We are often asked if StoreFinder can be installed and run as a script on our clients own web servers. The short answer is no it can’t, and the reason is that store finder is a sophisticated software system which has been designed and tested for our server environment.
Because we control the hardware as well as the software we can guarantee all our clients very high speed and reliability. But there are other benefits to using a hosted locator service…
GUARANTEED COMPATIBILITY ACROSS ALL DEVICES AND OPERATING SYSTEMS
All of the code and data structures to make StoreFinder work are executed on our server and the results sent back to your device. This means that StoreFinder will work on any platform which can connect to it regardless of its manufacturer, operating system, speed or memory capacity of the device. All the hard work is done on our server and all the device needs to do is render the results.
FREE ONGOING UPGRADES
By centralising all the code and data we can quickly respond to user feedback and deploy a new version as required for all of our clients virtually instantly. If someone reports a bug or requests a new feature we can code it on our server without having to roll it out and test on all of our clients machines. This frees us up to spend more time with our clients and coming up with new features and ideas.
FAST DEPLOYMENT
Installing a locator system like StoreFinder on a server would take days of frustrating installations and configurations. Then you would need to connect it to your website and test it. Invariably it wouldn’t work the first time and you would have to debug the system and figure out where it’s failing.
Instead, by keeping StoreFinder running on our servers we can avoid all of this and make it much easier, faster and reliable for our clients. As a result, getting StoreFinder up and running only takes a couple of minutes and it works first time, every time.
FAST SEARCHING OF UNLIMITED STORE LOCATIONS IN FRACTIONS OF A SECOND
Our servers have the latest technology, the fanciest hard drives and the beefiest memory banks to grind through the calculations necessary to get accurate distance by road calculations for thousands of locations every second. They run 24 hours a day and backed up by batteries and diesel generators. Over a ten-year period they have only been down for a few hours.
CAN BE MANAGED FROM ANYWHERE VIA WEB CONTROL PANEL
Finally, our web control allows remote access maintenance of the databases from anywhere you happen to be, home or work or at the local cafe with your laptop is just fine.
ADDITIONAL BENEFITS OF USING STOREFINDER
A few other benefits we can offer you for choosing StoreFinder include:
- Free connection to your website
- Free email and phone tech support
- Unlimited store locations
- Auto geocoding of address information
- Optimised especially for Australia and New Zealand
- Tablet and mobile device friendly
INDUSTRY STANDARD PHP AND MYSQL TECHNOLOGY
All of our code is written in industry-standard languages and scripts such as PHP, JavaScript and MySQL, all of which have been around for many years and will certainly be around well into the foreseeable future. StoreFinder is as future proof as a software system can be.
ADDING OUR STORE LOCATOR APP TO YOUR WEBSITE
A single line of HTML code or two lines of JavaScript are all that’s required to get your StoreFinder locator service working on your website. This takes a couple of minutes and is guaranteed to work regardless of how your website is constructed, and is compatible with all popular CMS (content management systems) including Joomla and WordPress.
DEVELOPERS, BUILD YOUR OWN APPS
Web and App Developers, if you have a special project which requires a custom solution you can still benefit from our experience, performance and stability by using our API.
StoreFinders API includes:
- A very easy to learn and use Application Programming Interface
- Standard XML return values
- Easy to understand documentation (no computer science degree is required)