Hello all, after searching around on this site I'm getting interested in LAinterweb. However, I'm wondering about the amount of transfer per month. One of my other prospectives is nanohosting, which seems to be a small and fairly new (1yr) company.

Transfer seems to me like trying to figure out the minutes you need on your phone. I have no idea what we will need.

nanohosting offers 1gb webspace and 50 gb xfer per month for 9.95
LAinterweb offers 200mb webspace and 4gb xfer for $13.95.

Both seem to offer similar things (or at least for what I need)... So why the difference?

We're starting a small business selling hunting equipment. We'll probably have about 200-300 different items in the inventory. We'll probably go through paypal for transactions, so we don't need an SSL or other payment processor. We don't need subdomains, we will need less than 10 email accounts. We do need a database that we can configure a little bit (I'm a database programmer, god help me.) I'd like to be able to run this for less than $12 per month and think I should be able to. Someone correct me if I'm wrong!

I am anti-spam and not into affiliates or any of that stuff. We just want to have our store. If my arm is twisted very hard by my partner :) , we (maybe) want to be able to run a confirmed opt in list for customers who say they want to hear from us.

So if anyone has answers to my questions, or recommendations for a web host based on my needs... thank you for reading.
-andrea-

Welcome to the forums austringer

Nanohosting of course offers you more bandwidth, but I doubt you will need it. I doubt you will have heavy graphics or anything like that.

What you want to look at - will you be able to grow? I do not recommend using the paypal cart. I would try to use your own cart / database. This way when you are ready, you can add your own payment gateway & you can move to another server as well.

Well my suggestions is always to understand your needs, and if you have problems with that, to go to a host who can help you work it out.

As an example, I have an ecommerce client who do relatively brisk business and they only use about 8GB of bandwidth a month. End of the day, it depends on a few factors as well:

1. Traffic to the site
2. Size of the graphics
3. Estimated no. of pages browsed per visitor.

And I can understand that is difficult. So always look for a host that can allow you to upgrade easily if needed.

Also, if you do have CPanel, using OScommerce or Interchange is a good idea too!

Originally posted by coreybryant
Welcome to the forums austringer
I do not recommend using the paypal cart. I would try to use your own cart / database. This way when you are ready, you can add your own payment gateway & you can move to another server as well.

Thanks for the welcome! I don't understand all the details of payment transaction. I was planning to use oscommerce which seems more configurable. But it seems like a lot of the payment processors charge a monthly fee plus a per transaction fee, whereas paypal has just the per-transaction fee. We don't have a brick/mortar store so we expect things to start out slow. I figure that later if/when the business gets established we can maybe move to something else.

Could you explain to me why you do not recommend paypal?
-andrea-

Not paypal, but paypal cart. Two totally different things.

Right now - it seems like you are doing the right thing - using oscommerce as your shoping cart. It comes with its own database, etc. You can easily move it to another server if you ever have to, export your data, etc. And you chose Paypal to see how your business might be received

Personally I do not suggest Oscommerce as customising it can be complex especially for starters. Go with it only if you can stand the standard look and feel or is willing to invest to get someone to customised it for you.

Originally posted by sprintserve
As an example, I have an ecommerce client who do relatively brisk business and they only use about 8GB of bandwidth a month.

Thanks, that's a very useful estimate. I had a similar formula in mind, though much more rough -- add up the size of the graphics and expect that any given customer will probably look at maybe 10 percent... new people would probably browse more, maybe 20 percent to see if they like our stuff and the prices. I expect initially about 150-200 browsers per month when we kick off the site, then it may drop down a bit later on.

Of course since we haven't started photographing the inventory we have no idea how much it is yet. But I figure if I massage everything into 256 color .jpgs we can keep the size small and the speed up. (I hate waiting for slow graphics, and sooo many people still use the old 56K.)
-andrea-

At your estimates, I would reckon 3-5 GB will be ok to start with as long as your graphics aren't 1MB a pop :)

Hi Austringer - As Sprintserve has already indicated - I do not believe you would require 50 GB of bandwith - rather, in your particular instance, I would focus on a host which provided you enough bandwith to grow your site to a reasonable level before requiring an upgrade. I would also look for which of the 2 providers you mentioned provide the most support for your application. Some will provide basic support for free and charge for more complex stuff - others will provide no application support what-so-ever.

Also - as previously mentioned - you may want to stear away from osCommerce if you're not familiar with the product - A great alternative is Zen Cart - which has been designed to be easy to use and customize..

Hope this helps and best of luck with your project..

