31 replies to this topic

[marklbishop]

Alright... Here it goes... This is my first store build with OSC. I'm excited to get this out there - and quite a bit nervous. Kinda feels like I'm dropping my pants infront of an audience.

So, I am building a site here for an antique store. The site is not live and will not be live for at least three more weeks - probably more. Please feel free to make make fake accounts and place orders as nothing will be charged, delivered etc... I also have many text changes to make.

One note... I have not decided what to do with the top header yet. I'm planing to make a global navigation with tabs (and remove the text navigation on the left side) but I haven't decided how to do it yet. THat's still in development. So when you see the top navigation that doesn't work - that's under development and in the plans.

Specifically, I'm having issues with Gift Vouchers. For some reason when you go to redeem GV, sometimes it takes you to the home page and sometimes it works.

Another task on my list... Try to figure out how to make the image resize contribution work for small, big AND medium sized images.

Be honest, I have a thick skin.

Anyway, here it is...

http://www.wowandzen.com/default.php

[BirdBrain]

Good Morning Mark!

I promise not to spank your bare behind too much....

I love the header...the reds are just the right shades. The Celedon green is also nice in the boxes....I'm not quite sure about the other 2 greens though...almost looks Christmasy. Have you thought about white inside the "shop" and maybe black for the background? I wouldn't normally suggest black but, it might work..

The page corner icons are cool...nice touch! The buttons are perfect.

Seems to function pretty well. it loads fast and I didn't have any trouble placing an order. The Gift Cert. has a couple of oddities....It is confusing to have to choose a shipping method when ordering a virtual item. When emailing a GV to a friend, you need to tell the customer NOT to put the $ in the amount field. One question about the GV's...Why the odd amount? Most consumers are used to buying GV's in a whole dollar amount....We never balk at $XX.99 for merchandise but $XX.99 on a GV feels "funny"....

The background link highlights in the checkout area are still blue.

[marklbishop]

Thanks for the comments. And I'm going to choose to not continue with the spanking discussion. Sometimes I find that my sense of humor doesn't translate well to email/BB.

Quote

I love the header...the reds are just the right shades. The Celedon green is also nice in the boxes....I'm not quite sure about the other 2 greens though...almost looks Christmasy. Have you thought about white inside the "shop" and maybe black for the background? I wouldn't normally suggest black but, it might work..

Thank you for the compliment - but I must defer because thoes are the colors of the client. I didn't choose them. I was a bit concerned about the Christmasy feeling, but again, not my colors.... However, that won't preclude me from trying a white back. I'll see what it looks like. But you do like the lighter green for the infoboxes? I wasn't sure about that. As for a black background, I tried it and didn't like it. But I'll try a green a shade darker and see what that looks like...

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It is confusing to have to choose a shipping method when ordering a virtual item. When emailing a GV to a friend, you need to tell the customer NOT to put the $ in the amount field.

Oops... I have put a lot of time trying to figure out the GV, and I forgot to put 0 for the shipping weight. Thanks for catching that.

Good point about the $...

How do the GV's work for you? They seem to be a useability problem to me. I find it particularly confusing when people check out and need to select a method of payment even if they are using a GV. My dirty hack was to make the "Use GV for Payment" box default as checked...

Quote

One question about the GV's...Why the odd amount? Most consumers are used to buying GV's in a whole dollar amount....We never balk at $XX.99 for merchandise but $XX.99 on a GV feels "funny"....

I made the odd numbers because it was driving me crazy that I couldn't get the GVs to be in order by price. If I put $25, $50 and $100, then the orders is 100, 25, 50... Any thoughts on how to change the sort order? Would it be better if my prices were $25, $55 and $95?

Again, thanks for the input.

[BirdBrain]

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I made the odd numbers because it was driving me crazy that I couldn't get the GVs to be in order by price. If I put $25, $50 and $100, then the orders is 100, 25, 50... Any thoughts on how to change the sort order? Would it be better if my prices were $25, $55 and $95?

Mark,

In the Tips and Tricks section is a hint I wrote about ordering products without using a mod, take a look at it...I promise it will fix that problem straight away.

[loxly]

Looks very nice Are those birdcages along the wall???

Debbie

[marklbishop]

Kim thanks for the suggestions. I updated my GCs and used your tip. Good idea. Also, I tried new colors - a darker background and lighter 'Shop' colors. Let me know whay you think. I also created new sub headings on the info boxes.

All the best,

Mark

[marklbishop]

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Looks very nice Are those birdcages along the wall???

Thanks Debbie.

Thoes are not birdcages you are looking at. I think you are looking at steel racks that are holding beautiful painted boxes - but I'm not sure what type of boxes there are.

I think they do have a few old bamboo birdcages in the back, and they are really beautiful. When the site is done, maybe we'll see them listed.

