their stolen code...I find it mind boggling that bvsoftware didn’t say all you people that bought the Ali product, the product in now called bvsoftware for DNN, this is the license transfer price and here is bvsoftware for DNN upgrade and make your store legal. But hey I suppose they are making enough money

Abdu Friday, December 11, 2009 at 12:55 PM Abdu says:

I am not surprised you won't find Australian banks gateways in many eCommerce solutions. That's like a niche market and not enough customers to support. I suggest you hire a developer from places like rentacoder.com and get him/her to implement a gateway. I have implemented Authorize.net's gateway for payment and it was super easy. It was just a simple http post call using ssl with the payment info and get the response. Most good payment processors and banks supply an api and some sample examples in different languages. You can also Google for open source solutions.

So my suggestions is get the api/examples from your banks and give them to the developer and tell them to add the implementation to the NB_Store. If NB_Store implements some kind of provider model of it's payment functionality, it would be easy to plugin a new gateway.

Or you can look at available open source carts from any language and convert the code to asp.net. PHP carts like osCommerce and zzencart are popular and maybe someone implemented an Australian bank gateway. Good luck.

Dave Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 4:31 AM Dave says:

Smith Cart DNN module supports the following payment gateways:

* Authorize.Net
* PayPal Website Payments Standard
* PayPal Website Payments Pro
* PayPal Payflow Pro
* TransFirst
* Innovative (QuickBooks)
* QuickBooks Merchant Services (QBMS)
* First Data Resources (FDR) - First Data Global Gateway Connect
* LinkPoint - First Data Global Gateway
* MyGate
* NMI- Network Merchants, Inc.
* Checkout option - Pay with credit card or Paypal
* Checkout option - Pay with credit card or Bill me Later
* Manual Processing (No Gateway) – If you choose this option the module stores the customer, order and credit card information in the database and you can process the credit card transaction at a later time manually through your credit card terminal or virtual terminal.

For more info on this shopping cart module check out smithcart.com

Dwayne Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 12:31 PM Dwayne says:

It looks like aspdotnetstorefront dropped the ML/DNN version just a few days ago. No notice, no warnings, just deleted forumns and products like many other failed companies who ignore their customers.

http://www.aspdotnetstorefront.com/

This saga has gone on long enough. Will someone please find us a decent and reliable ecommerce module for DotNetNuke?

Tom Kraak Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 12:43 PM Tom Kraak says:

Not to spread any rumors, but I heard that ASPDNSF took it down because DNN Corp refused to get DNN PCI compliant ... don't hold me to it though.

Still, why not state that publicly ... or is it somewhere?

Dwayne Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 2:05 PM Dwayne says:

I just spoke with aspdnsf and will confirm that the product is supported but no longer offered as of December 14 by "upper management" and there is a PA-DSS issue and the finger is pointing at DotNetNuke.

When the jokers at PCI Security Standards Council get their act together with yet another confusing quasi-standard, if implemented by the PCI, it may ultimately affect all DNN ecommerce modules if DNN itself is not compliant.

To my knowledge, DotNetNuke can be configured to meet PCI-DSS but not PA-DSS, but this is where PCI fails to be a comprehensive standard because DotNetNuke does not natively handle credit cards anymore than IIS, SQL, or ASP.net or SharePoint does.

Where does one draw the line? In my view the payment card industry standards are a joke waiting for a punchline. A simple PIN confirmation would solve the majority of fraud problems instantly.

