Mailing List Archive

Quoting Davideth (Davideth@whojamadoogle.com):
> It was in 2001 that I first started using interchange and
> appreciated the multitude of replies to questions and queries for
> assistance. However, it has been noticeable to me that in the past
> year or so that responses have been fewer, not only for my posts but
> others as well. Have the ones who long supported this amazing
> e-commerce product just left and gone on to other products or
> concerns? Or possibly some other concerns?
>
> Either way, it saddens me that it does not appear to be the
> flourishing community that used to be present.
>
> One of the side effects is that I see fewer new independent sites
> that use Interchange. Or perhaps I have just missed seeing them. I
> do see some sites that have been developed by EndPoint and a few
> others, but it is the independent sites that seem to have reduced
> presence?

Independent sites have reduced presence everywhere. Amazon, eBay, and
others have coopted the small merchant.

To be honest, Interchange is no longer best of breed. While it is a
great tool for glue logic behind stores, more and more is being pushed
to the client and we don't have the tools that integrate well with that.

It is possible that a great developer with lots of energy could change
that to some degree, but people who have the time and energy to do
that type of pro-bono development are few and far between. Interchange
really only happened when it did by a combination of a few people who
had the time and inclination to ride the Internet wave and produce it.
I spent thousands of hours producing the core of Interchange, and a
couple of individuals and companies joined after a while. But
eventually people want to ring the cash register, and people move on
to different interests.

So Interchange is mostly legacy at this point. That is OK. If someone
wanted to redesign it to use some client-based JS architectures, and
to be deployed with one or more of the container deployment platforms,
it could conceivably flourish again. But it would require the dedicated
efforts of a smart and energetic developer. Those are hard to find for
free.

--
My children didn't have my advantages; I was born into
abject poverty. -- Kirk Douglas

_______________________________________________
interchange-users mailing list
interchange-users@icdevgroup.org
http://www.icdevgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/interchange-users

Thank you for the reply Mike.

And, especially, thank you for the many hours of effort that you have
put into this. Personally, I think that Interchange is better than the
ratings show. Perhaps this is due to limited exposure, out of sight, out
of mind. I also believe that with some additional effort on the part of
users and developers, Interchange could become a shining application
once again.

I do understand the issues involved and can see why many small and even
larger sites might opt for a more complete package at a monthly fee plus
a percentage of sales. That does not work for my situation as we are
very close to the level of a non-profit ( although some of our prices
are not what I would consider cheap ). There are people out there
desperately seeking products like ours.

I have tried to post improvements where I can. As a note, one of the
sites that I run is #1 organic for several competitive keywords and that
is due to some of the fine tuning that I have done to the page
structure. The ability of a site to have pages SEO optimized is critical
and I think that is is somewhat overlooked. Also, I believe that the
addition of Strap was a good one but again, there needs to be some tune up.

What I think is a major problem is the lack of visibility for
Interchange partly because it is not listed on many lists and as
mentioned a general lack of support.

From what I see, EndPoint is probably responsible for 90 percent of
current development. They are doing an excellent job in some respects
but they have priced themselves out of the range of some customers.
Every lost customer is lost visibility for Interchange. EndPoint has
done some work for us in the past couple of years and they did
outstanding work. As you said, it is necessary to ring the cash register.

Also, In agreement with your statement, there is much that could be done
to improve Interchange if a benefactor or benevolent developer was to be
found. I can envision a full production system, including production and
operations, accounting functions, inventory control, etc.

In the mean time, I will continue to post both requests for feedback and
suggestions for improvement in hopes that some response may result.


Thanks again,


David


_______________________________________________
interchange-users mailing list
interchange-users@icdevgroup.org
http://www.icdevgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/interchange-users