HandcraftMarket

I have never hosted anything with Yahoo, nor have I ever used Yahoo for anything besides chat and Instant Messenger.. well, and maybe the driving directions thing. Does Zen Cart market their software as 'osCommerce Made Easy'? Maybe you should send them an eMail and tell them how screwed up they are. Or perhaps the hundreds of outfits that charge big league money to write mods or build custom layouts.. or simply 'maintain' osCommerce sites. Maybe you should eMail those folks and tell 'em what crooks they are. The fact that you can't determine where sites are hosted based on the address of any of my clients clearly illustrates you're talking directly out of your @ss.. or that you have HandcraftMarket confused with some other hosting/sitebuilder site. I think the majority of your hostility stems from your own failures in this arena, compounded by the fact that hcmPro clients don't need your 'design experience' to maintain their sites. The crux of your complaint appears to be that i'm selling something that my clients can pay you to set up for them and then get for the same price, or from $3 to $5 a month cheaper.. then when they want to add an 'about me' page, they get to pay you or some other self professed 'web designer' to do it for them.

You spent countless hours building your site.. I spent countless hours coding, testing, fixing, re-coding, re-testing the hcmPro codebase. The whole reason I started HandcraftMarket was because I wanted to offer a lower cost alternative to the $21.95 and $19.95 'Do It Yourself' plans out there. That's why hcmPro is only $9.99 a month. All the other outfits have to license their software from someone else, or pay a programmer royalties. I decided i'd take a solid, existing open source product.. improve upon it to make it easy for the average person to set up and maintain, and offer it for half the price of the competition. It's ease of use and low cost are why more than one developer has used the hcmPro software to build their client sites. Developers who are well aware of Zen Cart and osCommerce. Sure I hoped to make a few bucks on it.. but let me tell you.. at $9.99 a month, i'm not getting rich on the deal. In fact, i'm lucky to make enough at the end of the month to pay my cable bill. My focus has shifted to development, and away from end user sales.. which is why I decided to sell HandcraftMarket, and will not be accepting any new clients with the new software.

hcmPro is NOT free software. You cannot download it anywhere at any price unless it's bootleg. If it was free and just everywhere for folks to download and use, then Adam would have it running already. The fact that he hasn't proves my point. While hcmPro is based on osCommerce, which is a 'free' or 'open source' program.. the modifications that I wrote that set it apart from any other osCommerce based software are not free or available at any price. Continued assertions that I was selling software that you could simply download for free are false, and border on libel. The domain name HandcraftMarket.com and my custom coded modifications have been sold. All current HandcraftMarket clients (including annual and lifetime members) sites are now running on my server. The first part of August I will be releasing new software that will incorporate many of the issues and feature requests i've received over the last 6 months or so. When that software is released, clients will have the option of staying with the 'old' hcmPro software, or switching to the new software. No current clients site is in danger of vanishing, or being shut down. If your subscription is current, you're still going to have a website. The plan is to make the next generation of software even easier to use with more choices.. and no the price won't be going up.. if anything, it will actually go DOWN in price. hcmPro clients wishing to migrate to the new software will be able to transfer most of their current site to the new builder with a few mouse clicks. The plan is to make the transition from hcmPro to the new software as smooth as possible. As mentioned in the eMail sent to all hcm clients earlier this month, you can address specific concerns or questions to: frank@mazbo.com

Who are you trying to BS? The image displayed on the login screen is located in the /root/admin/images folder. The only way that image would end up in the /root/admin/images folder of an oscMax installation is if you put it there. Unless by 'added some mods' you mean you copied the entire /admin directory of an hcmPro installation into an existing oscMax installation.

I believe what you said you were doing was attempting to turn oscMax into what hcmPro is.. which would suggest that you were starting from an oscMax installation. HandcraftMarket graphics and stylesheet color schemes are not included in a oscMax installation, nor would they be included in a SQL backup from an hcmPro installation. What you've done is either take screenshots of an existing hcmPro installation, or copied the software to another server.

haha.. I like how the screenshot of the login page the script for HandcraftMarket is clearly visible across the top left. Nice uhh.. 'programming' work, there skippy.

What sets hcmPro apart from oscMax isn't the orange color back end.. it's the stuff in 'Layout & Design' and 'Page Manager'. It's all rather moot at this point, since i'm not in the hosting biz anymore besides maintaining the existing clients I have. If you can build a better builder, more power to ya. Heck, if a stock osCommerce or oscMax install is as easy as MissMary says it is, you should just be able to load up oscMax and go, man.