Marcel Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 2:45 PM Marcel says:

I was looking at the PA-DSS and PCI-DSS requirements and they seem to be mainly around the server(s)/hosting and the security around the hosting/server environment and facilities, some of them seem to be about bricks and mortar retail operations. And others are about the Ecomm engine its self. I’m not sure where the view that the DNN core its self needs to be certified. I think it’s more about each individual implementation meeting the requirements.
1. Do not retain full magnetic stripe, card validation, code or value, or PIN block data.
2. Protect stored cardholder data.
3. Provide secure authentication features.
4. Log payment application activity.
5. Develop secure payment applications.
6. Protect wireless transmissions.
7. Test payment applications to address vulnerabilities.
8. Facilitate secure network implementation.
9. Cardholder data must never be stored on a server connected to the internet.
10. Facilitate secure remote software updates.
11. Facilitate secure remote access to payment application.
12. Encrypt sensitive traffic over public networks.
13. Encrypt all non-console administrative access.
14. Maintain instructional documentation and training programs for customers, resellers, and integrators.

https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/pdfs/pci_pa_dss.pdf

Abdu Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 3:48 PM Abdu says:

Why are PA-DSS and PCI-DSS required and
why isn't SSL and data encryption enough? Is it a requirement from the credit card processor or merchant bank?

Why doesn't ASPDNSF offer two versions? One which meets PA-DSS and PCI-DSS requirements and one which doesn't?

I am not familiar with these requirements and looking at those requirements posted, it seems these are implemented by the cart software vendor. How does DNN come into play and failed for ASPDNSF.. technically speaking?

Dave Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 4:07 PM Dave says:

I have been thru 5 PCI audits for various clients in the past. Visa has set a date of July 2010 for their phase 5 PCI requirement that all processors make sure their merchants are PCI DSS compliant. The following are the requirements for a web application that handles credit cards:

- Store credit cards numbers in the database using 256 bit strength encryption
- never store the cvv2 security code from the credit card
- All other sensitive customer data like passwords should be encrypted using 256 bit encryption also
- Application must be coded to prevent cross site scripting and other injection attacks including sql injection. Normally the use of stored procedures vs inline sql handles most of this but their are other best practice coding techniques to prevent and application from being hacked.
- In your webconfig connection string use integrated sql security instead of mixed. SQL server integrated security is more secure
- Make sure the permissions are locked down on sql server to only the security needed
- Never use the sql server sa password
- Site must use ssl

The rest of the pci requirements are non cart related and revolve around network, server, windows and database security and other physical security requirements like keeping your servers in a locked data center and only allowing apporved personnel access.

Dave Smith
www.smith-consulting.com

Abdu Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 4:18 PM Abdu says:

I have been using authorize.net for 10 years and never got a notice about needing to meet any requirements and I accept Visa cards. Who do these requirements apply to?

What is a PCI audit.. someone physically looks at your web.config and makes sure your database uses 256 encryption key?

Dwayne Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 4:35 PM Dwayne says:

I am a loyal (and very patient) ASPDNSF customer who chose ML/DNN because of DotNetNuke and PA-DSS (previously PABP).
https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/pdfs/pci_pa_dss.pdf
PA-DSS does apply to payment applications provided in modules, which typically includes a “baseline” module and other modules specific to customer types or functions, or customized per customer request. PA-DSS may only apply to the baseline module if that module is the only one performing payment functions (once confirmed by a PA-QSA).

Note: PCI SSC will ONLY list applications that are payment applications.

From these excerpts I would expect ASPDNSF to be certified but not DotNetNuke. We can only guess that the PA-QSA discovered DNN issues with login or customer information, encryption, the data access layer, cross site scripting or even the Host|SQL option.

The Primary Account Number (PAN) is the defining factor in the applicability of PCI DSS requirements and PA-DSS. If PAN is not stored, processed, or transmitted, PCI DSS and PA-DSS do not apply.

I believe this is a single configuration setting in ASPDNSF. If your website does not store credit card info then none of this crap applies. However, if you need to issue refunds you will need to re-request the credit card number from the customer (which is a whole new bag of worms).

Greg Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 4:48 PM Greg says:

I am getting ready to start on my first ecommerce project within DNN. If I understand correctly, if you send the visitor to PayPal's or Authorize.net's site for payment instead of having the visitor pay directly on your site then none of this PCI crap applies?

What are the benefits in having visitors pay directly on your site that would make the added responsibility/risk worth it?

Rob Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 5:19 PM Rob says:

If you're using the provider's hosted payment page, then the PCI scan is basically finished once that fact has been established... the "scan" up to that point being a simple self-assessment questionnaire. For everyone else, it's the beginning of a whole lot of work.

