A few weeks ago I signed up for a Yahoos Stores account. After a lot of thought I felt it was time to convert to this platform. My decision was based a desire to simplify my programming, improve inventory management and order tracking and to able to have more sophisticated sales, discounts and shipping options.
What a disaster this turned out to be. Getting up and running was not so hard, using the online wizards. One big problem I ran into was the Store Editor function. I downloaded a detailed 300 page PDF file that was a guide to Store Editor Version 2.0 Lots of good walkthroughs. After working with for a while I realized that I was working with Verison 3.0 of Store Editor which was considerably different. But there is no equivalent PDF guide for the new version (and 3.0 has been around since 2006). I called tech support and they told me to use the online help files, and I pointed out that these file were nowhere near as detailed as the downloadable guide. In the end I had them switch me back to using version 2.0, so at least it matched my guide.
So far so good. As I worked through the Store Editor I became more and more disillusioned with how the platform worked. To go beyond a very basic inflexible design you have to learn how to manipulate page templates with a proprietary language called RTML. The main point of trying to use Yahoo was to simplify the programming involved in maintaining the website, yet now I have to learn a new scripting language. And by the way, Yahoo provides no resources for learning RTML, instead pointing you to 3rd party developers who can build your store for you: the last thing I want.
I gave it good 2-3 days and finally called it quits. Yahoo gave me a prorated refund, so I guess it was worth the $60 to learn that for sure I do not ever want to use Yahoo stores as my ecommerce platform.
Back to PHP and MySql I guess.
