As with many merchants, I basically rent my shopping cart. I do not want the headache of hosting my own shopping cart, paying for fixes, and upgrades. If your a programmer, yes, you can do your own shopping cart.

I would rather have somebody watching it 24 X 7 that I can call up at 2AM, when my site is having some issues.

This is the fourth shopping cart for ChildBook.

A quick history:

V 1.0 - Static Web Page, only checks accepted. I did all the html.

V 2.0 - Credit Cards Accepted! It was part static pages, and a shopping cart called BigStep. The shopping cart was very limited.

V 3.0 - A semi custom cart. The headache was I had to pay for any bug fixes and upgrades. Customization was good and bad.

V 4.0 - My last cart I just moved from. I am not naming them right now, since I still have a store with them. It was the best cart around for the price range when I started with them about 5 years ago. Unfortunately they have had some challenges, and these challenges caused a lot of frustrations, that I don't really need.

V 5.0 - My latest cart. Once all the challenges are done, it will be nice. The speed is faster, and there are a lot of nice features I am looking forward too! I am also going to move the blog once the shopping cart settles down.

Labels: childbook