Interspire - Tell me about your experiences

Gabriel Crowe

i wonder if anyone at interspire can comment on this. I doubt it.

Gabriel Crowe

Looks like their forum is in lockdown too. I read their rules.

https://www.interspire.com/forum/showthread.php?t=17348

looks like... they are keeping complaints in check with an iron fist. well, they know where to come. i dont mind what we talk about here. :D

GrantG

I'm getting an error "you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:" when I click that link you posted Gabe, perhaps it's in one of the subforums (KB, Email Marketing, etc) and not Shopping Cart forum?

Gabriel Crowe

i think they have made certain things so you need to be a member and signed in to view them.

bad crack.

wesleythorne

Just had an email from support, maybe there is some news, I had some issues and complaining a lot.

"Version 6.1.6 of the shopping cart has been tested and should be released shortly (in a matter of weeks).
It features a lot of fixed issues, so it should definitely help."

How many weeks I wonder ?
Wesley

wesleythorne

hi, our site is at last up today, converted from actinic.

Everything seems ok bar one issue, some of our images are showing our development site URL, (bristol sweet shop) and not the live site ( Treasure island sweets)

the main product images are fine, its some images we uploaded through the admin panel to create some gluten free/ sugar free symbols.

example of problem product, its at the bottom of the product description, instead of the image you just get the image name

www dot treasureislandsweets dot co dot uk / products/Banana-Split-Eclairs.html

GrantG

Hey Wes

Not sure what the problem is here, I've looked at your Banana Split Eclairs products, the main product image is loading from TIS.co.uk, at the bottom of the product description, it says in plain text:

toffee-selection.jpg
gluten-free.gif

I am assuming this is what you mean? Looking at the source, it's trying to pull the images from your Bristol site but isn't loading because the image doesn't physically exist on your Bristol store hosting.

To be honest, I think your best bet is to download the images from /product_images/uploaded_images/ from the Bristol site to your desktop, then upload to the same location for Treasure Island. Then use the following SQL to effectively find and replace in the database.

UPDATE isc_products set proddesc = replace(proddesc, ‘http://www.yourtestsiteurl.co.uk’, ‘http://www.yourlivesiteurl.co.uk’

This will therefore change http://www.yourtestsiteurl.co.uk/product_images/uploaded_images/blah.jpg to http://www.yourlivesiteurl.co.uk/product_images/uploaded_images/blah.jpg

In any case, the usual backup before you go routine should be followed, but this is the exact code I used for the exact same purpose before launching a rivitalised ISC store.

PS. I note the new software on TAS is replacing an apostrophe with slanted apostrophes of which the name currently evades me, but hopefully you'll see what I mean in the above example. Remember to change these for regular apostrophes when running the SQL.

wesleythorne

hi grant many thanks for the help. I tried to run the SQL but am getting an error. I have changed the slanted ' for a straight one.

UPDATE isc_products SET proddesc = replace( proddesc, 'http://www.bristolsweetshop.co.uk', 'http://www.treasureislandsweets.co.uk'

MySQL said:


#1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that 
corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use 
near '' at line 1

MoleEnd

You have a closing bracket missing at the end I think.

wesleythorne

excellent, well spotted. All working fine now. Many thanks to you both.
Wesley

wesleythorne

Just to let you all know ISC v6.1.6 is available for download if you have a support contract. Not sure what it updates yet.

wes

wesleythorne

Have a problem this week with customer addresses not showing when creating a new off-line order.
Have email support but no reply there.

When we create a new order in admin, we can enter a customers name / email for previous customers, there address normaly pops up and we can select it.

This week nothing is showing the customer address is empty, yet if I go into customer accounts I can see there are addresses in there.

Any ideas ?

Kind Regards
Wesley

wesleythorne

ok, looks like new customers are not having their addresses saved, older customers are fine but anything new in the last month is like no address saved to the customer address book.

traceyhand

Wesley, is that using ISC or Big Commerce?

traceyhand

Hmmm, I've tested this (in ISC) and some of ours do bring up an address, some don't.

I wondered if it perhaps started happening on a particular date but it does seem to be somewhat "random"

I have some accounts back mid-October not bringing addresses up, and some only last week that do.

I can't work out the difference between those that are working and those that aren't though (and, tbh, CBA checking and comparing)

Have you checked the Interspire forums for other reports?

wesleythorne

further investigating they are totally random. I have exported the customers via admin and opened in excel. Some of the addresses are missing and there seems no logical pattern.

A problem when a regular customer rings us to place an order and we have to take there address again.

ISC 6.1.1

.

wesleythorne

customer address book does not always save the address.
This also happens in big commerce, I have just gone through our big commerce site and checked the customers. Quite a few have missing addresses.
I also just had a customer call to ask why his address is not showing when he logs into his account.

wesleythorne

reply from support

This is because you have enabled the guest checkout and creating an account for guests. 

When a customers order as guest the software creates an account for the customer, but it does not stores the address in the address book, it only creates an account for that customer.

This is the default behavior of the shopping cart.

traceyhand

Right

Well that makes sense, I suppose. Solution would be to disable guest checkout then but that's NOT a good idea IMO

It does give you a valid reason for requesting their details again though. Because THEY opted to guest check out in the first instance!

GrantG

I like how CS-Cart handles Guest checkout, which, if memory serves correctly, Interspire does follow suit.

Customer adds product to cart, completes checkout steps, bounces to/from PSP, then gets order confirmation on screen, with the option to enter a password, with various customisable reasons to do so (eg. "You can login and track your order", "Ask a question about your order", etc) , thus, an account is opened. These converted guest accounts all store the exact same information as customers whom created an account during the initial checkout phase.