The complexities and requirements for accepting payments on-site are only likely to become more stringent over time and I'll be leaving that for the payment service providers to handle. Granted, some of us here won't have the choice, but in my business, I'm generally making that decision.

My advice for people starting out in ecommerce here is to consider whether your own payment page is going to create more, or less, business than that of a major payment service provider, and then draw a line where you want the functionality of your website to end and their services to begin.

Integrated payment > Start working down list of PCI requirements > start selling

Hosted payment > start selling

The difference between the two used to be a debate about whether customers would be put off the purchase if they paid on a page that looked different from your website. These days, a well-known payment service is seen as a benefit, and sites even advertise the gateways they use. Whether the card details page is ultimately hosted or not seems irrelevant.

The DPS gateway I'm using here has been the de-facto local standard for quite a while now, and sending buyers to their hosted page is generally a plus all around.

Note that I'm targeting this advice at the typical small business ecommerce sites that DNN users tend to be involved with. If someone is building the next Amazon then by all means, go all the way.

Rob

Abdu Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 5:47 PM Abdu says:

Greg: I suggest you ask your credit card processor about the requirements. I haven't got satisfying answers here about when PA-DSS and PCI-DSS should apply to you. I haven't heard when you NEED to be under PA-DSS and PCI-DSS. I use my own page to capture credit card information and pass them along to authorize.net. Whether I save the information in my own database is up to me. I am sure some customers won't feel comfortable when the payment page is on another site. When this practice becomes very common then I guess it's OK. As for refunds for authorize.net, you can log in to their site and issue refunds without knowing the credit card #. Same thing with Paypal. You only need to know the transaction ID. You can refund partial amounts.

Find out if you need to meet PCI requirements first by asking the processor.

CoralGoose Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 7:10 PM CoralGoose says:

HI! I'm still in shock over the fact that ASPDNSF is suddenly, without notice, discontinuing ML/DNN. I put MONTHS (and yes, I really mean MONTHS) of my life earlier this year to get PART of my inventory loaded into my ML/DNN store. I was converting from a non-DNN version of ASPDNSF so, after research, it seemed "easiest and cheapest" to move to the DNN version since I really didn't have time to code the "accessories" that go around the store.

It was only earlier this year that 7.2 came out. 7.1.2 was the first version that actually installed and was somewhat usable. While starting with that. 7.2 came out. All versions prior to 7.1.2 were unusable. This fact was reported and ignored.

Let's note that ASPDNSF admits that the Zone Diet site was HEAVILY customized. It's NOT an out of the box implementation!

Guess that's immaterial now. But I'm now trying to figure out what to do. Do I spend my energy RECONVERTING my catalog to another store or do I try to fix ASPDNSF ML/DNN code to work on DNN 5.x and address some other issues it has? I already spent weeks recoding the Paypal standard payments because it looked like it was coded by two different people! One tried to do it as an HTML form submit ( no no for DNN) and the other tries later to submit the data as a web.request (no no for paypal) and ultimately, neither worked (and no rational person would do them both in the same process!).

Sorry...I'm frustrated and my poor store is the victim. Just 2 weeks ago, I bought more customization to try to fix the registration portion of the ASPDNSF ML/DNN cart because, among other things, it asks the user for their phone number 3 times! I hadn't even gotten it installed before the discontinuation was not announced (and I mean that...NO announcement, just POOF).

My store should be assisting me sell product. I shouldn't have to spend more time implementing/maintaining the store than MAKING the products!

Doolz Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 12:42 PM Doolz says:

Well, I'm not surprised.
I search and search for a solution aboard DotNetNuke and the only bit I find is the ever so bloated Catalook with it's ridiculous requirement of .NetShip for a bloody free XML postback system.
With ASPDNSF shutting down, I may just say the hell with this useless CMS.
User friendly, but not ecommerce friendly.
This is actually a pretty big load of bullshit. Trying to find a viable solution to a real time shipping issue is getting tiresome and disappointing.

