Having Trouble with Lycos Eshop - Page 2 - eShop Forums - eCommerce Help Forum for Shopping Cart Owners.

Black Rhino · #21 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 01:30 AM

Sorry everyone, just a bad day at the office

I am now totally confused. My google bar definitely shows my site (homepage, sunglasses) as PR1 (and no, I don't really have a hang up about PR, it was just an observation earlier on about the lycos site not showing up) and has been doing for a week, yet you are right about my signature because I tried from there and what do I get- no PR info available!

Black Rhino · #22 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 01:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kate

Being told not to stick your finger in a candle flame is even older - but it's still good advice.

Kate

I agree, but I bet coca cola was minging when they first started out but they got there in the end. I just get angry when someone quotes something that in pc terms is ancient, especially when they have had no experience of said product.

Black Rhino · #23 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 01:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tinkerbell

when was the last time you checke your site on here
http://www.xinureturns.com/
as I just have and this is what it says
Diagnosis
Url difficult to remember
your doman is sweden
there is no page rank for google available
and you do rank anywhere on the others and NONE of your pages are indexed by any of the najor search engines???
What exactly is your url Black Rhino? I am using the one in your sig, like I presume others are?

www.theblackrhino.co.uk
Type that in and see what comes up. I dont know what all the fuss is about with my domain.

Lawrence · #24 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 01:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Naturally Simple

Black Rino

I am now listed on Yahoo but it is just showing my full name www.naturallysimple.co.uk - how do you get the meta tags to work? Any help at all would be appreciated.

Thank you.

You've got rid of the framed pages which is a definite plus as far as the search engines go.

To get more than just your name showing on Yahoo or most of the other search engines you will have to wait until they re index your site. Sometimes this can happen quickly, other times it can take weeks or even months to happen. One way to help speed up the process is to increase the number of incoming links you have to your site, the more links you have, the more likely a spider will follow one to your site. Just because you see that a spider has visited your site from your site stats, doesn't necessarily mean that your site will be indexed imminently, it can still take time. You just have to be patient and keep working on those links.

You also have a similar problem with your HTML as Blackrhino. You have <html>, <head> and <body> tags within the main content of your page, the </body></html> signifies the end of useful content on your page and may stop some search bots from spidering the whole of each page. They may even prevent some browsers from displaying the page correctly. These superfluous tags need to be removed. If you need help to do this, just ask, someone on here will help you out.

This site will explain page structure in more detail http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp

If you are serious about running your own ecommerce site, then I would suggest you reconsider the use of Lycos or any of the other all in one packages. They may be easier to initially set up for the beginner, but they are very limited, expensive and you're putting your whole business in the hands of one company. If anything happens to Lycos (it can happen) then you're out of business. If you're using a stand alone package and your host goes out of business, you simply switch to another host, upload your files and you're back in action. You aren't dependent on any single company for your site, you are in 100% control of it. From about £50/year for hosting (can go up if your site starts to get very busy), you can have virtually an unlimited number of products, compare that to the price plan you are currently on. Search the net for hosting only packages to see what I mean. It's something worth considering.

Black Rhino · #25 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 01:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tinkerbell

Check your site before you laugh. If you need any help or advice there are plenty of people on here who will beonly to happy to help you.
Out of interest how manyhits are you getting and where exactly are they coming from? also are they actually converting into sales?

Check my site? What's that meant to mean? And no, I dont need any help thank you very much as I only posted originally to help Naturally Simple with a problem she had with Lycos, not any problems I had.
My website is only a newborn baby in internet terms (just over 2 months old) and I only get around 60-70 hits a day, mainly through organic google searches, but crucially these are converting to sales, which is the main thing.

Lawrence · #26 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 01:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Black Rhino

Sorry everyone, just a bad day at the office

I am now totally confused. My google bar definitely shows my site (homepage, sunglasses) as PR1 (and no, I don't really have a hang up about PR, it was just an observation earlier on about the lycos site not showing up) and has been doing for a week, yet you are right about my signature because I tried from there and what do I get- no PR info available!

There is something odd happening. I've just checked your site using the Firefox SEO plug-in and that shows PR1, but the Google toolbar, data centres and several PR checking sites show PR0. The toolbar and data centres are the authority sources for Page Rank, but there is definitely something odd occurring here.

BTW No need to apologise for anything.

Lawrence · #27 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 01:59 AM

Sales are the only thing that really matter. All those numbers are meaningless unless you can convert them into cash.

Do you two know that Google are giving away £30 worth of AdWords for free? http://services.google.com/marketing...rds-gotooffer/

If not, it can add a little boost to your site.

Kate · #28 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 10:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Black Rhino

I agree, but I bet coca cola was minging when they first started out but they got there in the end. I just get angry when someone quotes something that in pc terms is ancient, especially when they have had no experience of said product.