Gabriel Crowe

I saw this thread.

http://www.shoppingcartstrategies.com/software/open-question-to-interspire/

Has anybody got any updates on the current status of ISC?

GrantG

You might find this and this interesting.

These are the sort of idiots you're dealing with, in essence, it's like walking onto a Fiat forecourt. No matter what the sales guy tells you, it's BS.

Gabriel Crowe

wow, this is idiocy. its a bit like they WANT to self-destruct.

wesleythorne

Hi having some speed issues this weekend with the checkout.
Not what we need when we are expecting our first baby any day ! (2 days late as well)

www dot treasureislandsweets dot co dot uk

A customer can complete the checkout process but when they choose either paypal or sagepay/credit card as a payment option the checkout hangs for about 2 minuites.

Any ideas ?

many thanks as always.
Wes

GrantG

Hi Wes

Good luck with the baby...if it ain't sleepness nights with babies it'll be sleepless nights with Interspire :D

Try this out first and foremost:

Enable Debug Mode -> Settings -> Store Settings -> Logging -> Yes, Enable Debug Mode.

Then visit your homepage, you should be seeing a "Page built in..." message right at the very bottom of the page. If so, proceed to the cart and through the checkout, once you get to the appropriate checkout page which is hanging, what statistics are you getting ("Page built in..")?

Have you tried switching between checkout modes (one page and multi page)?

wesleythorne

Hi Grant,
baby is holding on for better weather i think !

Checkout page is showing
Page built in 0.3151s with 12 queries. Memory usage peaked at 11.50 MB

It is when you then have to select which payment type (sagepay or paypal) that it hangs for a bout 50seconds.

The bounce page to sagepay or paypal takes for ever to load.

Spoke to sagepay and they said nothing wrong at there end.

Spoke to our hosts who said the same.

GrantG

Hey Wes

Just had a look at your cart, I see what you mean, I selected SagePay and it took forever and a day to load, but I got there eventually.

Think this is going to need some server-side investigation - seems the responses you've received are the typical answers you'll get from SagePay and most hosts.

I assume you no longer have an active support contract with Interspire? Did you try changing to multi-page checkout to see if the problem goes away? You might have more luck over at Shopping Cart Community, guys like Martin know the Interspire system quite well, probably better than Interspire themselves.

wesleythorne

Hi grant, hosted with host-it (old 4sure hosting) . last night I reinstalled to a new server with another hosting company. Copied database over etc and all is well on our test domain the redirect to sagepay is instant.

Gave these results to our current hosts and they are looking into it.

Good time for us to move to a VPS me thinks.

Just checking through all our mods.

Dave Fisher

Hi Wes,

OMG that is terrible and can't be doing your conversion rates any good. See its still not sorted, just tried and it took 50 seconds before re-directing.

Hope 4sure hosting get back to you with an answer soon.

If you get really fed up with Interspire and fancy a hosted solution (I know many don't) then have a look at Bluepark. Great features, cloud hosting, excellent support and rock solid software. Quite a few ex-actinic users using them now.

Good luck with the pending arrival of your baby!

wesleythorne

thanks dave.
4sure are looking into it, keep fobing me off.

tested the site on a nublue hosting account and it works fine.
Then though I would upgrade the site to 6.1.8 of ISC

ISC 6.1.8 has bug bugs.

Category tree is unselectable, basicly you cant add a product to a category or if you manage to it adds it to every single category you have.

Offline add an order, no longer works. try adding a product and it crashes.

Edit an order and you cant update quantity of products / prices

Wes

Dave Fisher

Sounds like an absolute bloody nightmare. The last thing you need with a new arrival on the way. Although no doubt you will have plenty of sleepless nights to work on ISC in the near future :-)

wesleythorne

about to revert back to 6.1.1
isc support is crap as ever.
hostit keep telling me the checkout passes to sagepay in 2 to 3 seconds which is absolute tosh

wes

Even actinic looks good today!
At least they have amazon integration with their online product

How about cs cart any amazon intergration there ?

Any idea on moving from ISC to CS cart ?

Dave Fisher

I did look at Actinic Online for another project I was thinking of working on. However, it does have some basic stuff missing and I couldn't do simple things like add a product to more than three categories which for me was a big, big problem.

Not sure about CS-Cart / Amazon Integration but I was pretty impressed when I looked at it.

Don't know if you remember Buspassjohn from Actinic but he uses Bluepark and Amazon to sell. He uses a product called Linnworks to sync orders/stock between the two.

acompton

Amazon integration seems to be the big stumbling point for most shopping carts. 1StopOrders does it, but is a manual system. LinnWorks is very impressive (just watch their promotional videos) but it involves a monthly cost. There is a free version for about 20 products. It get very expensive when you have a lot of products.

wesleythorne

well interspire have fixed the bugs for me in 6.1.8

new vps hosting is working well, I have site copied over and updated, just tweaking a few things before we make it live.
Redirects to sagepay and paypal very fast now.

Hostit are still looking at the problems on old server !

Last niggle is google product feed, 6.18 of ISC has updated the feed but as we have 1000 products I don't want to manually update them as you have to edit each product and map it to google feed.

Martins merchant feed on shoppingcartcommunity worked fine for us on version 6.1.1 of ISC but not yet working on 6.1.8.

baby not hear yet, one week late!

wes

GrantG

Really do wish Google would just settle on a specification for Base/Merchant Center feeds - every cart has problems with it, most of which I have just resolved in CS-Cart which is now going well, at long last!

In case anybody is interested, I'm just about finished my 3rd ISC > CS-Cart conversion, got the transfer process going rather smoothly now, so if anybody is interested in converting their Interspire store to CS-Cart, feel free to get in touch.

Howdy, Stranger!

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