Guess I'll just redevelop the site in Drupal and call it a day.

Hey maybe if the asshats at Catalook manage to get off their horses for a half sec and readdress the shipping thing, maybe then the Canada Post wouldn't require .NetShip, given that .NetShip is some idiotic load of code from a completely different country.

Doesn't make sense that it would be required for anything... except to pay for some asshat's Christmas shopping.

charlie382 Tuesday, December 29, 2009 at 8:27 PM charlie382 says:

Let me know when you have a good cart

Jeff Waters Sunday, January 03, 2010 at 10:31 AM Jeff Waters says:

Wow, what a long lived discussion!
So, what's the verdict these days?

I'm interested in a cart solution for selling digital downloads (fewer than 20) from a DNN site. Right now, I'm leaning towards www.e-junkie.com.

Why would I choose a DNN module based solution over this?

What would be the best DNN module based solution for my needs at this time?

Song Sunday, January 03, 2010 at 11:36 AM Song says:

This is a great thread on ecommerce module in DNN.

It would be better if there is a dedicated summary of every module available on the market, perhaps including PHP-based.

Could anyone suggest PHP-based e-commerce modules (e.g zencart)?

Thanks

Pedro Monday, January 04, 2010 at 9:23 AM Pedro says:

Hi Song,

I've herd good feedback on Magento and Cubecart (I guess both are PHP based).

I guess a lot of people have the dilema of whether to go for a popular PHP e-commerce solution or a DNN e-commerce module. This is specially true for DNN users/developers like me.

What I think can be an option for established DNN sites that want to extend to e-commerce is to have a mix PHP e-commerce website. and having the DNN website do the rest. I think that as long as the look and feel of the website is the same you can have the best of both worlds. I've been thinking about this for my website but I haven't implemented this solution so I'm not sure of what I'm saying. I would be very happy to hear some critique on this.

I would like to thank this thread for info on alicommerce as I was almost about to buy it.

Cheers great thread

Song Monday, January 04, 2010 at 10:37 AM Song says:

@Pedro,

Thank you for your info.

A mix of PHP e-commerce website and DNN website could be a solution. Is it easy to share one database between PHP shopping cart and DNN website? Or supported?

I am also glad to find the thread.

Pedro Monday, January 04, 2010 at 10:45 AM Pedro says:

If you are a developer or if you have someone to do it for you it should not be difficult to have it done.

I would start of by having both sites databases apart as it would be simplier. But again I don't know the business logic of your website and perhaps sharing info (like customers) is critical to you.

Cheers

Abdu Monday, January 04, 2010 at 12:43 PM Abdu says:

The reason to get a DNN cart is the integration between the cart and DNN. The shopping cart is displaying inside the DNN portal. The cart will have the same theme and navigation as the portal. If you're going with PHP or anything else, the cart will be a separate application. There are many none DNN based ASP.NET based carts out there. Free open source or commercial. dashCommerce and nopCommerce can be downloaded from CodePlex. For PHP, ZenCart and osCommerce are the most popular. However they were developed under the LAMP platform. If you plan to use them under Windows, you should read other Windows users experiences and read about their specific Windows setup so they run properly under Windows.

Doolz Monday, January 04, 2010 at 7:34 PM Doolz says:

As a DNN based web designer of several years now, I can honestly say that there are no SIMPLE, full featured options that are comparable to something such as Ubercart that is available for Drupal.

The offset is the usability of DotNetNuke as a backend... however, given the (sometimes extreme) performance differences, between ASP and PHP based CMS platforms, I may just write a 'Your Website for Dummies' handbook for my clients and their Drupal needs.

That said, existing solutions range all over and NB_Store is an incredible solution save for one crucial element in Shipping methods.

@Jeff Waters :: Try NB_Store out, integrating your store in DNN means you don't have to pay E-Junkie, right?

Will Paccione Monday, January 04, 2010 at 7:46 PM Will Paccione says:

I tested NB_Store for a short period of time and REALLY liked it. I think the more the community uses it and gives feedback, the better it'll become.

