[ic] Newbie has questions and needs some help

Jim Balcom interchange-users@icdevgroup.org
Mon Sep 9 18:25:01 2002


On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, M.McNeil wrote:

M>>I'm brand new to Interchange and I'd like to get pointed in the right direction
M>>for customizing it. My questions are:
M>>
M>>1. How do you customize the appearance of the store
M>>2. How can I add my own logo
M>>3. How to I add extra buttons, ie. "View your cart".
M>>
M>>The RedHat docs suck and I'm trying to have a usable website by Halloween, so
M>>any help would be greatly appreciated

If you expect IC to work right out of the box, then you might as well quit
now. Because unless you are going to sell the exact same things as are in
the demo, it won't.

I am experienced in writing large applications in C, as well as holding my
own in HTML, and reasonably proficient in Linux (I started running it in
1994.

I started working on my IC store in October 2000, and I finally got it
on-line on July 4,2001, and that was just a scaled-down version, just to get
something on-line.

IC has a VERY steep learning curve.
IC is more complex than anything that MicroSoft has ever put out.
IC is more powerful than anything Microsoft has ever put out.
IC is far more stable than anything that Microsoft has ever put out.
IC is far more flexible than anything that Microsoft has ever put out. (See
www.freecell.com which runs under IC, so I am told)
IC is far cheaper than anything that Microsoft has ever put out!

If you want something quick and easy, I personally recommend commerce.cgi. I
used it for a couple of years and it's great and quite configurable. I
didn't like the way that it handled shipping, nor did it allow customers to
have accounts.

I recommend that you get the demo running the way that it was intended. Then
go in and make small changes - one at a time. Make frequent backups so that
when you screw it up badly that you can back up and recover. (And, yes you
will screw it up. That's how you learn.)

If you don't want to take all that time, then pick up the  phone and call
Mike Heins in Ohio (He puts his phone number at the bottom of every message
of his) and hire him to help you. After all, it's free software so anything
you pay for consultants is still less than you would pay for comparable
software (if you can find it) in the Microsoft world!


-= Jim =-

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Tagline for Monday, September 09, 2002 at 18:05 PM:
There's my way, and then there's the easy way.

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