Originally posted by sprintserve
Personally I do not suggest Oscommerce as customising it can be complex especially for starters. Go with it only if you can stand the standard look and feel or is willing to invest to get someone to customised it for you.

This is where my vocation as a Foxpro programmer comes in. :)

One of the complexities I ran into while researching hosts was this thing that my business partner wants to do. She wants to offer a "discount starter package" but it does not have not a fixed set of items. Example, if you already have steel food bowls for your retriever, you can get a training dummy, a retractable leash, and snow boots, and get a little discount. However, if you want the bowls, the dummy and the leash and not the snow boots 'cos you live in Arizona, you get the discount too.

Databasewise, certain items in the inventory have to be flagged as applying to the package. Buy three or more of anything (quantity or different items) and the discount applies.

Because I was talking to hosting sales staff, I was not getting good answers to whether various packages can do this. Oscommerce looked like it was more configurable, so I decided I might be able to take a whack at it.

If you know of a cart that can do this right out of the box I sure would like to know about it.
-andrea-

Originally posted by SillexWeb
Also, if you do have CPanel, using OScommerce or Interchange is a good idea too!

Okay, what is CPanel? I've seen the name but what does it do?

Hi Austringer - Cpanel is a control panel offered by some hosts - it allows you to set up your emails, ftp, manage your domains, etc...

The "reason" ( I believe) - the previous poster indicated this would be a good idea is because Cpanel has a program autoload feature called Fantastico - which allows users to quickly and easily install various applications...

However, most control panels offer some version of this - and I usually recommend manual installs anyway - I like to know exactly what version Im installing and what pathces, if any, I need to install - rather then counting on a provider to have the correct version loaded into their autoinstaller...

Personal preference really -

Originally posted by Cartika
Zen Cart - which has been designed to be easy to use and customize..



Can it do the situation I described above?

A hosting company that knows osCommerce backwards & forwards: http://oscommerce.snappyserver.com/ - we refer a lot of clients over that desire oscommerce

Cpanel is a system to manage your hosting account with a host. It allows you to manage your emails, your site, and some offer script installers as well. If you have to consider Zen Cart, which is actually modified from OSCommerce base and has better usability.

Originally posted by austringer
Can it do the situation I described above?

Yes - theres 2 ways to accomplish this - the first - is by a series of attributes making up all combinations of purchases...

The second - is a new feature added into Zen Cart v1.2 called discount by attribute..

Heres how it would work..

The Product Price is set to 0.00

The Product Priced by Attributes is set to YES

The attribute prices are defined without the price prefix of +

The Display Price is made up of the lowest attribute price from each Option Name group.

The price prefix of the + is not used as we are not "adding" to the display price.

The options attributes are set for the discount to be applied, their prices before the discount are: (for example)
2 items $499.99
3 items $519.00
4 items $539.00

You can then actually add as many combinations of products that you wish with the appropriate discount - 10%, 15%, 20%, etc... OR - you could simply leave this as any 2 items, any 3 items, etc - and have the customer enter which items they would want during the checkout process in the additional comments field...

I "think" this is the functionality you're looking for (if I understood your requirements properly)

Originally posted by Cartika
[B
I "think" this is the functionality you're looking for (if I understood your requirements properly) [/B]

Without actually seeing what all these different things like Option Name and the Priced by Attributes boolean is... I don't think it is quite what we'd like to do. (But I admit your taking the time to write all that has me half sold on zen cart already!)

Let's say these are all the "starter package" items.

snow boots $10
cedar bed $50
leash $20
stainless bowl set $12
dummies $5

All these items can be purchased individually at the prices shown. But if you buy any 3 (individual items, or you could get the bowl set and 2 dummies) you get a 10% off. If you don't buy 3 or more starter items, e.g. just the snow boots, they are normal price.

What you describe sounds more like the items cannot be bought at the normal price individually, and that the items do not have different prices i.e. it is more like a quantity discount that goes across different items. Correct me if I'm wrong?
-andrea-

Hi Andrea - You are correct - what i described is a quantity discount model - Your propsed functionality adds 1 level of complication to the process as you're looking for several items with different prices - and would then like a correlation with # of products purchased - another way to handle this - and its a work around - is with the use of coupons - so - indicate coupon codes on your site (and their corresponding discount level) - which translate into x% discount - depending on coupon code - not as clean as you imagine - but def functional..

Anyway - your best bet is to play with a live demo of Zen Cart v 1.2 - make sure it has all the demo products and sample situations loaded up so that you can see all the functionality in action...


Andrew

You can probably add a modification if you are capable in PHP to apply discounts based on number of items from a certain set group (at the shopping cart stage)