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Music Store Site Review Please


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Will you all visit my site and give me some feedback? Shopwsm

 

Speed

 

I have a cable modem and it seems to load quickly for me. However, http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ tells me it takes 40 seconds on a 56K. Is this true?

 

Images

 

I have an on the fly thumbnailer which has helped a heap however I am still missing ALOT of images. Is there a way that oscommerce can tell if an image is present in the images folder. If an image isnt present, can it display a default noimage without having to change the data for each and every product before I upload the data via easy populate?

 

Products

Please don't look too much into products. As I am working on those for the next two weeks.

 

Site theme

 

Design Errors? Does it flow? Does it feel like a music store? As a consumer what does it need for you to spend money?

 

Contributions

Am I missing anything especially important? Anything that will help my customers?

 

Site Security

Anyone able to access admin, customer accounts or the database? I have read many times there are loopholes that oscommerce gurus can access these easily.

 

Search Engine Friendly

 

Can't seem to make the meta tags display correctly using the meta tag contribution. For those of you search engine gurus, am I set or do I need alot of work in this area?

 

Appealing or just plain boring?

 

If you are having a bad day, please don't slam me! Constructive critiscm please!

 

Thank you for your time. I realize this is a very valuable commodity!

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It looks nice. I like the colors they flow well together, very easy on the eyes.

 

Few things i didn't like:

The 2nd search box on the footer. Why do you need 2?

Your tabs don't work correctly in firefox.

Pageload is too long for 56k.

 

Overall it seems like a well rounded site though.

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Hmm, i notice you lack the images but you addressed that. I would just like to say, it's nicely layed out... Easy to navigate and understand. You want your customers to be able to feel confortable running around on your site.

 

Nice job so far Allison

 

Robert

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Very nice site, beautiful buttons , greate color choices..all in all..... :thumbsup:

 

 

I would consider removing the osCommerce banner in the fotter...but well thats just me..... B)

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Hmm, i notice you lack the images but you addressed that. I would just like to say, it's nicely layed out... Easy to navigate and  understand. You want your customers to be able to feel confortable running around on your site.

 

Nice job so far Allison

 

Robert

 

 

I did remove the oscommerce banner. It did overwhelm the footer. Thanks for the feedback Nick.

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Robert, Thank you for your reply. I also visited your site. Wow, its super fast. Its it because you only have 1300 products so or did you do some work on the code?

 

Mind sharing your server specs?

Nice Job Allison - can you tell me what you did to put the search in the footer - looks good.

 

Ruth

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Hey Ruth,

Wow, yours loads fast too. On you on a dedicated server? Really having a time with my page loads.

 

:thumbsup: Try this in your footer.php page. I am using Advanced Search results as anyone just looking for guitar would get bogged down with over 10,000 results.

 

<td>

<table cellSpacing="0" cellPadding="0" width="100%" border="0">

<tr>

<td class="Bottom" bgcolor="#ffffff">

<table cellSpacing="0" cellPadding="0" border="0">

<form name="searchform" action="<?php echo FILENAME_ADVANCED_SEARCH_RESULT ?>" method="get">

<input type="hidden" name="search_in_title" value="1">

<?php echo tep_hide_session_id(); ?>

<tr>

<td align="right"><font face="Arial" size="2" color="#666666"><b>   

Search:</b></font></td>

<td align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2" color="#666666">

 <input type="text" name="keywords" size="16" maxlength="30">

<input type="submit" value="Search"></font></td>

</tr>

</form>

</table>

</td>

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<_< Hey Nico,

 

Wow, creepy. Howdoya fix this?

 

Per the site --

 

Currently we are not aware of any vendor-supplied patches for this issue. If you feel we are in error or are aware of more recent information, please mail us at: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>.

 

Anyone else know of security related problems? Wanna resolve the most overlooked before the store opens to the public!

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Some Speed suggestions, even though your site loads ok for me..but i am on a high speed adsl line....

 

- consider using a thumnail contrib with catching or one that creates physical thumnails in a separate folder like automatic thumbnails.

 

- consider exchanging also purchased with xsell

 

- consider using the page cache contrib

 

- consider using the c-meta tags with cache contrib

 

B)

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Some Speed suggestions, even though your site loads ok for me..but i am on a high speed adsl line....

 

- consider using a thumnail contrib with catching or one that creates physical thumnails in a separate folder like automatic thumbnails.

 

- consider exchanging also purchased with xsell

 

- consider using the page cache contrib

 

- consider using the c-meta tags with cache contrib

 

B)

 

 

Any specific mods you are referring to regarding automatic thumbnails. I have tried just about every available thumbnail contribution without success until I came across the one I am using now.

 

Page Cache is definetely in my plans.

 

Regarding meta tags, is this the one you are referring to?

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contri...earch,meta+tags

 

Thank you for your comments - every little bit helps!

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Yes thats the meta one....

 

Automatic Thumbnails

 

alt...

 

Ultra Pics

 

Not a resizer, but alows u to upload different picture sizes on a per product basis.....

 

Xsell

 

or alt.

