Actinic Catalog - Business Review

Overall Rating

Easy to use.

Very difficult to setup the SSL.

If you don't need to use SSL, i.e. the https, for payment process, Actinic is very good.

If you need to use SSL, please, please check with your web host to see if it can support it. Actinic won't work on every host, and not every host can support Actinic's stupid linking method.

This is how actinic works with the SSL:
1) Actinic set up all the files in two directories: acatalog and cgi-bin, in the HTTP server -- a non-secure server. Actinic will mainly run on this server;

2) Actinic will store the main pages, such as product pages and shopping carts, etc. in the '/htdocs/acatalog/' directory in the non-secure server. NOTE: Once an order is placed, the shopping cart will be updated in THIS directory and in THIS server.

3) All non-secure scripts that only handle the running of site are loaded and ran in the '/htdocs/cgi-bin/' directory in the non-secure server.

3) When SSL is selected in Actinic, Actinic will load the secure script in another cgi-bin directory in the SECURE server (i.e. the HTTPS server).

4) You can "Add to Cart" in HTTP. Whenever you click the 'Check Out', Actinic's will transfer you to the HTTPS server and run the script in the cgi-bin directory over there.

5) But the Actinic needs to access the shopping cart information in the 'acatalog' directory in the LOCAL server. Actinic is not clever enough to search beyond local server. At this time, you are in the secure server running secure scripts, but the up-to-date shopping cart is in the non-secure server. Actinic never updates the shopping cart in the secure server.

6) So, you need to set up a symbolic link to point the 'acatalog' directory in the HTTPS server to the 'acatalog' directory in the HTTP server.

7) This symbolic link can only be set up by the administrator of your web host. If your web host is putting the HTTP and HTTPS servers on different boxes (this is most common prectise for security reasons), then it is impossible to set up such symbolic link. Because symbolic link can only be setup within the same system.

I have tried to load the whole site to the secure server and ran from there. But some internal bugs in Actinic won't allow https to be used all the time. I still don't know why.

I have spent 4 months in learning how to use Actinic and create a shop with it. When I get to the payment settings, I have found that Actinic doesn't match with my web host. I have then spent another month finding out why from various forums: learning how to creat symbolic link in Unix, etc. After a lot of communication, Actinic finally admit that from their experience, their software never work on my web host, and my web host also admit they won't support Actinic. I am now at a cross road and don't know what to do: change the ecommerce software or change the host which I have just subscribed for two years.