Miva Merchant Blog » Miva Merchant News

Does Your Credit Rating Suck?

Jason — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:20:05 +0000

Your credit rating might suck, but you probably don’t know it.

I got you the hook up to check your credit rating on all three credit bureaus, Equifax, TransUnion and Experien for free.

So go check your credit rating for free.

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The Darkside of Miva Merchant

Jason — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 05:48:41 +0000

This story is not about anything new. Users of Miva Merchant have been misled, deceived, and even lied to for years.

The OpenUI Look and Feel Module is frequently the main subject in these matters. The reasons for this in my opinion are as follows:

Makes end-users of Miva Merchant less dependant on modules for enhancements which pisses off third-party module developers
Gives end-users so many features and the ability to do so many things that they are less reliant on custom development services which pisses off third-party developers
Exposes horrible hosting companies who overload their servers, have horrendous support, and are generally clueless about Miva Merchant and are not involved in the Miva Merchant community.
Has made the creators of Miva Merchant look bad because this shopping cart would probably be dead without the OpenUI.

I was doing some onsite consulting here in Dallas, TX with Ernest Delmonico of Delmonico Hatter, Hats and Caps like Kangol and Fedora.

I found out that the main reason he wanted to upgrade to Miva Merchant 5 was because his host and many untruthful people in the Miva Merchant community had told him that OpenUI was the problem.

His Miva Merchant store was on a dedicated server at his old and incredibly incompetent host. After he was moved to only a shared server on a new and Miva Merchant friendly host, the difference was extreme.

Ernest spent three days at my home office working on his Miva Merchant 5 test store. He was frequently going back and forth from his version 4 store on the new host and the version 5 store. I would say that no less then five times I turned around to see what all the fuss was after hearing statements of joy coming from Ernest. Every time he was basically amazed at how fast his version 4 store was compared to the old host.

Here is a sad video testimonial from Ernest about how he was deceived for years into believing OpenUI was his problem. May the evil people who did this to him and his company get what’s coming to them!

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Miva Conference 2006 First Day

Jason — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 04:01:19 +0000

The turnout for this year’s conference is much smaller than in the past. The top session so far in my opinion was the keynote by Anne Holland, directory of MarketingSherpa. She shared a lot of great data and helpul information. Not only did she give a great presentation, but it was good to see her again. I had met and got to know Anne from MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Summit and Selling Subscriptions on the Internet conferences earlier this year in Chicago and New York. Here is a pic of us. Yes, she is famous for closing her eyes during pictures. She is also standing on the steps of the stage. Anne is tall but not that tall.

Another old friend I got to see was PJ of Webnet Miva Hosting.

I also got to see Mike Pimco of Penguin Clothing, a former and now current client who was the first one to register for my upcoming search engine optimization and marketing boot camp for Miva Merchant store owners. Here is a pic and video of Mike.

Matt Alper and Brian Gold of Cop Shoes who will also be attending the boot camp. Here are two videos of Matt and Brian.

and Todd of Discount Party Supplies who is also attending. Here is a video of Todd.

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Early Bird Discount for 2006 Miva Small Business Conference Doesn’t Expire Again

Jason — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 03:38:41 +0000

Without disclosing any keynote speakers, details on sessions and speakers, or a detailed agenda with session times, Miva recently announced an early bird discount of $399 for their upcoming Miva Small Business Conference entitled Paving the Way. The deadline came and went. Instead of raising the price, Miva extended the discount another week with threat of definitely raising the price on Monday, July 17, with no exceptions. The second deadline has come and gone once again with no increase in price.

One has to wonder what the marketing department for Miva Small Business is thinking. It is about six weeks till the conference, and all these details are still not available. I have even talked to three speakers, and they are still awaiting more information as well. These details are not just for us. Miva Merchant end-users come to us asking whether they should go to the conference or not. I am going to the conference and hope others go too.

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Miva Small Business Conference 2006 Announced - Paving the Way

Jason — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 00:40:04 +0000

The 2006 Miva Conference was recently announced. It will be held August 29 through September 1 in San Diego. I don’t know what Miva was thinking, but they are offering an early bird discount that expires July 9th without any keynote speakers listed and no details on educational sessions other than title and presenter. In other years, there have been descriptions of the sessions. So it is pretty bizarre for them to offer a discount that expires without disclosing all the details of the conference. Interesting sessions this year are:

Link Building
Search Engine Optimization
In Search of Better Organic Search
Web Analytics

Also interesting is that Miva themselves have admitted that they are trying to make the conference for ecommerce in general rather than targeted for Miva Merchant users only. I think this is a huge mistake. In past years, they have had general ecommerce discussed in the keynote sessions and targeted Miva Merchant in the educational sessions. This year we have no idea about the keynote sessions, but many of the most important educational sessions will now be conducted by people not versed in Miva Merchant. Past keynotes have been very informative but have left end-users wondering how to apply it to their Miva Merchant stores. It is unfortunate that now they will be wondering the same thing after educational sessions.

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Death to All Affiliates - Miva User Forums in Flames!

Jason — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:23:26 +0000

Wow! I guess it was inevitable, but I didn’t think the flame wars would get that testy on the new Miva User Forums. Some of the most helpful people in the Miva Merchant community also happen to be affiliates for Miva Merchant module websites including Miva’s own MivaCentral.com. They can continue to help end-users over and over again whether the solution requires a module or not including how to do many things without modules, but certain individuals in the community with hidden agendas keep attacking them including myself. They allege that the only reason we recommend certain modules is because of the affiliate commission.