Coca Cola never needed to ming, the Coke part was actually spot-on for the original product, it contained cocaine at a time when using it wasn't illegal in the US. Not much, but enough to get the 'buzz'. Now they just overload it with caffeine instead.

Nice shop front by the way.

Kate

Black Rhino · #29 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 11:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lawrence

There is something odd happening. I've just checked your site using the Firefox SEO plug-in and that shows PR1, but the Google toolbar, data centres and several PR checking sites show PR0. The toolbar and data centres are the authority sources for Page Rank, but there is definitely something odd occurring here.

BTW No need to apologise for anything.

Thank God for that. I thought I was going mad for a minute there, what with everyone insisting I was PR0. I may well be a PR0, but my toolbar syas I'm a PR1 so thats good enough for me. BTW, I am using Firefox with extensions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lawrence

Sales are the only thing that really matter. All those numbers are meaningless unless you can convert them into cash.

Do you two know that Google are giving away £30 worth of AdWords for free? http://services.google.com/marketing...rds-gotooffer/

If not, it can add a little boost to your site.

I actually am using google adwords as well as the MSN version but they are not performing too well at the moment. I might have to change some keywords or re-write the adds.

Black Rhino · #30 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lawrence

You also have a similar problem with your HTML as Blackrhino. You have <html>, <head> and <body> tags within the main content of your page, the </body></html> signifies the end of useful content on your page and may stop some search bots from spidering the whole of each page. They may even prevent some browsers from displaying the page correctly. These superfluous tags need to be removed. If you need help to do this, just ask, someone on here will help you out.

This site will explain page structure in more detail http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp

If you are serious about running your own ecommerce site, then I would suggest you reconsider the use of Lycos or any of the other all in one packages. They may be easier to initially set up for the beginner, but they are very limited, expensive and you're putting your whole business in the hands of one company. If anything happens to Lycos (it can happen) then you're out of business. If you're using a stand alone package and your host goes out of business, you simply switch to another host, upload your files and you're back in action. You aren't dependent on any single company for your site, you are in 100% control of it. From about £50/year for hosting (can go up if your site starts to get very busy), you can have virtually an unlimited number of products, compare that to the price plan you are currently on. Search the net for hosting only packages to see what I mean. It's something worth considering.

Lawrence, because we are using an e-shop package, there is no way we can edit any html as these are ready made templates.

I'm interested in your comment about avoiding Lycos or any other packages. The reasons you give are valid but surely around 80-90% of all e-shop owners have absolutely no knowledge of html or website building from scratch (myself included) so have to rely on these ready to go options, whether they are from lycos, 1 & 1 or anyone else?
Obviously I would love a contingency plan because as you say, anything could happen. Lycos give you the option of exporting all your product details, pictures, data, etc to an excel file. Whether this could be used to import to another package I don't know.

Black Rhino · #31 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kate

Coca Cola never needed to ming, the Coke part was actually spot-on for the original product, it contained cocaine at a time when using it wasn't illegal in the US. Not much, but enough to get the 'buzz'. Now they just overload it with caffeine instead.

Nice shop front by the way.

Kate

Kate
I actually thought coke was minging until I was about 12, that why I used the example

(Love it now by the way)
Thanks for the complement about the shop front

Kate · #32 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 01:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Black Rhino

Lawrence, because we are using an e-shop package, there is no way we can edit any html as these are ready made templates.

I'm interested in your comment about avoiding Lycos or any other packages. The reasons you give are valid but surely around 80-90% of all e-shop owners have absolutely no knowledge of html or website building from scratch (myself included) so have to rely on these ready to go options, whether they are from lycos, 1 & 1 or anyone else?
Obviously I would love a contingency plan because as you say, anything could happen. Lycos give you the option of exporting all your product details, pictures, data, etc to an excel file. Whether this could be used to import to another package I don't know.

Butting in. You'll find that most of the eshop owners in this forum have built their own sites from scratch and with zero knowledge of html. Take a look at Blush's shop as a shining example. It's an ongoing build for her, she tweaks and adds every day and is doing a brilliant job, she is also the first to say that anyone can do it. If you look at the Zen Cart (no, I don't have shares in the company or any other interest) you'll find that it gives you, essentially, a ready-made shop with ecommerce facilities. There are various templates you can use or you can design your own. And it's free. All you need then is a host for your domain name which, as Lawrence has said, can cost as little as £50 per annum. Success or failure is then up to you and isn't dependent on how other people view the host (Lycos), which means that the sky's the limit.

I'll now butt out again and hope to have added a bit more help.

Kate

Lawrence · #33 (**permalink**) 12-11-2007, 04:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Black Rhino

Lawrence, because we are using an e-shop package, there is no way we can edit any html as these are ready made templates.

