Major problem.

[Bob Isaac]

I have set up two online sites on our server in the same domain. One is for our membership (https://www.volvoclub.org.uk/acatalog/index.html) and the other for our merchandise sales (https://www.volvoclub.org.uk/shop/index.html).

For some time our server errror log has shown that many customers are getting 404s when they click on a product link in one site and Actinic tries to find that file in the other site.

For example. Someone wanting to join clicks on the product 'Initial membership' in the membership site and gets a 404 because Actinic is looking for Membership.html in the /shop/ site.

I have raised a ticket over this with Actinic in the past and I have to say the support was pretty poor. We have just paid our support fee for the next year, so I expect some proper help or we will have to dump Actinic and ask for our fee back. It's gone on too long and we are losing business.

In an attempt to try to resolve this I tried to put our membership in https://www.volvoclub.org.uk/membership/index.html with different script ID numbers. It was a total disaster and I got constant 404s.

Look at the attachments-

error1.pnp: The browser address bar shows the correct URL and the site homepage. OK so far.

error2.png: Hover the cursor over the product INITIAL MEMBERSHIP and the browser status bar shows the link to the file /ss000014.pl.

error3.png: Click the product INITIAL MEMBERSHIP and you get a 404 because the browser address bar shows Actinic is trying to find Membership.html in volvoclub.org.uk/shop/ instead of volvoclub.org.uk/acatalog/

What the heck is going on?????

Bob

[pinbrook]

My initial question is why bother with 2 shops, wouldn't it be easier to have one shop within acatalog for example and then split into 2 sections, one for membership and one for merchandise.

The way you have it split at present results in someone who would like to buy mechandise and membership not being able to, as it results in 2 checkouts.

I would hazard a guess that this is causing your current problems, what would you expect to happen if someone added membership to their basket then tried to add merchandise?

[pinbrook]

Having posted the above, I then went to the site and bought membership without error and then went on to buy merchandise without problem.

Is there a particular sequence of events that you can guarantee hitting the error, have you completely cleared the cache of your PC?

[Bob Isaac]

Yes there is a reason why we run two sites, running one site would solve the problem, but not wishing to go into war and peace why we run the two, I can find no alternative at the present time.

Our new web consultant gets regular 404s on the membership site using volvoclub.org.uk/acatalog/index.html.

Which URL did you use for the membership? volvoclub.org.uk/acatalog/index.html or volvoclub.org.uk/membership/index.html

When I set up the new membership site today I tried two PCs and got constant 404s from them both, even after a reboot.

Bob

[Bob Isaac]

Is there a way to setup one site with two sections, membership and merchandise, and allow two separate people to download from each section separately as if it was two sites?

Bob

[george]

Do the payments have to go through separate checkouts?

[Bob Isaac]

Each site is totally separate from the other, so each has its own checkout. Yes, this does mean that if someone wants to join and purchase something they need to visit two sites.

Perhaps if I explain the situation then it will enable someone to present me with a better option, although I still would like to know why/how the scripts switch from site to site as I described above.

We have one paid employee, the membership secretary, who also used to deal with the merchandise. Poor accounting and management (and not having a good grasp on computerisation) meant we either fired him or changed his role to a simpler one that he could cope with. We decided on the latter for several reasons. We then split this work into two areas and gave the merchandise to someone else, who did it as a volunteer, as we all are.

The membership site has no shipping, tax nor stock control. Tax is dealt with by the custom made membership database made for us by Prosolve in Bedford.

The merchandise has all of these.

My first thought was to create one site and let the merchandise manager download all orders and deal with all the card transactions. A copy of the order invoice would also be sent to the membership secretary and would contain all the info he needs. The problem with this is that our paid employee, who has the time, would do less, and the unpaid merchandise manager would have a greater workload.

Doing it the other way around would mean the membership secretary would have time to do it all, except ship the merchandise which will remain with that manager as she will get a copy of the order invoice by email, but his accuracy with the keyboard and difficulty understanding things such as Actinic would - could - introduce errors.

This has many benefits as all the clubs' financial activities are together, and all that would need to be done is for the membership secretary to send the finance director a weekly/monthly site snapshot to run through Sage.

This option is probably the best, unless someone has a better idea. If Actinic cannot find out the cause of the strange behaviour above then I may be forced to do it this way, but it will need a lot of work by me keeping a eye on the secretary to make sure no mistakes are made.

Thanks for any ideas or suggestions.

Bob