Well since you think I host with Yahoo, apparently you fall squarely in the 'don't know what they're talking about' column. The fact remains that the elements of hcmPro that make it point and click are my own custom built and coded works. The truth is I looked for some time for already built mods to do what I wanted it to do, and couldn't find them, so I coded them myself. I built hcmPro for people who wanted the power of osCommerce, but wanted an easy way to edit their own sites without hassling with code. For people who were tired of getting bent over paying $19.99 a month for Option Cart and getting stuck having to rely on MAL's, or having to pay even more for Mals Premium. The introductory price for hcm was low for that very reason. To make sites affordable for small business owners. It's why it's been priced at $9.99 for some time now. I'm not sure what exactly it is you're advocating anyway.. that people quit my service to use the same software with Yahoo at the same price?

Well then, put it to the test. You have full access to your MySQL database. If hcmPro is just a rebranded version of oscMax, then the database should just drop right into a stock copy of oscMax and run, right? I mean.. if I didn't write any code.. then you should be able to do a straight dump of your hcmPro SQL into an oscMax install and be off and running, right? I mean.. it's the same thing, you keep saying. You keep telling everyone in this thread you can get the same thing for free.. So let's see you do it. I just upgraded your account with File Manager and Fantastico access.

It says if you distribute open source software as a part of your own software that the software becomes open source. I haven't distributed anything. If a web designer designs an osCommerce template, does that template become opensource, too? No. Not unless the designer distributes the template with osCommerce.

Let me ask you this, MissMary.. does your modded version of osCommerce have an Update Manager? No. Because I wrote that. Does your modded version of osCommerce have a Layout Manager? No. Because I wrote that, too. Does your modded version of osCommerce have a Page Manager where you can click a button and create a new static page? No. Because that's another module I wrote. Does your modded version of osCommerce have an Image Manager? No. Because.. again.. this is another module I wrote. These are all features that I built that are not available as mods or updates. These are elements that I wrote, and that separate hcmPro from other forks of osCommerce.

I'm not sure who you think this thread is about, but I charged $9.99 a month, and the closest thing I have to do with anything Yahoo related is I have a Yahoo Instant Messenger account.

There's where you're mistaken. I placed the software on a SERVER that I own that your domain happens to POINT to. It was never distributed.

I think what may be hanging you up here is that I never distributed the software. Had I distributed hcmPro as a product, i'd be allowed to sell it for whatever I liked, but since portions of the code were released under GNU, the software could then be freely distributed.. including my code. But hcmPro was never distributed. It was packaged as a service hosted and installed by me on my server. You mentioned low cost hosting alternatives, and i've hosted many accounts for $4.99 for clients who want to use plain Zen Cart, or osCommerce.. in fact, those accounts include Fantastico so the client can install the software themselves. Zen Cart or osCommerce as stock are definitely not 'do it yourself' options for most individuals interested in building a website. osCommerce with lots of mods, and the code that I wrote is.

GNU doesn't apply to MY code, nor does it apply to hosting.

hcmPro is NOT completely open source. The big problem with osCommerce and it's various branches (like oscMax, Zen Cart, etc) is that it's difficult to change layouts, add and remove static pages, etc. hcmPro is a fully modded version of osCommerce with a custom built back end making it easy for average users to quickly maintain their website. That's kind of like one of your clients saying they feel like they got ripped off for paying $9 for one of your candles when they could have gotten the stuff to make it for $4, poured it in an old mayo jar and made it themselves. It isn't even the same end product.

If you'd have asked, i'd have told you. But i'll post it here just in case anyone else has the same question. From your cPanel, click on phpMyAdmin.. then click on your database.. it should be called 'hcmDB', then click the 'export' button. That makes a full backup of your MySQL database. I've not tried to load the database into a unmodded copy of osCommerce.. you'd likely have to go with someting like oscMax (which is just osCommerce loaded with a bunch of mods) Now as to the hcmPro database not being drop in compatible with any other DIY builder.. what's new with that? If you left DIY eStores to go to an Option Cart sitebuilder (or vice versa) the backups wouldn't be interchangeable, either.

I'm not sure where everyone gets the idea that i'm taking down their sites. If you have a subscription, and you're current on your account, your site isn't going anywhere. That includes people with annual or lifetime subscriptions.

This likely has little to do with the fact that your store installation resides in a /store directory, and more to do with how visitors to your domain get from your 'root' (i.e. http://www.yourdomain.com) to your /store. For example, some configurations (and builders) use a 'doorway' or 'splash' page on their root domain with a 'CLICK TO ENTER' link that directs the visitor to their actual store. Google hates these, especially if these 'doorway' or 'splash' pages are loaded or 'seeded' with keywords. Such methods can hurt your search ranking considerably. Here's what Google has to say about 'doorway' or 'splash' pages.. So moving your store to a subdirectory like /store isn't going to negatively impact your ranking.. but how you go about directing visitors to your root domain very well can.

Hard to say why some domains and eMails are considered 'bad' by such software, while others are not. The welcome eMail sent to me from this message board was flagged by my mail client as 'junk', for example.