Final Feature Comparison [.pdf]

We've recently updated a chart for comparing version 4 with version 7. This form was very beneficial for the last migration process in 2008, but almost all of the version 7 features have been brought up to parity with version 4 in time for the software upgrade this year. Be sure to Download the Ecommerce Feature Comparison [pdf] to become more familiar.

You can also go inside a live Version 7 store using username: guest and password: Netsol1. Thanks and have a good weekend!

We Have Specified Your Canonical

There's been a good discussion lately about a potential Canonical Issue on the Network Solutions Forums and I wanted to explain a little bit about it so that everyone is up to speed. Our top notch ecommerce (v7) development team made a minor software change several months ago based on client-submitted feature requests and the recommendations of our industry-leading search engine optimization experts. We added a canonical link tag to each page. It looks something like this:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/keyword-url.aspx" />

The intent with this dynamic tag is to indicate to the major search engines which choice is the proper URL for the page that loaded. It's possible that for the example above, a search engine may find multiple links to it formatted as...

• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• http://www.example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• https://example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• https://www.example.com/keyword-url.aspx
• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx?ref=foo
• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx?start=25
• http://example.com/keyword-url.aspx?next

Even though a user loading the pages above would see the same content, the search bots would treat them as different --unless there is a specified canonical.

Google added support to this format to allow sites with content accessible via multiple URLs to specify a preferred URL to be returned in search results. We added this feature to point them in the right direction. This feature is a valuable improvement to help eliminate duplicate content worries.

Clients may see temporary fluctuations to their SERPs rankings as Google re-indexes their site to take into account the new format support. However, given the variables involved and recent Google update, it would be nearly impossible to determine the exact cause of any changes in their SERPs.

The forum discussion revolves around the fact that the home page is specified with a /index.aspx rather than just a /. It's perceived that home page ranking may have fluctuated due to this change. It's certainly possible, but I'm also aware that Google changes all the time and it may be unrelated. The SERPs are showing the /index.aspx for the home page, but that just might be because they are now displaying the canonical choice in the rankings page and does not indicate anything that would affect a site's actual listings.

If you'd like more information about Google and how they treat canonical, please see official Google blog post as well as Matt Cutts' post. In the future, we may be adding a new feature that will allow our merchants to specify their own home page for this link tag. But even so, normal "don't panic" rules of SEO should apply.

Just a Few Lines of Code...

Whenever someone says (somewhat flippantly),..

Why can't your developers just add that feature really quickly? It's just a few lines of code.

I need to have an example of why this is obviously false. It makes total instinctive sense to me despite the fact that I'm not a developer, but for other people it may take convincing examples.

Here is my first one. Please read Favicon Hell: Small Feature, Big Code.

Technical Support III: Job Title

I was just informed earlier today that I am the only member of the company that is a Technical Support III. Job titles aren't really all that important to me. In my past years at this company I went through the ranks of technical support at about the same time they were actually adding ranks.

I was pretty sure that I was the only tech support team member at level III that worked here in Belleville. But as it turns out, I'm a bit of an odd ball in that I'm the only level III in all of Network Solutions. That seems a bit weird. The reason that this happens is largely that there is a career path that most follow from Tech Support I to Tech Support II and then from there jump off to either a leadership position or to another department like Design, QA or Development.

Even though I started in this department the very first week there was in-house technical support department formed, I don't feel like I should get any sort of special treatment. And I am certainly very happy doing what I'm doing in my current role. It's just weird.

Job titles are weird. End of story.

Why'd You Remove That Feature?

My Opinion Below

Whenever there is an upgrade to a new version of any software program, inevitably there is some amount of confusion with the new system. It is up to the technical support department to help ferry clients to a new understanding of the new system. One of the most commonly asked questions we will hear regards features that were being used in the previous version but that aren't available or readily apparent (or as easy to use) in the new version.

Why would you remove a feature that our business depends on?! I used that every day! I certainly understand the frustration here. This happens commonly to me with other software programs and I experienced it very strongly in the upgrade from Microsoft Office 2000 to Microsoft Office XP. There was a certain undocumented feature that I used quite often that was not in Office XP. It was several weeks or more of adjustment on my part to get used to the change.

Having seen this side of the software development cycle, I have a little more perspective on it, but I still find it annoying. The cause of these sorts of issues is that the development department is creating a new product from scratch. In most cases like this, the feature that is being referenced wasn't specifically left out on purpose. There wasn't a board meeting where some group decided which features to nix. Instead, there were several meetings where they reviewed usage and importance and functionality of each new feature to be added versus the time and resources that were available to release the product. The important point to take away is that there are always business-based decisions behind every step in the plan, and although that might hurt or inconvenience some clients in the short term it is not done personally. If the option is major critical to users it will be implemented in upgrades to the new system down the line.

This does beg the argument that perhaps it is better to fix current versions and not create a completely new version from scratch, but there are many other considerations to consider here that have to be taken into account. For instance, perhaps the current version of the software uses ASP, but the new version will be written with ASP.NET and gain all the benefits there. You can't simply take the code of the old version and update it as it wouldn't work on the new hardware. So instead you start with code line zero.

It sucks. But it's the nature of the beast.

Shopping Cart Software by MonsterCommerce - Ecommerce Solutions

Several great things have happened in the last 24 hours or so that I feel like celebrating.

• First, a new version of our pro e-commerce software has been released, sometimes called version 7.0 Pro. As discussed on the forums, current clients on v4.6 will not be updated to the new version until after the holidays and we are sure that we have a stable and fully tested upgrade/migration script.
• Second, a big update of our standard e-commerce software has been applied, bringing this version more in line with our pro version, albeit still with only the standard features. This version was considered v5.0, but the new version will be called v7.0 Standard.
• Thirdly, to keep pace with the new look and feel of these new programs, our home page has been updated graphically and with more information relating to the new software.

Haven't seen our home page in a while? Stop by at MonsterCommerce.com. You can see screen shots as well as a graphical demo.

W3C Markup Validator

One quick notable thing I like about the new version of our software coming out soon (THIS WEEKEND!) is that it is much more W3C compliant. Just now, I did a form upload of my test site's home page HTML output and it only generated 3 errors! Visit the W3C Markup Validator.

There are a lot of other great things too, but this is something that appeals to the perfectionist in me.