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Hosting Internal Version of Website |
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Espressotec 
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Joined: 10-August-2007 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 0 |
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 Topic: Hosting Internal Version of WebsitePosted: 16-September-2010 at 2:46pm |
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We are looking into acquiring a server for our operation, and we were looking into hosting our ProductCart-driven website for internal use for faster access and less reliance on internet connection.
My first question is whether or not we would need a second ProductCart license to do this, and whether this concept is feasible at all. My second question is whether MS Access is sufficient for this concept, as it doesn't seem worthwhile for us to go with MS SQL. If anyone has done this before or has any experience with it, any feedback would be much appreciated. |
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cognecy
Certified ProductCart Developers 
Joined: 18-March-2006 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 8 |
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Posted: 16-September-2010 at 4:41pm |
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I will start by saying that yes this is possible however there are many caveats that you may be missing especially when it comes securing your store as well as being able to ensure your customers, no matter how far reaching they are, have to ability to view the site at the speeds they deserve to view it at. I will not delve into PCI a whole lot here as that is another can of worms entirely but will say that one of the fundamental requirement is PCI is to have your website, your DNS servers and your Database server separated (as in different servers).
Even without PCI, running your Database on the same server as your website is a no-no. This guidance is not only given by the developers here in the forums but also by Early Impact and By Microsoft. Can you do it ... yes - should you do it .... No!
Your question regarding the Access DB .... hard to answer without being very blunt on the matter so here goes. Access Database should NEVER be used for a public facing ecommerce application. They are not designed for it, they are not secure (even if you password protect them), and they simply cannot handle simultaneous web traffic efficiently (only one user an write to the DB at any given time). Bottom line is that Access DB's are very handy in the development environment because most most of the queries used in MSSQL can be used with Access. The Table structure is similar etc.... beyond that the different become very vast.
My suggestion would be to talk with the productcart host here in the forum that can provide hosting and servers - Myself, Greg from GreyBeard, Sean form WMS, Shannon from Jolt ... to name a few.
The advantage is that we are all very experienced with hosting ProductCart as well as in providing segregated environments for hosting.
Hope this helps.
If you want to Private Message me your contact info I will be happy to give you a call and discuss further.
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Mark Shipp
Cognecy Solutions, LLC Hosting/Design/Customization/Database Migration www.cognecy.com www.cognecy.co.uk |
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Espressotec
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Joined: 10-August-2007 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 0 |
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Posted: 16-September-2010 at 5:20pm |
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Mark,
Sorry for not clarifying earlier, but the website is not for access to public users. Its sole purpose is to enable our staff to navigate through the website without going through the web, hopefully increasing speed. We often have customers on the phone while navigating the website, and slow connections often result in frustrated customers. Essentially now the question is, is Access sufficient for operating a copy of our website for internal access only? And what else would be involved in setting this up? |
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Hamish
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Joined: 12-October-2006 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 56 |
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Posted: 16-September-2010 at 5:25pm |
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Hi,
In addition to the (as usual) great post from Marm. A few questions.... - Is this for sales staff who are taking orders from customers? - Do you track stock at all on the website? (If so two stores for the same stock will give you major headaches). Managing two identical stores doubles the effort in updating the store for products / categories / the software updates etc and is at quite a risk of getting out of sync - in fact over time it's almost a certainty. Regarding the licences, yes you would need a second licence as it would be a live store. See : http://wiki.earlyimpact.com/productcart/licensing for the details. If this is for internal sales staff taking customer orders have you considered the Quick Order Entry add-on (see http://wiki.earlyimpact.com/widgets/thirdparty/quickorderentry ) If you are having performance issues it's definitely worth looking at one of the hosting companies Mark has mentioned. Also try using tools such as the Firebug addon for Firefox to analyze page speed issues. I took a quick look at your store and there are rendering issues, with the page jumping about as the page elements load, which is inefficient as well as quite distracting, so I think it's worth getting a web designer to take a quick look at that problem - it shouldn't take too long to sort. |
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Espressotec
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Joined: 10-August-2007 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 0 |
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Posted: 20-September-2010 at 3:02pm |
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Hamish,
In response to your questions: 1. No, it is not for taking orders. We are interested in this because we are in an odd location where the major ISP's don't offer service. As a result our internet has not been as reliable as we would like and customers often navigate through our website faster than we do while on the phone. 2. No, we do not track stock so it would not be an issue. I suppose our question is whether or not we can synchronize our actual web server with our internal server and make it functional. On your last note, we are aware of the rendering issue and will deal with it shortly. Thanks very much for the input. |
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intour
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Joined: 30-June-2006 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 0 |
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Posted: 23-September-2010 at 4:45am |
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Hi,
I have recently setup ProductCart for a UK based customer whose requirement was very similar to your own.
They wanted a system for internal sales use only so that all their sales staff were singing from the same hymn sheet. They sell custom built computers and components so ProductCart offered an ideal way to give their sales staff instant access to sales information at a resonable cost.
They have ProductCart BTO with Conflict Manager running on an in house Windows Server 2003 with an Access database. It works without any problems.
They did not want or need to go down the route of setting up an MSSQL database for this particular project and Access is fine in this environment.
If you are running a live website from the same data source then this solution is not practical or recommended though you can, of course, access your remote database from a local server.
Nigel
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