Dave just added Authorize.net to help it out. I haven't checked out the shipping methods in it though Doolz.

I also have high hopes for Smith Cart. eTailer is nice for an easy solution too.

Though, my next project will probably be NB_Store

Guy Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 5:27 PM Guy says:

Not exactly encouraging news about a BV Commerce module:

"We've had to put our DNN work on hold for the moment due to the announcement that DNN will not be moving to ASP.NET MVC. Our plan was to integrate our next BV Commerce version (which will be MVC) with DNN but I'm not sure that will be possible. We're taking a step back to evaluate our options right now. I wouldn't expect a DNN cart from us anytime in the next few months."

Tom Kraak Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 5:32 PM Tom Kraak says:

Thanks for keeping us current Guy, much appreciated!

Abdu Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 1:02 PM Abdu says:

I don't see what the benefits are of moving to MVC and lose the DNN market? Feature wise, MVC doesn't offer anything that WebForms can't do. MVC maybe offers better testability and better separation of concerns but the keyword is "better" and unless you have unit tests made for the UI or you don't understand how to design a good WebForm site, MVC offers nothing compelling to redesign and recode a whole commercial app that took years to develop. I understand using MVC if you're starting a new project. Going MVC AND losing DNN customers doesn't make much sense to me. The app user doesn't know and doesn't care if the site uses WebForms or MVC, unless they are a developer planning to customize the store through code. Do the benefits of using MVC outweigh the revenue from serving DNN customers? Maybe the BV guy knows better.

I am not sure of this, but I read that WebForms and MVC can work together in the same app. But in the case of DNN, maybe it's not feasible because you can't mix MVC with master pages based on WebForms.

From the start, I was already skeptical about BV Commerce going DNN. I knew this is a huge project to make an existing app work inside DNN and it would take a single developer months to make this happen. (I am guessing BV is a single developer company based on my observations).

BTW, this is the first time I hear about an announcement about a big existing asp.bet app going from webform to MVC.

If you were in his shoes, would yo make the same move?

Chris Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 1:48 AM Chris says:

It's interesting that BV Commerce has backed away from DNN due to MVC, when BVCommerce has a blog post from 12/2009 that says they are sticking with Webforms for BVCommerce 6 instead of MVC based as he initially planned.

Getting a store module setup for DNN is no small feat, the first thing I ever did with DNN was a store, so I know the struggles there. Perhaps Marcus simply got overwhelmed and decided it wasn't going to happen.

Asaf Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 9:54 AM Asaf says:

I'm one of the Ali-commerce victims :) I've actually paid for it.

I've been working on an online catalog project for the past couple of month And it was quite intimidating to go online with a non supported solution like Alicommerce.

I spent the last week or so in migrating All of the templates I've created and all of my catalog data (200+ products) to NB_Store, and I have to say I am very very happy with the results.
It looks like NB_Store is a great replacement for Alicommerce.

Tom Kraak Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 10:14 AM Tom Kraak says:

@ Asaf - that's at least some good news, thanks.

Please share a link to your site once you are happy with it as I believe many in this discussion would like to see NB_Store in action.

Dave Sunday, January 31, 2010 at 10:39 AM Dave says:

For anyone that's interested here's a link to one of the sites I've created with NB_Store.

http://www.lebazardewally.com – Best eCommerce Site, OpenForce Europe Division 2009

Dave Sunday, January 31, 2010 at 10:43 AM Dave says:

The last statement was a bit pompous of me I mean :

For anyone that's interested here's a link to one of the sites WE HAVE created with NB_Store.

http://www.lebazardewally.com – Best eCommerce Site, OpenForce Europe Division 2009

loukas Tuesday, February 09, 2010 at 8:41 PM loukas says:

We have developed many sites with catalook but... we charge a lot of money just to set up catalook and skin it because it is so vast and it has a plethora of options.

This post is very very informative and we will have to look at nb store for "smaller" customers that we want to get the job done and paid in a fair amount of time (and a fair amount of money).