 

Optimize also_purchased_products module

 

Hope this helps.....

 

B)

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You need to reduce the actual size of the HTML code rendered. All your images look good but the HTML source code is about 86Kb. You should either use GZIP compression, physical code compression, or my favorite -> BOTH.

 

With both implemented you should be able to bring that code size down to 25-30 Kb which will absolutely fly even on dial connections...

 

Bobby

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...

Page Cache is definetely in my plans.

 

Regarding meta tags, is this the one you are referring to?

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contri...earch,meta+tags

 

Thank you for your comments - every little bit helps!

IMO, unless you have identified a server resource drain by the MySQL server due to excessive queries (or "expensive" queries) there is no reason to install Page Cache. It should be used as a last resort and not a front line measure. Remember, when you implement Page Cache you lose the benefit of dynamically created pages. Sure it will bring the server load down dramatically (and also has built in page compression) but the dynamic elements will be cached and hence static (bestsellers, etc).

 

...just my 2 cents.

 

Bobby

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IMO, unless you have identified a server resource drain by the MySQL server due to excessive queries (or "expensive" queries) there is no reason to install Page Cache.  It should be used as a last resort and not a front line measure.  Remember, when you implement Page Cache you lose the benefit of dynamically created pages.  Sure it will bring the server load down dramatically (and also has built in page compression) but the dynamic elements will be cached and hence static (bestsellers, etc). 

 

...just my 2 cents.

 

Bobby

 

:'( Hey Bobby,

Regarding html are you referring to the main page only or should I be working on a fix elsewhere?

 

As I stated when I sent a PM regarding the SEO URLS dying on me, I wonder if my load time is all from my cheap dedicated server - shaving off the html will really make much of a difference?

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My site is slower than I want it, but yes it's only around 1300 viewable, around 2500 not viewable.... Once I finish the information on all the items, I doubt it will run as fast as it's going.

 

I just viewing your site again, and on the gv.faq.php theres

 

SUB_HEADING_TITLE

SUB_HEADING_TEXT

 

at the bottom. I'm not sure if anyone has addressed that yet...

 

Robert

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:'( Hey Bobby,

Regarding html are you referring to the main page only or should I be working on a fix elsewhere?

 

As I stated when I sent a PM regarding the SEO URLS dying on me, I wonder if my load time is all from my cheap dedicated server - shaving off the html will really make much of a difference?

I'm talking about the rendered HTML...the actual page output after all the PHP has been parsed.

 

Will it matter than much? It will hardly be noticeable on a good broadband connection however for the dial users it will mean the difference between 12 seconds and 4 seconds...and that is just to download the HTML code to START presenting the page. Add on top of that the time needed to download all the images. So, it could shave 0-10 seconds from the load time depending on connection speed.

 

With repsect to your server: I always say that you get what you pay for...and this is especially true in the world of website hosting. If you are making money online it only makes sense that you invest some money into solid hosting. Just my opinion...

 

Bobby

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Hey Ruth,

Wow, yours loads fast too. On you on a dedicated server? Really having a time with my page loads.

 

:thumbsup: Try this in your footer.php page. I am using Advanced Search results as anyone just looking for guitar would get bogged down with over 10,000 results. 

 

    <td>

    <table cellSpacing="0" cellPadding="0" width="100%" border="0">

      <tr>

        <td class="Bottom" bgcolor="#ffffff">

        <table cellSpacing="0" cellPadding="0" border="0">

          <form name="searchform" action="<?php echo FILENAME_ADVANCED_SEARCH_RESULT ?>" method="get">

            <input type="hidden" name="search_in_title" value="1">

            <?php echo tep_hide_session_id(); ?>

              <tr>

              <td align="right"><font face="Arial" size="2" color="#666666"><b>   

              Search:</b></font></td>

              <td align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2" color="#666666">

               <input type="text" name="keywords" size="16" maxlength="30">

              <input type="submit" value="Search"></font></td>

            </tr>

          </form>

        </table>

        </td>

 

Thanks for the code Allison that did the trick! To answer your question I'm on a shared ssl. I'm glad My Webpage loaded well for you I was concerned about how it is for others. Are you with high speed?

 

Thanks again,

 

Ruth

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My site is slower than I want it, but yes it's only around 1300 viewable, around 2500 not viewable.... Once I finish the information on all the items, I doubt it will run as fast as it's going.

 

I just viewing your site again, and on the gv.faq.php theres

 

SUB_HEADING_TITLE

SUB_HEADING_TEXT

 

at the bottom. I'm not sure if anyone has addressed that yet...

 

Robert

 

:thumbsup: Nope, thanks for the tip. I will certainly fix that ASAP! Anything else?

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Thanks for the code Allison that did the trick!  To answer your question I'm on a shared ssl.  I'm glad My Webpage loaded well for you I was concerned about how it is for others.  Are you with high speed? 

 

Thanks again,

 

Ruth

 

:huh: Yep, I'm on high speed. When I used the web analyzer yours displayed 30.51 for dialup, mine 40.24 so it looks like your shared server is better than my dedicated or you have much cleaner code than mine.

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