Posts Tagged ‘e-Commerce’


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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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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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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August 4th, 2009 by Brian under News | No Comments »

Moving Saturday

Just a quick update. I’ll be moving to a new apartment on Saturday, and that will involve lots of packing this week. I don’t expect to get any work done until next week after we’re settled in. However, I will still be available to answer quote requests and e-mails during this time.

Once the move is completed, I have a wonderful project to begin working on. This project is an e-commerce store for a music shop located in Battle Creek, MI. I’ll be designing a whole new look for this site, and implementing it on top of WordPress with the WP-eCommerce plugin. Exciting times are ahead, and I’m always looking forward to new projects!


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