Actinic ecommerce software - on trial

My very first ecommerce website was set up using Actinic ecommerce software. We used the business version because of the extra features that it gave us.

We chose Actinic because we didn't have a clue what we were doing! I own a web development company that now specialises in ecommerce web development - but at the time, we just did straight forward web site design. We knew nothing about php (code) at the time (frankly, it scared the **** out of me).

I knew we could change the web design template that actinic uses - so we chose that software.

What we my overall thoughts? Well, the experience was such that it made me learn about php and develop my own!

Don't get me wrong - there are a number of clever features about Actinic Business Ecommerce software that I liked...but then, there were some great features on the Titanic but this didn't make it a great ship!

Actinic basically generates a complete static site and then uploads this to the internet. You then sign on whenever you like and download your orders from the site. If you want to make any updates - you have to republish the whole site. This, frankly, was cumbersome and annoying. Fair play to actinic though as at the time, we were on dial up which didn't add to an enjoyable experience.

I want a website that I can change easily and see real time information on without the need to republish or download chunks of data. This is why a "dynamic" website or one that it database driven is vastly superior to something like Actinic.

The changing of the templates wasn't easy at all (and we knew what we were doing) and there are only so many ways you can get the software to display the products.

What Actinic did do well was get you on the search engines, which is half the battle of having a successful ecommerce website, and if this is important to you and you don't care about the way the software works - it could be a great option for you.

Who would I recommend Actinic to? Probably no one. You can download and install something like oscommerce which is much better and cheaper than Actinic. Both, in my opinion require some web knowledge - but not much.

Also - if you think, like I did, "we'll try it and if it doesn't work - I will sell it" - then think again. You cannot resell the software once it has been used. So avoid the copies on eBay.

You would, in my opinion, be better off learning how to do your own database sites (trust me - this is much easier than it sounds, and will post some stuff soon on how to do that) or contact a professional company (like us for example) and have a proper database site with a good content management system. In the long run - you will be much much better off.