More Questions about Blue Voda

[Eileen]

Hi,

Maybe Beth can answer this. I'm wondering if when changing sites to Blue Voda, do they let you keep domain names you already have? My domain names are from Yahoo, but I had to transfer something to SOL about that, as I recall. And - should I keep my sites up with SOL while rebuilding them on Blue Voda?

Also, does Blue Voda have a flat fee for multiple websites, or charge separately for each website? And - is Blue Voda compatible with any shopping cart you choose?

Thanks for answers.

Eileen

[KarenMac]

Eileen,

Im not Beth, but I will try to go thru here and answer you with most if not all of it.

BV is a builder but ISNT a cart, and no its not compatible with all carts. You can do a checkout, with paypal buttons, buttons from cartmanager, buttons from mals ecart, to name a few, and if you do it this way, you can build as many stores as you want for the price of one hosting account. Now with that said, if you are wanting MORE options with mals than the free service there will be a seperate charge for that, and cartmananger has NO free options, so you would have a charge per store unless you went with the higher end to do as many stores as you want. Beth can explain that part.

If you choose to go with soho or some other option requiring ssl, you can only do one dedicated ip and ssl per hosting account. You would have costs for running dedicated ip and having the ssl issued to your store in addition to the hosting, which.. is still cheaper than SOL.

As for the domain names, you can keep those, you just DIRECT them to point to vodahost, which is just a matter of typing in a couple of lines, you dont have to transfer the domains, just POINT to the server, which is very easy once you see how to do it. You dont even have to notify voda you are pointing.

To clarify, BV Blue Voda is an html editor, not a shopping cart. You can build all the sites you want with it. You have to determine what you want to do for a shopping cart, a catalogue driven one like soholaunch, or do you want to copy and paste your buttons, and list your products with a cart type manager where they go there to checkout.

Karen

[Eileen]

Thanks Karen,

I notice on the Blue Voda sites, that you have a Site Map but no footers at the bottom of the page. Does Blue Voda tell you how to create the Site Map?

And, while you are building your site with Blue Voda, do you pay when it is ready to publish or when you first begin building?

Eileen

[KarenMac]

Eileen

I have a site map thats created by the builder I am using but, its for navigation thru the stores by all categories or all products, its NOT a sitemap like you are thinking.

2 stores are a work in progress and between updating and adding and fixing the two main ones I have a full time job.

No, BV doesnt tell you how to generate a site map. You still have to do it the old fashioned way. I do have google sitemaps and rss sitemaps on all my stores, but I did them all with a site map generator. These sitemaps arent visible to the public.

None of my stores are built with BV. They are all catalogue driven sitebuilders with shopping carts. 2 of the four are soholaunch and 2 are eccommerce templates. 2 have ssl, 2 use paypal and authorize.net sim as soon as i finish integrating them.

As far as footers are concerned, I have them on 3 stores, but I dont need them as my menus arent javascripted and the SE follow them along. Charming I did the footer before I realized I didnt need it, but then left it for keyword content anyway.

Karen

[Eileen]

Thanks again, Karen,

You are so fast to answer my questions. I looked at your Granny's Nook
website and think its great. I will be giving Blue Voda a try, but have to get my brain in gear first as it's a challenge for me, and I do think that SOL made it pretty easy to get started.

Oh yes, thanks for putting my link on your website as I wasn't sure you received my message that your link is on my website. If it wern't for this great forum with members like you, I would never get answers to my questions.

Hope your Valentine's Day is happy.

Eileen

[KarenMac]

Eileen,

That is Soholaunch. Thats catalogue driven, and you will need dedicated ip and ssl for cc encryption and onsite processing.

www.grannys-nook.com is the second site I am building in soholaunch, so you can see u can get many different looks and templates.

Karen

[Bethers]

Built in BV - are Pinata Palace and A Child's Palace - both use Cart Manager for a shopping cart.

I use any online site map builder to build both the sitemaps that Google wants and for the sites - but don't really use them for the sites. With Blue Voda - if you use their navigation - you don't need a footer - nor did I need the sitemap - as all my pages were indexed before I added one.

[Effectiveselling]

My Poker site is with Soholaunch, the Sports collectibles is built in BV (as it states, it's a work in progress) and I use Mal's eCommerce shopping cart. It has a free version, which is pretty simple to use, but if you want more shipping options and the option to use a merchant account then you'll need to upgrade to the premium account, which is only $8 a month (approx.) Voda is $7, so together is still cheaper than SOL and you can have multiple stores on both of them (on the shopping cart you can use a general Business name to process, instead of your site's).

Hope this helps.

[Eileen]

Still another question about switching hosts, and shopping cart. Wondering if I can keep ECI and DPS along with BV and Mals e-commerce or must I use Authorize.net with Humboldt with BV and Mals. When I check pricing, it all seems about the same but with a big extra fee to switch to Authorize.net. I have ECI set up with my bank under a business account name. Does Authorize.net charge separately for each website?

Eileen

[Bethers]

Talk to Karen to see if she can get the fee waived for switching to Auth.net. You'll need to switch to someone - as ECI is not a gateway used by very many carts - Auth.net is one of the most universally used and accepted gateways (plus the costs will be a tad less).

If you put a general product listing for your account with auth.net - you can use the one account on more than one site. There ARE acceptions - mainly dealing with high risk products.

[tiki girl]

I believe you will have to switch. Blue Voda is just a store builder with no shopping cart so you can choose whatever cart you like. If you choose Mal's Cart, you would have to change to another payment processor. You could choose Authorized Net as your gateway as this is integrated with Mal's. When shopping around for shopping carts you will see that they all identify which processor's will work with their carts.

Most shopping carts do not use ECI.

I use Authorized Net and have several stores all under one account. Sometimes Auth Net has specials that they will waive the set-up fees.

[Bethers]

LOL Joan - we were typing almost the identical thing at the exact same time :)

[Effectiveselling]

Eileen,

Mal's has a few options for processors, but ECI is not one of them (in fact, most shopping carts do not have ECI on their list). Karen might be able to get those fees waived, and if you do go with AutorizeNet you can give them a very general "product" list so they won't charge you for each site.

However, Mal's have other options you can use for checking out, including PayPal and Google checkout, which is becoming very popular.

[KarenMac]

I just got in and havent heard from the boss lady today yet. Will work on this probably tomorrow.. and get back to you all

Karen

[tiki girl]

Beth - You know what they say about great minds!!! LOL

[KarenMac]

Eileen

Please pm me your business name, email address, your phone number and your full name so I can work on your account with the humboldt reps.

Karen