Miva 5 & Miva Mailer
I’m currently using Miva 4.22. I have been hesitating on an upgrade to Miva 5 because I saw an incompatibility report with OPEN UI, which I have installed. I am going to remove it, and take the plunge. I always hesitate to make any big jumps when it comes to my shopping cart, because I’m always afraid of failure. When I added OPEN UI, I lost all of my customized preferences, and had to redo a lot of work. I lost ALL of my product headers. I was furious, because this was not documented anywhere that it may happen. That was a very stressful three days of work! And anyone who runs their own show, understands how we don’t want to create any unnecessary stress!
What appeals to me about Miva 5 is the flexibility on product page layout. It’s always bothered me that I can’t customize each page. Apparently now, I’ll be able to do that. I am toying with the idea of using more of Miva, and less of my GO Live pages. Currently I have each department page in Go Live, and each product is in Miva (I’ve hidden the category tree in Miva). I do this to maintain more control over the look of my site. I worry if I start using Miva for more of my store, that the search engines will not be as likely to index my pages. Using more of Miva will save me oodles of time. I have to think harder on this, and work more in the new version of Miva 5 before I take the leap.
I am also going to start using Miva Mailer to manage my email campaigns. I’ve done some research, and think it will make my life easier. I’m currently doing it manually, using an email list feature provided by my server, APLUS.net. It’s fine, but I need something that offers a more comprehensive list management feature, and I think Miva Mailer will do that for me. The price is comparable.
I’m also hoping that using Miva Mailer will possibly take care of some of the errors I’m getting with my current scenario. I’ve blogged about this previously. I have to wonder if it’s my email that’s causing the problem. We use Squirrel Mail because it’s part of our package. But I can’t stand it! It’s primitive. Could that cause errors? I’m sure someone out there knows?
That’s it for now. I’ll keep you posted.
