When I wrote my post on the best shopping carts of 2012 I noted that while Interspire was still at the front of the pack it would not be around long. How right I was, but I must admit even I am surprised that they have given us only 3 months to prepare and start migrating websites to a supported platform.

If there is a positive to this it is that there is finally a way to migrate from Interspire to BigCommerce. It is not automated, the migration team at BigCommerce handle it for you, all you have to do is fill out a short form at http://www.bigcommerce.com/migrate-from-ISC.php

Pretty weak that this was snuck into a forum post, but at least the question has finally been answered although some of the comments make it pretty clear that it is too late and that many developers have already abandoned ship.

The full announcement reads

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1. How to create a theme for Interspire Shopping Cart

I passed 1100 comments on the blog in January and now I have 2 posts with more than 200 comments (Shopify vs BigCommerce and Volusion vs BigCommerce) and one with over a hundred comments (my Core Commerce Review). Those numbers are a little daunting and I think if I did the math you all would have written more on my site than I have.

So I have been thinking about all this information and how to make it easier for everyone to to share and learn from the communities experiences. My first thought was a forum but I may just be showing how long I have been on the internet now. Let me know your thoughts and I will get things streamlined so that I can help everyone that visits

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1. Step by Step Guide to Setting up an eBay Store

I thought I would drop a little survey on you all and share the results so that we can all have a deeper understanding of the reality of shopping cart bandwidth charges. Thank you for taking the time to build up this knowledge base for everyone.

It would be great if you left an email address below with your survey (optional though) so I could contact you to get a better understanding of your answers – it will also add you to my mailing list by default but only I will ever email you (and you can opt out), I don’t sell anyone’s information.

Thanks again, Andrew

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I found a site that offers a list by county, zip code and surtaxes for Florida I imported that list in Excel and with the help of filters I was able to separate all the zip codes by tax 6%, 6.5%, 7% and 7.5%, created 4 groups (tax zone by zip code) and copy and pasted the zip codes for each tax in each group, it took me less than 5 minutes to do that, I know is not perfect but it is a start, since some counties could share the same zip code. Please use my solution at your own risk, this solution is as good as the information contained in this free of charge tax table, The link for downloading it is : http://www.taxrates.com/state-rates/florida/
On the top rigth corner you will see the legend to download the file.
Download Free Florida ZIP Code Sales Tax Table

About Larry Miranda

I am a mechanical engineer,  I studied computer programming in the 80´s I have knowledge of the following computer languages: Fortran, Basic, Pascal, C, RPG and Cobol. Currently I own a company in Miami for export of computer products to Latin America, by the name www.asserocorp.com

A big thank you to Larry, and anyone else that has a tip to make ecommerce more manageable feel free to email them to me using the contact form

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Ashop Commerce has been around for about a decade, has Australian roots and is priced competitively so it seemed like a great shopping cart for the “I hate BigCommerce” crowd.

Ashop Commerce features

• Comprehensive SEO features and tools
• B2B Wholesale Support
• Supports Australia Post, FedEx, UPS, USPS
• Supports al major payment processors including Paypal and Google Checkout.
• Large collection of beautiful free themes see Ashop Commerce Templates
• Built in newsletter system
• Built in affiliate program
• Built in customer support tickets
• Digital Product delivery – including product key management
• Language Editor to translate your entire store
• Coming next month eBay integration to sell old stock on eBay automatically.

Whats missing from Ashop Commerce?

• Daily Deals
• Mail Chimp. Constant Contact or Campaign Monitor Integration
• Product Bundling
• Amazon Integration

Things I like about Ashop Commerce

Proper Wholesale customer support. Want to show wholesale customers one set of prices and everyone else another? Tick one box and you can – finally someone made it easy.

Support. They have enough support resources for their client base and offer multiple ways to get issues resolved fast. I got a phone call after 7pm on a Friday night – what more could you want?

Export your database as a database. Perfect for people that want to run their own reports and tools.

Unlimited bandwidth. Nothing confuses people more than plans with bandwidth limitations. It causes uncertainty and is a non-issue for 99% of shopping cart owners anyway.

Fair Price Structure. You can start from $16.95/month with $0 setup. If you want more features pay more. They call it MSaaS (Modular Software as a Service) – you will call it paying for only what you use – I know alot of people that will switch to Ashop just because of this.

Very clean interface, very easy to see most details and very easy to customise to suit. It looks and feels like a standard desktop application and recent changes have improved speed to the point it that it runs like one too.

The Australia version has Australian defaults. The USA version has USA defaults. I know this sounds like a very small details but it is attention to detail like this that makes using a shoping cart every day easier and more intuitive.

Things I would change if I could

I can not set a custom page title for product pages – I have some control, but I love SEO so I want more. Greedy? Yes probably but in a competitive market you need to be.

Images do not automatically resize to suit the design, you need to do this as an extra step. For some people this would be a bonus though so don’t necessarily put this in the con column.

The trial is only 10 days – it is full featured which is more than other carts but 10 days is a little short if you need more than one person to play with the cart and give it a proper evaluation.

The content area of the website is table based. This means very little to most business people but it makes it harder to apply fine detail level design changes. Not a show stopper, but hopefully they start cleaning it up during 2012.

Ashop Commerce Screenshots

Would I recommend Ashop Commerce?

Yes. Look for a complete review and a comparison between BigCommerce and Ashop Commerce in February but for the time being I would happy recommend Ashop Commerce. If it meets your requirements you will have a great time with this software, as always give the free trial a spin and see how good it is firsthand.

Related posts:

1. Free Ashop Commerce Themes

I know several designer’s that will not be very impressed with the high quality of these themes – check back in a day or so to find out if Ashop is the best shopping cart for you but from the look around I have had this evening it looks like a solid product and I am really enjoying it – if you are looking for a simple to use ecommerce platform add it to your short list.

Related posts:

1. Free Shopify Themes
2. Free Pinnacle Cart Themes
3. Ashop Commerce First Look Review

From now until the end of March 2012 you can use the code PCNOSETUP to sign up for Pinnacle Cart without the $49 setup fee.

New features in Pinnacle Cart 3.7.0 include:

• Quick 8 step setup guide, ideal for ecommerce newbies
• More free templates
• Better photo galleries
• Full URL customisation (perfect if you are moving to Pinnacle Cart from another platform)
• Product Reviews and Testimonials
• Unlimited Drop Shipping Locations
• Support for UPC and SKU numbers
• Amazon Payments and QuickBooks Merchant Services
• Site profit reports
• Brand landing pages

Want to know more read this Pinnacle Cart Review or head over to Which Cart? to get more personalised help.

Related posts:

1. Free Pinnacle Cart Themes
2. Shopping Cart Updates October 2011
3. Best Shopping Cart (2012 Edition)

Here are the freely available themes that you can use, or you can contact me or any of the designers listed on this site for a free quote to build you a custom ecommerce theme.

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I expect there will be issues with the PHP templating system they use, as CoreCommerce found out in August 2011, but they are smart cookies so I am confident they will have a solution.

My biggest complaint about LemonStand has always been that small businesses need to buy sme pretty expensive web hosting to make it run at full speed, but with a hosted solution based around Firehost and the Akamai CDN that will no longer be an issue.

At the moment the software is in closed beta, but you can be sure as soon as I get to see it I will let you know how it goes. There is no word on pricing or what will happen with LemonStand licensed but if the lessons of magento Community Edition and Interspire are anything to go by once a company moves to a hosted version they slowly but surely either kill off the licenced product or let it die of negligence – lets hope not they were making a great product.

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