KatoUSA oddness

[kiwi_al]

So this evening I thought I'd check to see if the Katousa parts page was back, but no it's not. However I then thought I'd checkout the online store for goodies and got this - imagine my surprise, looks like something is happening, not saying it's good

[woodone]

I still find it hard to believe that they (Kato USA ) shut their parts replacement down 100%
Seams to me you would keep what was up & running until the new replacement was ready.
Then tell you the new site would be up & running in May of this year.
Now it has been moved to be going late this summer, when ever that might be.
I have a new diesel that needs a new truck , but is sidelined for lack of gettin a new one.
Guess parts sales is not on their to to list.

[thomasjmdavis]

Did you try clicking on the "Kato Parts (1880)" link? At least, as of 9:15 AM EDT I got a page listing a bunch of parts.  It appears random, will eventually have photos, is not yet listing 1880 parts, but I would say it indicates considerable progress in the right direction. The links on the page are live- taking you, for instance, to here:
https://katousa.com/product/1-chime-airhorn-red-n-scale/

It appears that the structure is there and working, what they need to do now is to complete populating it with the available products, and add photos.

[peteski]

So they are merging their parts store into the main online store. Hopefully it will be as easy to search and list parts like the old store was.  Call  me jaded, but somehow I have my doubts.  At this point in my life I have learned that all good things come to an end.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Web content stuff is hard.
It's the hardest parts of web projects.

And if they've just got their "IT guy" working on it, well, it'll be a mess like this for a little while. But I'm sure they'll figure it out.

[carlso]

I needed a drawbar for a KATO N scale GS4 in the worst way. Parts page still not working.

So, I called KATO and the gentleman I spoke to took my order and said they are in stock as that part is one of our most requested. He put two bags in the mail today for me, took cc info and processed the order. Great helpful service. Much appreciated as a GS4 without drawbar sucks.

I asked him about the on-line parts catalog and he stated "it is close". They have added some info BUT you can not place an order yet through that catalog.

Yes, KATO walks to the beat of a different drum but the quality of products offsets that, IMHO.

[Hedron]

I stumbled across the "new" site yesterday. It came up when I followed a link from a google search result. They must be letting google crawl it, intentionally or not. (I am leaning not intentionally.) You can put stuff in a cart, but it is not accepting any forms of payment. I am so grateful that they have an online browsable parts department that I do not wish to speak ill, but the interface so far is....um...

[mmagliaro]

Web content stuff is hard.
It's the hardest parts of web projects.

And if they've just got their "IT guy" working on it, well, it'll be a mess like this for a little while. But I'm sure they'll figure it out.

This, I do not understand.  Who puts an unfinished website up live?  I mean, if it was my own personal website and I really didn't care if it was a mess while people randomly hit it, fine.  But a real company with items for sale?  Why not put it on a local server and test it for a while before pushing all the code to the real server?

[Ed Kapuscinski]

This, I do not understand.  Who puts an unfinished website up live?  I mean, if it was my own personal website and I really didn't care if it was a mess while people randomly hit it, fine.  But a real company with items for sale?  Why not put it on a local server and test it for a while before pushing all the code to the real server?

Well, it depends.

It sounds like they're not launching a new system, just adding content to an existing one.
If you're a large company with a large budget, you'll have plenty of upstream environments for developing and testing.
If you're a medium company with medium budgets, you'll hopefully have something along those lines.
If you're a small business, well, you're just glad everything's not broken.

Kato is using WordPress as a CMS for the site and Woocommerce on top of it for their eCommerce stuff.

That combo strikes me as your typical "small business web solution". It's functional, but not really that great when it comes to stuff like this.

WordPress has the ability to support development/test/stage/prod workflows, but that setup and work for replication, which likely means costs they don't want to incur.

That means that it's likely far easier for their folks to just "do it live" in production.

I'd take a SWAG that they're doing the content entry and keeping things unsaleable until it's done and reviewed.

[peteski]

The question remains as to why not keep the old parts ordering system (which was always separate from their regular online store) until the parts inventory was moved to their online store.  This whole fiasco started when they ahem, "improved" their website.

I know, some sort of compatibility issue.    Back in the day . . .  (yes, I'm becoming an old fart).

[bbunge]

The question remains as to why not keep the old parts ordering system (which was always separate from their regular online store) until the parts inventory was moved to their online store.  This whole fiasco started when they ahem, "improved" their website.

I know, some sort of compatibility issue.    Back in the day . . .  (yes, I'm becoming an old fart).

It could have been a hardware issue with the old site, or an end of contract issue if they had hosted it somewhere.  Or the old site was running on a operating system that, if they had a good heart, was end of life and at high risk of being compromised along with their customer's information. 

[mmagliaro]

Okay, I guess it could be just a "small company" thing.  Admittedly, I don't do this type of programming much (even though I'm a developer by trade).  For web sites I've built in the past, I just put them all on a local web server, and hit it with a browser to test it.  It is invisible to the whole universe, not even on the internet.  Once it is working, upload all the files to the real server. 
Is maintaining a separate parallel server just for testing really that big a deal?

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Okay, I guess it could be just a "small company" thing.  Admittedly, I don't do this type of programming much (even though I'm a developer by trade).  For web sites I've built in the past, I just put them all on a local web server, and hit it with a browser to test it.  It is invisible to the whole universe, not even on the internet.  Once it is working, upload all the files to the real server. 
Is maintaining a separate parallel server just for testing really that big a deal?

Definitely, because modern sites are typically powered by a content management system of some fashion. In Kato's case, Wordpress.
Those CMSes pull their content from databases, pass it through programming, and spit it out as websites.
Moving the code and content data around and keeping it all in sync requires some doing.

Not a lot. But some. And it's typically ignored at the low end. For example, I don't have a dedicated development or testing environment for https://archives.thecrhs.org/, https://archive.nkphts.org/, or  https://conrailphotos.thecrhs.org/. They ARE, however, hosted on AWS so creating a copy of them is just a few clicks. Syncing stuff from that copy over? That can be some work.

[johnb]

any company that is using WordPress is asking for trouble, it's like locking the front door and putting the key under the welcome mat, you stand a high risk of being compromised

[Ed Kapuscinski]

any company that is using WordPress is asking for trouble, it's like locking the front door and putting the key under the welcome mat, you stand a high risk of being compromised

Yeah. I can't imagine what PCI/DSS compliance is like on a Wordpress site.