Last but not least... I will probably have my own e-shop within the next few months and I will definitely use catalook because a) lack of good ecommerce dnn modules b) I think it is the best in terms of features and elasticity.

@Dave... I stumbled upon your site searching for inspiration and I think it is very very nicely done, kudos

webgirl Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 1:10 PM webgirl says:

Have any of your guys considered ablecommerce? NB Store is looking good but its feature set is too limited for our needs. Here is a great thread on stackoverflow about ASP.NET E-commerce solutions from the developers that use them:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/47234/best-asp-net-e-commerce-framework-aspdotnetstorefront-ablecommerce-bvcommerce

There are some DNN developers on there who give real opinions on ASPDNSF ... some of them seem favorable towards ablecommerce. We just downloaded the free trial today and will start playing around with it once we get it setup

Tom Kraak Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 1:20 PM Tom Kraak says:

How will ablecommerce help you in a DNN environment though?

webgirl Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 1:45 PM webgirl says:

True its not a DNN module so it won't integrate with our present website as such but we will skin it to look like the site and link to it from the store link on our DNN site ...

If we skin it well (which we plan to) most users likely won't notice the transition unless they look at their address bar. The main reason that people log into to our site is to make a purchase so we'll change things a little to only have login links on the actual store pages as to not confuse users about why logging into the site doesn't log them into the store.

It's not a perfectly seamless solution but the DNN e-commerce offerings that are presently available leave much to be desired. We really need something more stable, more feature-rich, more easily customizeable, more user-friendly and more well documented than what we've seen so far.

We've worked with both Catalook and ASPDNSF. Catalook comes closest than any of others but it can be somewhat of a beast to grapple with as far as the learning curve to get it going. It does work fairly well though which is more than I can say for others.

At any rate ... although we're sticking with DNN for our website itself (DNN has been a Godsend for us) we feel compelled to search outside of it for a good e-commerce solution.

Dave Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 3:29 AM Dave says:

This is the first time I've looked at Ablecommerce, and it looks good!! And if your feature set requirements don't match any DNN ecommerce solutions then the idea of linking to a seperate website for the ecommerce is a probably the best way to go.

The NB_store feature set and documentation is still behind these kind of mature ecommerce solution, but hopefully we'll catch up!!

@webgirl, if you get time I'll be interested if you could list some of of features that NB_Store is missing on NB_Store codeplex disscussions. NB_Store does everything my clients need for an ecommerce (I have an advantage of devloping any features I need), but I'm always interested in why people can't use it?

webgirl Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 12:22 PM webgirl says:

Hi Dave,

I've placed a few posts on codeplex after downloading and installing NB Store to play around with it and see if it had what we needed. I mentioned a few things in my posts but I didn't put a comprehensive list.

Management will be meeting later on this week or early next week to compile the final master list of requirements for our new store. I will post post a more detail list on codeplex then ...

NB Store is a good package from what I've seen so far. I was really hoping that it would work out for us ...

John Tisdale Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 2:47 AM John Tisdale says:

I've been running my own dedicated Windows server for 16 years with DNN on it for the past 8. I used Catalook several years ago but found it too difficult to manage and almost impossible to provide an intuitive user experience. I do a lot of user experience architecture and the amount of work required to make any such solution usable is so extensive and then their updates overwrite such configuration changes - making such changes impossible to maintain.

I then purchased ASPDotNetStorefront for a grand at the time. Admittedly, I was one of the first ML/DNN users and spent the better part of a year trying to make it work and keep it running - terrible DNN integration. I got good customer service whenever I called them asking for my money back (most of the first year) but terrible service otherwise. Their technical support service is the worst I've experienced in my 30 years as an IT professional. Their telephone operator seems to be one of the only people in the company willing to help you solve problems - seriously discuss your problems with the woman who answers their phone if you need to get anything done with them at their company.

