[ic] Upgrading from Minivend

[Kevin Walsh]

> 
> I'm upgrading from MV to IC also.  I tried the idea of tarring up the old
> catalog and implementing it under IC.  After a lot of search-and-replaces
> for new ITL tags, I finally had it working.  This, however, misses the point
> of the upgrade, because you're not taking advantage of any new features.
> When I wanted to take advantage of new features, I had to start from scratch
> in IC - which is quite a time consuming process.  Enough things have changed
> that it would be a good idea to decide if you want to upgrade for new
> features or if you're just upgrading to be cool.  If it's the former, it
> might take a lot of work to get the new features implemented on an old MV
> catalog.
> 
> List of features that caused me to start over:
> 
> Templating system is different.
> Database driven navigation (area and cat tables)
> Multi-shipping addresses (although I've since abandonded it because getting
> IC to calculate the true shipping cost is nearly impossible)
> Gift certificates (although I'm about to abandon that because you can't
> discount the [total-cost] in IC, only the subtotal)
> Use of the new Admin (very slick - previously I had written my own)
> Better discounting using groups
> New shipping method format
> 
That is all true, of course.

A quick conversion from MV to IC is a good idea to start with,
even without taking advantage of the new facilities, because
Interchange is a lot more security conscious than MV ever was.

Interchange will also run without the need for a constant check
to see if it has fallen over.  When I was running MiniVend, I
used to need a check script which would run every now and then,
restarting the daemon as required.

I'd advise anyone on MV to move to IC.  Redesigns can come later.

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