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WP e-Commerce

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

UPDATE: My client’s site is now live! Link: http://www.stringcollector.com

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. I will post a link to my client’s WP e-Commerce site soon in my portfolio when it goes live!

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Client: Allen’s Photography

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

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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Tags: Client Update, WordPress

Back to Work

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

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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Tags: Client Update, e-Commerce, Graphic Design, WordPress

Moving Saturday

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

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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Tags: Client Update, e-Commerce, Graphic Design, WordPress

Image Rollovers in WordPress

July 28th, 2009 by Brian under Web Development | 12 Comments »

This article is an expansion upon my last article which discusses how to set up jQuery in WordPress. In this article, you will learn how to create a simple rollover image using jQuery.

First of all, you need to have your images created of course. For the sake of this article, the images should be named imagename.png, and imagename-hover.png (or any other picture file extension).

As you learned in the previous article, you need to enclose your jQuery function in a special function of its own.

This is called from an external .js file, and will work for any images inside of a div called #quote (or whatever fits your website).

jQuery(function($) {                    < --This is the enclosing function
    $(document).ready(function(){       <--This is the overall jQuery function
 
        $("#content #quote img").each(function () {    <--This function determines img src
            rollsrc = $(this).attr("src");
            rollON = rollsrc.replace(/.png$/gi, "-hover.png");
            $("<img>").attr("src", rollON);
        });
 
        $("#content #quote a").mouseover(function () {  < --This displays the -hover image
            imgsrc = $(this).children("img").attr("src");
            matches = imgsrc.match(/-hover/);
            if (!matches) {
                imgsrcON = imgsrc.replace(/.png$/gi, "-hover.png");
                $(this).children("img").attr("src", imgsrcON);
            }
        });
 
        $("#content #quote a").mouseout(function () {  <--This returns the image to normal
            $(this).children("img").attr("src", imgsrc);
        });
 
    });
});

The first part of each of the 3 functions that actually change the image contain a css path to the hyperlink (‘a’ tag). This will vary depending on the structure of your website. A good way to find the css path is to use the Firefox plugin called FireBug.

I hope this helps other developers in their WordPress and jQuery endeavors!

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