I revisited the minivend site. It's now "Interchange" and is a merger of minivend and tallyman.
I was unable to get minivend to run on my site at all, and while I have non-standard locations for my servers, they are "NOT" non-standard! Anyway, the Interchange installation went smooth as silk. It even loaded cpan and updated the modules it needed.
I was then able to go to the directory area, and make the test catalog (pretty advanced) and get it running without much of a problem. Granted, it's still not perfect, and there are things I don't understand... but it's running! and it has two development teams, and loads of support behind it.
I'd rather hack away at a program that has teams of support, built in support for all sorts of transaction processing, and a world-wide support group that keeps it updated.
Don't take this as an endorsement of minivend/interchange, _but_ I think that if I can get it running, and figure out the process behind it, it might be a better way to add a fully functional shopping center with the same high-end features as Links SQL to a site.
I'm still working on my "catalog" program, that is made for items of a quantity of 1, mainly, and with an eye on selling books (via amazon and b&n, etc). But, if I can get minivend working, it's always been my goal to use that.
Has anyone else tried this?
It's a hybrid flat-file/sql program (sort of like the 1.0 version of links) and hopefully that will improve over the next releases, as more effort is put into the UI and feature sets. But, what that means, is the more SQLish it gets, the easier it will be to link it to other SQL based programs. It might also be possible to pass LinkSQL data into minivend/interchange, using Links as the front end, and interchange as the back end... but, that will take much more exploring. As an open source GPL program, it's free to modify, so it's a good place to start, at least.
PUGDOGŪ
PUGDOGŪ Enterprises, Inc.
FAQ: http://postcards.com/FAQ
I was unable to get minivend to run on my site at all, and while I have non-standard locations for my servers, they are "NOT" non-standard! Anyway, the Interchange installation went smooth as silk. It even loaded cpan and updated the modules it needed.
I was then able to go to the directory area, and make the test catalog (pretty advanced) and get it running without much of a problem. Granted, it's still not perfect, and there are things I don't understand... but it's running! and it has two development teams, and loads of support behind it.
I'd rather hack away at a program that has teams of support, built in support for all sorts of transaction processing, and a world-wide support group that keeps it updated.
Don't take this as an endorsement of minivend/interchange, _but_ I think that if I can get it running, and figure out the process behind it, it might be a better way to add a fully functional shopping center with the same high-end features as Links SQL to a site.
I'm still working on my "catalog" program, that is made for items of a quantity of 1, mainly, and with an eye on selling books (via amazon and b&n, etc). But, if I can get minivend working, it's always been my goal to use that.
Has anyone else tried this?
It's a hybrid flat-file/sql program (sort of like the 1.0 version of links) and hopefully that will improve over the next releases, as more effort is put into the UI and feature sets. But, what that means, is the more SQLish it gets, the easier it will be to link it to other SQL based programs. It might also be possible to pass LinkSQL data into minivend/interchange, using Links as the front end, and interchange as the back end... but, that will take much more exploring. As an open source GPL program, it's free to modify, so it's a good place to start, at least.
PUGDOGŪ
PUGDOGŪ Enterprises, Inc.
FAQ: http://postcards.com/FAQ
eCommerce and shopping or catalog