Miva Installation

[Chris]

Todd has in the past said some nice things about miva. I always had a bad opinion about it before because the older sites I would see using it would be slow from the CGI and completely SE unfriendly.

So I tried to install the newer one this morning. Its BS. You buy the software but you also have to install their "virtual machine" to get the software to run, and they provide next to no information on installing the virtual machine.

There is an included readme file, online documentation, and an online knowledgebase, all of which provide incomplete and different instructions. They tell you to move and rename files (why couldn't they rename the files themselves before releasing them? thats ridiculous), they make assumptions such as you've renamed the files but they never told you to rename the file (as in the readme). They divide the package up into multiple downloads instead of a single one (thats useful....).

They mention a diagnostic file you can use to test your installation, but they never mention where to find it. One of the three sources mentions a configure file, that you must build from scratch. The other two make no mention of such a file.

Has anyone done this installation before?

[Emancipator]

i tried miva and its complete garbage. I abandoned it completely.

[Todd W]

Chris, I've used the leased license + hosting from Hostasaurus because they offer phone support for not only hosting but MIVA, and it's not $600 or $900 or whatever the going rate is for MIVA right now. + After 3 installs you get a discounted rate.

Sorry, I haven't installed it out of the box.

Emancipator- What was it about MIVA you didn't like?

-Todd

[Chris]

There is no way I'm going to use their software now. The only thing that would have gotten me to use it was ease of use and reliability. But the fact that they do not provide complete installation instructions anywhere and have 3 different sets of incomplete instructions located in different places, well... it makes me think the software will be harder to use than OSC.

Then...t heir support has be absolutely retarded. I went through their contact request form and selected refund request and told them I wanted a refund and told them why... this was mere hours after I made my purchase. 3 emails later they still haven't done it, they keep trying to push technical support on me, they offered me (I think) free installation service (no... I don't want to give your company access to my root server, if you cannot write simple proper documentation or an install readme why should I trust you not to mess things up).

They left me a message so I called back... this was classic. The guy has a very, very, thick indian accent, and I'm trying to explain to him that I'm returning a call and not calling about a specific support ticket. He finally gets that, and the person who left the message is busy and asks if he can call me back in a half hour to an hour and if I will be available.

I say probably.

He says if I am not available where is a number I could be reached at.

I say if I'm not available it is because I went outside and there is no phone out there.

He says, and what is the phone number there?

I say, its outside, it doesn't have a phone. Then I got real specific explaining how the number they had is the best number to reach me at but that I wasn't going to hover around the phone all afternoon incase they called back.

So then he said they'd call back in 15 minutes....

[ZigE]

Don't you have a phone nestled in your flower bed? :P :lol:

[Chris]

They didn't call back in 15 minutes, or an hour.

[Erin]

Funny. I tried Miva a long, long time ago, but didn't find that it suited my needs.

What's wrong with OS Commerce? I've seen some pretty nice OSC sites...