Hostway verses Miva

[PJS]

Attempting to help myself with an upgrade. I'm a newbie and I'm trying to get up to speed. I need to up grade my storefront, currently I have Miva and the upgrade to Miva 5 would be good and offer an quick/easy checkout with look & feel good. But Hostway does not and has no time frame for supporting Miva 5. What I'm I missing? Is there a big break up?

If I change one which would be easier to handle for a novice? If I change my storefront what happens to the traffic I get at the miva storefront page. Its good traffic, do I lose it if I change storefront software? I have been told its a major event to change servers, is that correct? Again, can a novice get through the process of changing servers? Any suggestions or ideas?

[crankydave]

Having just recently gone through an ecommerce site rebuild, and a new host perhaps I can help a little.

The platform I was on was very degridated and support was... well just leave it at that.

I opted for ShopSite. Very easy to use, lots of good features and lots of good modules that can be added. The hosting provider I went with was Lexiconn. Their support and knowledge of ShopSite is simply outstanding. Answers and help with in minutes. I can't say enough about them.

As far as Shopsite goes, they have a demo you can "play around with" so you can get a feel for whether or not you like it.

My site has a nicely established clientelle and decent rankings. Since going live, I've not had any real kind of dramatic fall off. Fluxuations here and there but many rankings have actually improved quickly because of the improved platform.

By getting your redirects in place when you go live, it's not as scary as you may think, and submitting sitemaps, you can help make the transition nicely regardless of the platform and host you end up deciding upon.

I really hope to get a more detailed account of my move put together soon, hopefully to help others out considering the same thing. Just haven't had the time.

Hope this helps

Dave

[PJS]

Thanks Dave

Food for thought, will continue the process. Your info is encouraging.