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HomeHomeOur CommunityOur CommunityGeneral Discuss...General Discuss...Which store for DNN?Which store for DNN?
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8/23/2007 9:28 AM
 

Hi all,

I think there should be a thread here about store modules for DNN. (in addition to the DNN store module)

We need to purchase a store for DNN and are curious to hear what other people's opinions are on the available products?

PortalStore and Catalook look nice. Catalook looks more complex. I hear that PortalStore is more search-engine friendly. I don't really have experience with either.

What is your favorite storefront for DNN and why?

 
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8/23/2007 10:08 AM
 

I have used several different e-commercie modules, including both PortalStore and Catalook, for DNN and so far have not found a "perfect" solution.  My personal choice is AspDotNetStorefront which is supposed to be coming out of beta next week.

It is a complex e-commerce suite and takes some getting used to, but the same can be said of the other e-commerce solutions as well.  The feature for me that is the real differentiator is the ability to easily add onto ASPDNSF through the use of their XmlPackage technology.  An XmlPackage is a simple method for packaging data queries, web queries and an XSLT into a single file which can generate just about any page or page fragment for display in the site.  I can add new capabilities to the system without requiring changes to the core tables or system.  In order to take advantage of XmlPackages you will need to learn XSLT, which I found took a little effort, but was well worth the investment.  XmlPackages addressed the problem that I quickly ran into with most other e-commerce packages I tried: what happens when your e-commerce site needs to do something a little different than what the vendor intended?  In PortalStore and Catalook I ended up writing a lot of custom code and altering the modules to suit my business needs which made it almost impossible to support module upgrades at that point.  With AspDotNetStorefront I am able to substitute standard XmlPackages with my own custom versions without touching the original package.  The system automatically detects that I have a custom version and uses the customized version instead of the standard package.

I do have to add that I do have a slight bias since I consulted in the conversion of the standalone ASPDNSF application to a set of DotNetNuke modules. 


Joe Brinkman
DNN Corp.
 
New Post
8/24/2007 1:40 AM
 

adoucette wrote

Hi all,

I think there should be a thread here about store modules for DNN. (in addition to the DNN store module)

We need to purchase a store for DNN and are curious to hear what other people's opinions are on the available products?

PortalStore and Catalook look nice. Catalook looks more complex. I hear that PortalStore is more search-engine friendly. I don't really have experience with either.

What is your favorite storefront for DNN and why?

To adoucette:

Depending on what kind of store you're going to build,  Alicommerce might be worth a look.

The following is our annoucement:

www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/Forums/tabid/795/forumid/118/threadid/159548/scope/posts/Default.aspx

 

Demo Site: demo.AliCommerce.com

 

Login as a Customer:

Username: customer
Password: customer


Login as a Store Manager:

Username: alicommerce
Password: alicommerce

Thanks a lot

Frank


Frank Wang
 
New Post
8/24/2007 8:19 AM
 

Thanks for the replies, I'm trying to look at store modules that are already available for DNN. These should be mature products already (one would hope...).

It looks like CataLook and Portal Store are the only game in town? Are there any others that are already available?

Does anyone have any ideas of Catalook VS Portal Store? I've google'd for this and haven't come up with any real results.

It seems like the storefront is a pretty important part of many people's DNN sites. It seems odd to me that there are only a couple products out there already. eTailer, DotNetStorefront, AliCommerce, and the upcoming DNN Store Module 2.0 are all scheduled to be released soon. But a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?

 
New Post
8/24/2007 9:06 AM
 

Hi there,

I went through the same thing. I spent dozens of hours on Catalook. They were helpful but dang that thing is complicated. The 'quick install' guide is like 35 pages and very tough to follow. We needed a store that the client (nonprogrammers) could deploy and use themselves. We chose one 'outside the portal' but it works great and we never hear from them on 'how do I do this?' or 'this has exploded!' type problems. It is also inexpensive and has loads of features. You can check out the product here. You can check out the working store right here.

Our experience was that our obsession with getting the store to be 'within' DNN cost us dearly in time and money and the client cared not that the store did not exactly 'match' the rest of the site.

Thanks,

Will Sugg
www.planetmaine.net

 
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