Posts Tagged ‘Client Update’


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October 20th, 2009 by Brian under News | No Comments »

October Activity

I haven’t had time to write a nice article in a while, so I wanted to throw something out here to let everyone know how business is doing. First of all, I finished up a large e-commerce project at the beginning of the month for The String Collector. I enjoy rock and roll music and have a bass guitar, so this was a fun project for me to work on. The website can be seen in my portfolio, and you can read about it here: The String Collector

I am currently working on a web store for a band called The Vala. One of the members is a personal friend of mine, and he came to me for help with this project. The design was largely done by him, with input from myself along the way. The test website is still in its initial stages of setup, so you’ll have to wait a bit to see more from this one. This website will be using WordPress and WP e-Commerce just like the store that I put together for The String Collector.

On a different note, I’m about halfway into the school semester, my last semester at WMU, and I can’t wait to be done! It’s exciting to finally be graduating and truly moving into the work force. I know my web design and development skills will continue to expand, and I will use everything I have to help my customers create successful websites.


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October 6th, 2009 by Brian under Portfolio | 2 Comments »

The String Collector

The String Collector is an online store that sells new, used, and vintage instruments. They specialize in everything from guitars to tuners and accessories. I created this website using WordPress and the free WP e-Commerce plug-in with the $40 gold module upgrade.

If you are interested in learning more about WP e-Commerce, I wrote an article about it that you can read here: WP e-Commerce – The Ups and Downs


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September 16th, 2009 by Brian under Web Development | 1 Comment »

WP e-Commerce

I have recently been developing an e-Commerce website for a client using WordPress and the free WP e-Commerce plug-in. In this post, I’d like to talk a bit about the plug-in and some of my thoughts and opinions about it as an overall product.

First of all, I love the fact that it is free. For a free platform, it gets the job done. Unfortunately, if you want some standard features such as product search, or grid display of products, you need to purchase their $40 gold upgrade. No big deal, but these should still be standard features. One gripe that I have with the product search is that it only searches through product titles, and tags that are manually added by the store manager.

Applying my theme to the website was fairly simple, unfortunately I had to modify some of the core PHP files to achieve the result that I wanted. This causes problems, because if you ever want to update the plug-in it will write over all of your changes. One other gripe I had about the software was the ‘Product Specials’ feature. It did not work out of the box. I had to add some custom PHP code to write to the database to register that a product has been given a sale price. Even when I add a sale price now, there are some quirky steps I have to go through to make sure it’s still showing up.

One last gripe I have has to do with Search Engine Optimization. The plug-in does render nice URLs, and you are able to set some of the features with the All in One SEO plug-in. Unfortunately, there is no way to get the product and category pages to be included with an XML sitemap generator to submit to the search engines. This would be a nice feature that I think is very important to websites.

Aside from these few issues, it was a very easy platform to set up. Adding products and categories is simple and shouldn’t be any trouble for the store owner. Managing orders seems like a simple process as well. I believe that it is possible to make decent web stores with this software, but anyone looking to run a large e-Commerce website should look elsewhere.

I hope this article provides some insight for anyone shopping around.


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September 14th, 2009 by Brian under News | No Comments »

Client: Allen’s Photography

A co-worker of mine at Landscape Forms was looking for some help updating his photography website. When I first looked at the website, I noticed that the entire thing was written with static HTML pages. This type of site is very hard for any non-technical user to update. So I offered to help him migrate his website to WordPress, where it would be much easier to update and manage.

The whole process went really smoothly. I was able to install WordPress on his web host with no problems, configure all of the necessary plug-ins, and apply the theme from his HTML website without any trouble. He is very happy with the new features, and I hope that the work I have done for him makes his job easier, and helps to bring in new business to his company.

Link: http://www.allensphotography.net


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August 18th, 2009 by Brian under News | 1 Comment »

Back to Work

Now that I have moved in to my new apartment, I am back to working on web design projects. I recently finished the first draft of a design mockup for an eCommerce guitar website for a shop based in Battle Creek, MI. I have not heard back from the owner yet, but I’m confident that he will like the direction I have taken with the design. Once the design is exactly how he wants it, I can begin the implementation process on top of WordPress and the WP-eComerce plugin. I’m excited, because I think this will turn out to be a very nice web store in the end. I am also currently working on transferring a co-worker’s photography website to a WordPress install. I think that he will benefit greatly from the migration.

As always, Fro Designs is giving out free quotes for web design and development work. If you have any questions relating to the web, we are happy to try and answer them for you. Designing web sites is a great passion of mine, and I’m happy to share my skills with business and people whether they are located in the Kalamazoo area, or anywhere else in the United States or even the world.


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