The latest, highly anticipated 5.5 release of MIVA Merchant is now available. The new release includes a long list of enhancements that really smooth-out some of the rough edges that has dogged MIVA for the past few years. MIVA has always been a favorite of programmers and developers but many considered it lacking the back-end usability and ease of use that most non-technical business owners desired. Checking orders and performing simple day-to-day operations of your online business wasn’t as intuitive as some other shopping carts. MIVA has taken great strides to improve this in this latest major release.

Here at Durrani, we are still working our way through the latest features and how best to use them, but so far the admin interface is a welcome improvement.

The upgrade to 5.5 is free for current users of MIVA Merchant 5.0 and is only $99 for users of previous versions until May 31st. The upgrade is automatic on 5.0 installation when you run the upgrade wizard in the admin area. Customers running versions older then 5.0 who have heavily customized their store with modules and OpenUI configurations, should think through the impact of upgrading and make sure they take into consideration everything that needs to be changed for an efficient migration. Open UI modules, design templates and all modules from versions older then 5.0 are not compatible.

For a complete list of the latest features and fixes click the link below to view the complete post.

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Our preferred shopping cart of choice has always been MIVA Merchant. We develop and support several other carts, but if we are building an e-commerce site from scratch or have the option of switching a client over, we use MIVA Merchant. MIVA is much easier to configure and customize and getting a site launched is faster. MIVA is also very expandable for the future growth of an online business.

Last year we designed and constructed a completely new MIVA 5.0 storefront for our client, Walleye Direct (www.walleyedirect.com). We’ve watched Walleye grow from a side-job dream idea to a full-time business with sales rolling in every day. We continue to manage the Walleye MIVA website and also provide SEO optimization and marketing.

We’re exited that WalleyeDirect.com was this months featured MIVA site in the MIVA Merchant Galleria.

Click here for the complete interview with Walleye owner Jesse Ness. And for some fresh Walleye fish from the brisk rivers of Canada, visit www.walleyedirect.com.