Mark

[Derek]

Mark,
Can you tell me how you got everything to sit in the table in the middle of the page, I`ve been trying to get that same effect, without success

Derek

[Derek]

Quote

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Can you tell me how you got everything to sit in the table in the middle of the page

Here: guide.oscdox.com/Modification_Guide/Exercises/Exercise_2_.htm

hmm, I`ve donet that.. but it aint working right.... hmm need to read more stuff..

[marklbishop]

Quote

hmm, I`ve donet that.. but it aint working right.... hmm need to read more stuff..

I took a slightly dirty hack approach. I can't control it in the Admin - but that's not what I needed/wanted.

What I did was creat a table and inserted the opening of the table in the includes/header.php file, and the closing of the table in the includes/footer.php.

Around line 50ish of includes/header.php in included:

<table class="centeredmain" width="750" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">

  <tr>

    <td>

And to close the table, just before the last PHP statement in the includes/footer.php I inserted:

    </td>

  </tr>

</table>

[Derek]

ahh, ok & did you put a class "centeredmain" in the css ?

[marklbishop]

Why yes I did. I forgot about that.

TABLE.centeredmain {

  background: #D7E6CC;

  border-color: #000000;

  border-style: solid;

  border-width: 2px;

}

Of course, do as you please to you CSS file.

And if you've looked at my site recently, you'll see that it has already changed quite a bit. My client didn't like the centered look so now I'm expanding to 100%. Only change is certain in the world.

[Derek]

Yeh I had seen that you had changed your site I went back to look at the source & it was changed... now all i need to do is get an image in there

[gdfwilliams]

There's a Center Shop contribution in Contributions>Templates that may help.

Best way to do it is simply to start a table at the very top of header.php and end it at the very bottom of footer.php. Then define width and alignment of everything in the TD that will contain the store...

- Greg

[Derek]

Yeh, Grer I seen that when i done a search, but it looked a bit complicated Im only a beginner

I got my stuff centered, now what I need is to get an image in place...

[gdfwilliams]

just take a look at header.php. You should be able to figure out what's going on in there...

Beginner?! Absolutely THE best way to learn OSC is to experiment with as many of the contributions as you can. They will give you an idea of what's going on and you'll have the chance to start customizing, tweaking, etc to get them doing exactly what you need them to do.

[Derek]

Oh for an edit button, sorry for calling you Grer... :oops:

anyway, I am now looking through the header ..

Also, I had better stop posting here, I seem to have Hi-jacked this thread....

[marklbishop]

Greg:

I love your Tibet Collection site. It's beautiful. As you can probably see, I borrowed layout ideas for my homepage from you. Hope you don't mind.

Question for you... Could you point me in the right direction for editing category layout and for the category menu tree layout.

I hope I'm asking the right question.

Mark

[Max40]

Hi

first time here tonight, so I hope not to tread on toes.

Checked your site out, looks good and clean, but can I siggest that
the image of the shop might look nicer if it had a pencil boarder around it,
with a 2-4 pixel space at the top and bottom.

I would also make all the images below the same size. If one is to big
then I usually take a snap shot of the best side/part of the product.

Persomally when I do a shopping trolley I either leave the back ground in or out and keep to the same theme all the way through.

My first time here and my 2 cents. What do you think of my suggestions

regards

Maz

[marklbishop]

Max - Thanks for the input. I truly value all input that I get.

[quote]can I siggest that
the image of the shop might look nicer if it had a pencil boarder around it,
with a 2-4 pixel space at the top and bottom. [/quote]

You mean the photo of the front of the store? I'll play around with a border and see what it looks like, however, my client loves the fade on the right side so that does have to stay. When you say a border, do you mean you suggest 2-4 pixels of white space around the photo?

[quote]I would also make all the images below the same size. If one is to big then I usually take a snap shot of the best side/part of the product. [/quote]

Do you mean in the Current Specials or in the Browse by Category section? In the Browse by Category, thoes are not the final images and they are all going to be the same size. For the Specials (and all products) the client is in charge up uploading photos. Since he has no skill of photo editing, all small photos will be defaulted to 80 pixels high, and will keep porportion to what ever the photo size is. Most likely, when the store is live all the photos will be the same size. But more importantly, they definately will be the same height, and even more importantly, the client is in charge of that.

[quote]Persomally when I do a shopping trolley I either leave the back ground in or out and keep to the same theme all the way through. [/quote]

I'm not sure what this means. But if it means that some areas are in white outlined tables and some are on the light green background... then I agree completely. I'll be slowly going through the site to spot every class tag that I need to update to have a boarded white background for content. With all the mods that I installed, many of the class tags are inconsistent. I still have a couple of weeks, so I'm taking my time on this update. Infact, just this morning I updated the New Products page and the Send Gift Certificate Page. This small detail stuff takes so much time and I get bored of it sooo quickly. :?

Thanks for the input. I still have more work ahead of me, so all input is appreciated.

Mark[/quote]