Their current (live) website is built on WordPress + WooCommerce, while their newer website uses a React/Next.js frontend with a Python Django backend. And they're currently evaluating a Shopify migration and are looking for someone who can review both platforms and recommend the best long-term solution.

"But after launching our new website, we've faced several issues with performance, backend workflows, and SEO, and it has also affected our existing website. Many of our competitors use Shopify, so we're evaluating whether it would be a better long-term solution. We're looking for someone who can review both websites objectively and recommend the best platform based on our business requirements.....not necessarily Shopify."

They have 2 websites, on two different domains using two completely different tech stacks, both self-hosted. And now they're exploring the possibility of a third option (Shopify) of a managed hosting solution using a templating engine called liquid, which is Shopify's proprietary server-side templating language.

I was surprised that, being a small shop / brand, they spent a considerable amount of tech resources on building two whole websites and now willing to spend on a third one.

I suggested a newer / different tech stack : PHP > Laravel > OctoberCMS > MelonCart - mainly because PHP resources are in abundance in India and you get full control of the source-code just as it is with WordPress + WooCommerce and Django+React. And SEO using PHP is easier to handle ... well this is very true with WordPress because of all those SEO plugins available but in general this is possible in a Django based site too but since the front-end here is in React/NextJS, they probably faced issues challenges related to SEO on a SPA level. Go for Shopify if you're low on tech resources - Shopify can get a lot done easier and faster even by non-developers. But if you have a front-end guy and a back-end guy or even a decent full-stack engineer, then why not stick to self-hosted platform which you have full control of ?

My friend Sudhir, always chooses Shopify, but he is a marketing person and not a techie, so for people like him, Shopify makes sense.

The staff at OctoberCMS forum are extremely helpful. That's the main reason why I suggested OctoberCMS which is based on Laravel. So helpful, that when I suggested RazorPay as a payment gateway for Indian merchants is must, they had it implemented in a week's time and launched ! That's equivalent to free development effort by the founder themselves.

The only difference in choosing WordPress + WooCommerce or Django + React over OctoberCMS + LemonCart, is that there is a one-time license fee to use OctoberCMS which is \(19 and a one-time license fee to use LemonCart which is \)199 - but I don't find these as a bottleneck to develop a good eCommerce site in-house.

So give MelonCart a try - be on their forum at https://talk.octobercms.com and go ahead as ask away questions on challenges you're facing - you'd be surprised how much time you can save on development.

The beauty was its API services for developers to create apps based on Flickr photos. The API still exists - https://www.flickr.com/services/api/ - but Instagram acquired all next-gen users - and a great chunk of them are on mobile-only on a daily basis, being able to just slip in the devices in their pockets.

Instagram also has an embed option to embed a single post / photo to an HTML page on a website. The option to embed an entire Instagram feed is not available out of the box. This can be achieved using Instagram's API but requires some development time.

If you're looking for a quick solution where-in you just want to dump your photos on Instagram and not elsewhere, and want to showcase a gallery then elfsight is a viable option. If you are ready to shell out $5 a month beyond their free 200-views-per-month plan then wouldn't it cut a developer's time and cost?

They have a post on how to get this done at - https://elfsight.com/blog/2022/06/how-to-embed-instagram-feed-on-website/

If you want to change the layout, there are some settings that can be altered with. Though I would've preferred a custom CSS code edit.

An example of this embed is at https://allcareerguru.com/gallery

Does anyone know what the cheapest way to host a landing page is? I used elastic beanstalk before but it cost me $100 a month…

I mean - $100 for a landing page? Spending $100 a month for provisioning a server for your webapp makes sense and with $100 / mo you can scale to a fairly large extent given that a lot of sites with traffic of 1K - 10K per day are on some shared hosting servers like hostinger or bluehost or dreamhost or hostgator which start at way below $10 a month. But using Elastic Beanstalk for a landing page is not worth the money and the effort to set up. Because landing pages are meant to be generating leads and sales. So a product developer, focus on the application itself and use some 3rd party service for digital marketing if you cannot hire a full-time staff to do so.

For just a landing page for your upcoming product, I would suggest you go for a landing page service like carrd.co which has PRO plans starting at $19 a year for 10 websites. That's a lot of sites considering a yearly expense. (So, they have a $9 a year for 3 websites plan but this doesn't support custom domains, so I don't know who is their target audience for such a plan). The Pro plan has options for forms, embeds which can be hooked to most form email service providers like SendInblue and even has Buy Now buttons supporting payment gateways etc. Their Plus plan has even more features like redirects, password protection and variables and site files, which I am not sure what the last 2 are. The interesting thing is, within their Pro and Plus plans they sub-plans to support more sites under Pro and Plus plans.

Click here to give carrd a shot today.