Who are these people? Are their claims valid or are they hypocrites? Without naming names, lets analyze the type of people who have a problem with end-users hearing opinions other than their own if it includes an affiliate link.

Module developers who frequently promote their high-priced and overkill modules to end-users whether they need them or not and also spread misinformation to get purchases. If I sold modules, I would try and market them to the best of my ability, but I wouldn’t mislead people or constantly attack those who suggested less expensive alternatives.

Modules resellers who only promote the modules they resell at their site regardless of the end-users’ best interests. If I resold modules, I would have an interest in getting people to purchase modules at my store, but I wouldn’t be a hypocrite and flame others of promoting modules for financial purposes only.

Anti end-users who have a history of being against anything that greatly benefits the end-user like the OpenUI and also have no problem with promotion of module resellers other than Miva themselves. Many end-users would be shocked to hear about the dark side of Miva Merchant. Working professionally in search engine optimization since 1996, specializing in seo and Miva Merchant since 1999, having the only publicly-available newsletter on seo and Miva Merchant since 2002, maintaining the largest module comparison directory for over three years, and running unofficial Miva regional user conferences for end-users from across the US for three years now, I have been privy to user horror stories that would make your blood boil.

The funny thing about these anti-affiliate hypocrites is that they all promoted the first module comparison directory which had affiliate links and was run by an anti-openui module developer. I created my Miva Merchant module comparison directory because the other one listed only certain developers, had no free module section, horrible search, and only partial descriptions. People continually complained that they didn’t know about all the modules available and which ones were the best because of this directory, so I have tried to make this possible with my directory and Miva discussion lists since then. Turns out that it isn’t in the best interest of certain people, but I’m not going to let that stop me.

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Miva’s Own Store Galleria Promotes Misconceptions

Jason — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 17:15:47 +0000

Miva has a Galleria where it features certain Miva Merchant stores like Sage Jewelry and Nautica Watches. In the interest of promoting the new v5 version of Miva Merchant, it looks as if spreading misconceptions about previous versions are not a problem.

Both features highlight the fact that both stores used designers who were not very knowledgeable about the capabilities of Miva Merchant. Store owners and developers have been able to make Miva Merchant look the way you want, standards compliant, and use css instead of tables for quite some time. This goes to show you how valuable the old Miva user email lists were. You could get much better advice and opinions from several sources rather than just have to rely on one person who may not know all the answers.

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Miva Users List Closes

Jason — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 11:45:26 +0000

Miva corporation suddenly announced the close of their official email lists and the opening of their official forums. This pissed off most of the Miva user community. They did leave the list archives up for now. The user list was a huge part of the Miva Merchant community, and now it is fractured. Time will only tell how well users adapt to the new forum system. There are now unofficial Miva Merchant email discussion lists for end-users. These lists are not to fragment the Miva community further or to deter users from the official Miva forums. The fact is that many users and even developers will not post or post as often to the forums. This is simply an alternative for those that prefer email lists and to help keep the Miva Merchant community together in some way.

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Miva Merchant Users List Problems Again

Jason — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 11:14:55 +0000

Someone recently expressed concern about AOL and getting through to newsletter subscribers. Two knowledgeable members recommended some helpful suggestions that cost nothing and take hardly any time. Two gloom-and-doom members shot down all suggestions and insisted it was futile because they had no luck with AOL. This was after one of the more helpful members stated that he had seen direct evidence that small changes had helped with getting newsletters to AOL members. For future reference, the suggestion was to instruct AOL users on the confirmation screen about how to add your email to their contact address. Unfortunately the users list has quite a few glood-and-doom members, so please be careful when reading their emails.

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Beware of Miva Merchant Users List Advice

Jason — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 16:49:29 +0000

The users lists for Miva Merchant are an invaluable resource for end-users. Unfortunately misleading and sometimes flat-out incorrect advice is given. Store owners should exercise due diligence when considering search engine optimization and marketing advice when posted on the Miva Merchant users lists.

Recent examples of incorrect information include the claims that dynamic Miva Merchant pages rank lower than static pages and they are penalized heavily. Search engines like Google could care less what extension a file has when it comes to rankings. They care more about relevancy.

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Core 5 Update to MM5 Has End-Users Furious

Jason — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 12:40:36 +0000

Turns out that the recent core update to Miva Merchant 5 has crippled many stores. Core 5 has been pulled, and Core 6 is supposed to be released shortly. Here is more info.

Core 6 was released but was still problematic especially for users of modules from Bill Weiland of Emporium Plus. Weiland released updates to his modules that would make the core 6 update go more smoothly.

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Miva Expert Slandered on Users List

Jason — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 18:07:06 +0000

Respected expert on all things Miva Merchant, Vic Vega of Wolfpaw Hosting, was recently slandered on the merchant users list. Vic is known for frequently giving of his free time on the list to help all those who need help. Turns out that the person who falsely accused Vic doesn’t help or post on the merchant users list hardly at all. When is Miva going to enforce their no flaming rule. This was the second slanderous post in the past thirty days. Miva, get on the ball!

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Miva Merchant 5 Proves Problematic

Jason — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 07:47:51 +0000

Product import problems, lack of modules, lack of documentation, price group bugs among other nasty critters, and lack of admin features without the OpenUI Look and Feel are just a few of the problems plaguing end-users of Miva Merchant 5.

The latest problem is huge. A core update has left many stores crippled. Unlike OpenUI, there is no rollback feature. For more details on the latest problems, see this thread on the users list archive.

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