I saw the signs pretty early that their commitment to DNN was too sparse to make it. So, I spoke with their customer service personnel on multiple occasions in a persistent manner until I got them to agree to switch me from the ML/DNN version to their standard ML64-bit version. It runs on ASP.NET and SQL and so I have it running on the same machine as my DNN installation. It is robust, feature rich, secure and rock-solid stable - much more so than anything else on DNN - but obviously there is no native DNN integration solution. But, their system for customizing the interface makes no since and is very inconsistent.

Also, I have to say that their management interface had to have been developed by a group of techno-geeks who possess no concept of how human beings think or behave. You have to change the app behavior by changing the values of variables and they have all, thousands of them, stored alphabetically in the same place based on the variable name (which is entirely inconsistent). And, their variable name search mechanism doesn't work well. So, it's very difficult to find the needed variable and their documentation is far too sparse to help much.

Also, I have had to pay over $500 a year for support and yet in the past year I've contacted them many times asking for an updated version and their technicians will not give me one. They tell me that I have to prove to them that there is something wrong with my old version before they give me a newer one. Every time I email them a problem I'm having with it they explain it away and will not give me an update despite my $500 annual support. I have nothing to show for my annual support fees except abusive treatment by arrogant, rude technicians. Clearly, the industry is so desperate for a good e-comm solution that they will even keep a company like this in business.

Anyway, I have that client stabilized and basically managed. I'm now trying to help another client find a solution. One of their requirements is the need to support customer reviews of products (I was building e-commerce systems over a decade ago with this feature standard and it seems unimaginable any solution on the market today doesn't handle this basic need). I know Catalook and DNNShoppe support this feature but I'm not going back to Catalook unless someone can convince me that they've seen the light done a complete rewrite of their inefficient solution. Smith and NB Store don't appear to support this functionality currently. Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I'm trying to find a good DNN CRM solution and would love to see another thread like this one started on that topic. Most of the DNN modules I've reviewed that are labeled CRM are nothing more than a trouble ticket systems and nothing resembling a true CRM solution - layered audience segmentation, behavioral targeting and tracking, email campaign management, cross-channel marketing management, contact management, task management, workflow automation, custom reporting, etc. I'm considering purchasing something basic and stable - and then extending it with XMOD Pro. Here too, would love to get feedback on a new thread.

Thanks,
John

Dave Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 3:46 AM Dave says:

hi John,

NB_Store doesn't support the review of products, the first reason for this is because I don't have the time and my clients have never asked for it, and hence I have no buget to get it done.

The second reason is that there are some third party DNN modules available on snowcovered, which will do this. So therefore, even if one of my client s asked for it I think the cheapest option would be to extend NB_Store by buying the third party module and simply adding it into DNN page. I don;t know, but I would guess Smith cart has much the same idea.....extened the functionality by what's available in DNN, after all this is the advantage of DNN.

Jor Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 9:58 AM Jor says:

does Smith support "Foreign tax support by country, reqion, province"?

Dave Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 12:49 PM Dave says:

Here is a post about how SmithCart works with Foreign tax support by country, reqion and province.

http://www.smith-consulting.com/forums/forumid/1/threadid/445/scope/posts.aspx

Ryan Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 10:48 PM Ryan says:

This is a newer DNN store module but looks promising. Good SEO & easy interface. Doesn't have as many features as Catalook and some of the others. However, if you don't need all those features it looks like a great option.

http://www.dnnspot.com/Modules/DotNetNuke-Shopping-Cart/

This thread is still active after 3 years; some pretty good dialog going.

Brian Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 6:52 PM Brian says:

Today, I played with the trial of DNNSpot Store.

It took about 20 min. to setup and add the 3 trial products. Although it is a basic store, it has real promise. I was particularly impressed with the SEO features. There are a lot of features that need to be added but this could be the answer for my small DNN clients that don't require the massive function of Catalook.

Keep up the good work DNNSpot, this could be the store we have all been looking for. Would love to see Featured Products, Product Reviews and Real-time Shipping.