I'm interested in your comment about avoiding Lycos or any other packages. The reasons you give are valid but surely around 80-90% of all e-shop owners have absolutely no knowledge of html or website building from scratch (myself included) so have to rely on these ready to go options, whether they are from lycos, 1 & 1 or anyone else?
Obviously I would love a contingency plan because as you say, anything could happen. Lycos give you the option of exporting all your product details, pictures, data, etc to an excel file. Whether this could be used to import to another package I don't know.

I'm very surprised that Lycos haven't given you FTP access to your site, some of their hosting plans do. Can you not even access the files via a web based file manager?

I don't know what the ratio of the use of all in one ecommerce solutions to stand alone packages is. The majority of people I deal with tend to be ex (or existing) eBay, Tazbar, eBid etc traders who frequent their forums. The most common ecommerce solutions they use are ZenCart, OsCommerce, CRELoaded and Actinic, the first three are free, Actinic is commercial. MrSite, another all in one package is also quite popular, though this has the same disadvantages as Lycos, 1&1 etc.

You don't need HTML, PHP knowledge etc to run one of the other stores, it helps but isn't a necessity, though you will pick up bits and pieces as you go. As Kate said, Tinkerbell is the perfect example, she jumped in with no knowledge and is now importing stock and planning to open a real B&M shop to complement her website.

The exported Lycos excel file should be able to be imported into other apps with a bit of tweaking. There's an add-on for Zen called EZPopulate which helps with importing data from other stores. You "should" be able to use your Lycos data in the ecommerce application of your choice. Worst case scenario is that you would have to copy and paste the data into their respective fields. I searched a few forums to see if anyone had tried this with a Lycos store, though all I could find was some people who had attempted to install Zen on Lycos hosting.

My suggestion to anyone looking for an open source store is to use ZenCart, if you're willing to wait a bit then hang on for the production version of Magento to be released (expected Q1 2008). If you'd rather use commercial software and therefore have backup from the company that created it, then checkout the likes of OpenMind or Actinic.

Black Rhino · #34 (**permalink**) 12-11-2007, 11:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lawrence

I'm very surprised that Lycos haven't given you FTP access to your site, some of their hosting plans do. Can you not even access the files via a web based file manager?

Lawrence, there is FTP access. It's just that I haven't a clue as to how to use it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lawrence

I don't know what the ratio of the use of all in one ecommerce solutions to stand alone packages is. The majority of people I deal with tend to be ex (or existing) eBay, Tazbar, eBid etc traders who frequent their forums. The most common ecommerce solutions they use are ZenCart, OsCommerce, CRELoaded and Actinic, the first three are free, Actinic is commercial. MrSite, another all in one package is also quite popular, though this has the same disadvantages as Lycos, 1&1 etc.

You don't need HTML, PHP knowledge etc to run one of the other stores, it helps but isn't a necessity, though you will pick up bits and pieces as you go. As Kate said, Tinkerbell is the perfect example, she jumped in with no knowledge and is now importing stock and planning to open a real B&M shop to complement her website.

The exported Lycos excel file should be able to be imported into other apps with a bit of tweaking. There's an add-on for Zen called EZPopulate which helps with importing data from other stores. You "should" be able to use your Lycos data in the ecommerce application of your choice. Worst case scenario is that you would have to copy and paste the data into their respective fields. I searched a few forums to see if anyone had tried this with a Lycos store, though all I could find was some people who had attempted to install Zen on Lycos hosting.

My suggestion to anyone looking for an open source store is to use ZenCart, if you're willing to wait a bit then hang on for the production version of Magento to be released (expected Q1 2008). If you'd rather use commercial software and therefore have backup from the company that created it, then checkout the likes of OpenMind or Actinic.

As I said earlier, I am very happy with my Lycos shop at the moment and I've tweaked it considerably since I first set it up, so its almost where I want it to be. I would be interested in having options as a contingency plan because as you said earlier, you can't trust any company 100%, so thanks very much for your comments and input.
I apologise again to everyone if I came across a bit crass in my earlier posts- I was having a bad day and then got all defensive when someone bad mouthed Lycos

(don't know why because I don't have shares in them either

)

Lawrence · #35 (**permalink**) 12-11-2007, 01:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Black Rhino

Lawrence, there is FTP access. It's just that I haven't a clue as to how to use it.

Don't worry, we can soon change that. To access your site you need an FTP client such as http://www.download.com/3640-2160_4-10634986.html

Once you've installed your FTP client, set it up for your hosting. There's three things you will need to give it

FTP server
U/N
P/W

It will also ask you for a name, this is just a label so use whatever you want such as "BlackRhino".

Once that is done, moving files mack an forth between your PC and server is as easy as copying files from one folder to another on your PC.

To test it, create a file called hello.html containing

HTML Code:

<p>Hello World</p>

Then upload it to the root of your website. You will then be able to access it via your browser with www.blackrhino.co.uk/hello.html

Once you can do that, you'll then be able upload images, custom files or anything else you might want to put on the server as well as being able to customise your store's files and back them up.