Starting from scratch: best practices

[dutch]

I'm building another store for another business I'm starting. I've used Miva for quite a while with another domain.

Everyone has best practices when starting from scratch, who wants to share theirs? Here are a few areas I consider must-do but I need some input in other areas:

MUST in 2019...
1) Responsive design
2) Besides getting the products set up, integrate a WP blog from day 1 with rich content. WP because Google seems to spider WP blogs quicker.
3) Integrate with marketplaces
4) Solid sitemap
5) Shopper approved reviews
6) Rich content

Need help with following areas
1) Merchant account. If you were doing it over again and wanted simple, what would you use?
2) Mivapay?
3) Business system. Assume you are starting from scratch a drop ship business. Which business system "plays" nicest with Miva? Quickbooks? Or?
4) Other modules?

thanks for help

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Missed the first thing (IMO): Product Data. And by product data I mean a well thought out plan of the data set for each product (using custom field to break down the product information into dynamically actionable events. For example, say you sell shoes...along with the standard images and product text, you'll want custom fields for things like size, width, color, function, style, etc. This will allow your customers use fractal filtering when looking for shoes (i.e., show me only 9.5 mens 4E dress shoes that are brown).

Oh, and a plan on how to keep product information up to date without spending all day on it.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Two comments:

1) I strongly advise not integrating wordpress and your Miva Merchant on the same site; the risk of compromise by way of WP is far too great. There are ways to make it appear to be on the same site, if absolutely necessary, while still separating it on the server side; it would require either the blog or the store making use of a URI prefix, but you'd have needed that anyway if you intended to use URI management, which you should.

2) MivaPay is included in all plans now but does require a compatible payment gateway; those are listed at https://www.miva.com/mivapay

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Would this include running WP separately but using CURL() to fetch a Miva generated Header/Footer?

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Would this include running WP separately but using CURL() to fetch a Miva generated Header/Footer?

I am personally not a fan of that. Wordpress installs get attacked at a nearly constant rate, given how many of them tend to be vulnerable, and that results in attack traffic multiplying into pointless Miva Merchant traffic, if, for example, one illegitimate WP request results in two internal MM requests. I get why people like to do the integration that way, easier than moving content back and forth, but there's a price that comes with it.

[dutch]

My current site blog is a WP blog, can you check it and advise if it's done the way you like? It was done by Miva professional services

[ILoveHostasaurus]

My current site blog is a WP blog, can you check it and advise if it's done the way you like? It was done by Miva professional services

Sure, send me an email and I can check things out; [email protected]