David Saturday, May 01, 2010 at 4:58 PM David says:

Here are a few of the latest features now availible in Smith Cart

- Customer Reviews and Product Reviews
- Quantity discounts by product
- Automatic thumbnail generation
- Lighbox photo gallery
- Updated user interface
- Tabbed Interface for product description
- SEO Features - Title, Description and Keyword meta tags by product
- Option to not store credit card number (PCI/Cisp compliance)
- New payment gateways - Elavon and DPS
- New recurring billing options
- 7 New store management reports

- Automatic Serial number assignment for purchased products

Downloadable Product enhancements
- Velocity checks
- Hidden and encrypted URLs
- Option to generate and GUID in download url
- Option to add download link to confirmation emails
- Anti piracy features for electronic products
- Watermarked PDFs

For more information visit: http://www.smithcart.com/


John Tisdale Saturday, May 01, 2010 at 6:26 PM John Tisdale says:

I've used most of the DNN e-commerce modules on the market and overall have been pretty disappointed and frustrated over the past several years trying to find a good solution. Yet, I have to say that things are changing for the better.

I've been impressed with both NB Store and Smith Cart. Setting up and customizing NB Store is a little awkward and cumbersome until you find the right places to look for everything. But, it's stable and once configured, is easy to manage products. The feature list is a little sparse but for a free product, it can fill a lot of needs. The developer communicates well and provides helpful support and feedback. I definitely recommend it to those needing a simple solution.

Smith Cart is one of the most intuitive carts you will ever find in terms of set up, customization and management. It is stable and the feature list is good and growing rapidly. The developer is very communicative and responsive. He pushes new releases on a weekly basis. You'll pay about $200 per portal so it isn't the cheapest solution around but well worth the investment. For clients willing to flip the bill, Smith Cart has become my recommended DNN e-commerce solution.

NB Store and Smith Cart are the two primary carts I have in my DNN cart arsenal. I still run a non-DNN version of ASPDotNetStorefront on the same server. But, it carries a price tag of around $1,500 per site and is much more difficult to manage than either of these solutions. If you are like me and deploy lots of DNN sites for clients, you really need both NB Store and Smith Cart in your toolkit.

Cheers,
John

Vikas Monday, May 03, 2010 at 11:01 PM Vikas says:

I'll copy John on that. Im getting smith cart up and going at the moment. Its good, and getting better all the time. Needed a bit skin work as always to make it look perfect on my site, and a few little things have needed the developers attention but that I dont mind since my last experience was a new dll within the hour.

Dwayne Tuesday, May 04, 2010 at 1:11 PM Dwayne says:

I'll second that motion. Smith Cart wins out the box and the support response has been beyond expectations.

A very refreshing experience compared to others.

Daniel Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 2:04 AM Daniel says:

Agreed.

I've used NB_Store and SmithCart.

Both are good. NB_Store is free; Smith Cart is easier to use.

Both have great support, and developers answer questions within hours.

The reason I am posting this is just to note that I have an Australian website, and both NB_Store and Smith Cart have eWAY support.

Brad Sunday, September 05, 2010 at 6:27 AM Brad says:

I am a huge fan of NB_Store, but alas being in AU, I am also limited in what can be done from the payment gateway front, there is only 1 supported AU gateway, I recently sponsored some work around this Eway gateway, which works great, but we need more gateways.

But in terms of feature sets NB store is limited and for many projects I am simply not able to use it, which pains me because I believe NB store is the most configurable easiest to use Eshop system hands down. Catalook is the only store that seems to have almost everything, but once again I find this is lacks some of the simplest functions and flexability... the DNN e shop is just one real big disappointment, though NB store with the constant development does bring some promise, which I do look forward to...

cheap carrie underwood tickets Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 6:23 AM cheap carrie underwood tickets says:

I've been impressed with both NB Store and Smith Cart. Setting up and customizing NB Store is a little awkward and cumbersome until you find the right places to look for everything. But, it's stable and once configured, is easy to manage products. The feature list is a little sparse but for a free product, it can fill a lot of needs. The developer communicates well and provides helpful support and feedback. I definitely recommend it to those needing a simple solution.

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