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Photography Website using OSC


khenn

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After about a month and a half tweaking and enhancing OSC, my website is finally up and running.

 

Blue Mountain Outdoors Photography - www.bmophoto.com

 

Please take a look at the site and let me know what you think. Here are a few features that you might find interesting, especially if you are a photographer trying to use OSC.

 

- Password protected categories so only my clients (or those they give the password too) can see their images.

 

- Since this is a photography only website, I obviously sell photos. But as you know if you have ever tried to add multiple products into OSC, there is no easy way to do it. Well I implemented some code similar to that of Coppermine Photo Gallery to allow batch upload of images/products. I create categories and a directory structure to match on the server. For instance, If I create a category called Weddings and a subcategory of that called Wedding1, then on the server file system, I create an images/weddings/wedding1 subdirectory and FTP my images for that wedding into the directory. I drill to the Wedding1 category on the admin side, and then click on a Batch Add Products button that I added. At this point, it goes out to the server and reads all of the images from the images/weddings/wedding1 directory and builds a page with all of the images and checkboxes beside each image. By default the checkboxes are checked unless the image has already been added to the database previously. At the bottom is a list of checkboxes for all of the option values that I want to be associated with each image/product. So, if I want to sell those images as 4x6, 5x7 and 8x10, I check off those options (which come from the product attributes page), and then I click the Insert button. At this point, all of the checked images are stored into the database as products, and the selected option value attributes are associated with each product/image. I've uploaded 150 images into OCS as new products in about 5 seconds using this method!

 

- A filmstrip that is on the product_info page to view other images in that category. To see this in action, click on the Weddings gallery from the homepage, and then click on one of the images to go to the product_info page. The filmstrip will be displayed below the image. Mouseover the arrows to scroll left or right, or click on a thumbnail to view that image.

 

- The shopping cart is sorted and grouped so that when a customer adds a picture to their cart multiple times, it will only be displayed once. For instance if I add an image to the cart with 4 - 4x6s and 2 - 5x7s, it will display the thumbnail in the cart, and then beside it, it will list the 4x6 and 5x7 options with their quantities in the text fields. You can try this out if you go to Weddings>>Albums and add some album options to the cart. I have also modified my customer invoices and order history to display in this same manner.

 

Please give me some feedback as to what you like/dislike.

 

Thank You

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Hello

 

You need to center the site, but other than that it looks good, it is still stock so not a great deal to comment on, but i like the colours and the site loads fast and the images look good.

 

I could not see a price list, so that could be a little off putting, but i could have missed it.

 

Good Luck

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Hello

 

You need to center the site, but other than that it looks good, it is still stock so not a great deal to comment on, but i like the colours and the site loads fast and the images look good.

 

I could not see a price list, so that could be a little off putting, but i could have missed it.

 

Good Luck

 

Thanks for the comments. I went back and forth on the centered/non-centered issue several times and tried it both ways. Personally, I thought it looked better on the left. When I centered it, it looked like it was just out floating in the middle of space. Maybe that's because of the black background. We'll see what others have to say.

 

As for "still stock", you're right but I think it makes the site clean and simple.

 

You're right about a price list too. I do not have one listed, and I went back and forth on this issue too. I looked at a bunch of other photogs sites and it's about a 50/50 split. Some show prices, some don't. I figure that if a potential customer is really serious, they will contact us for pricing or to set up a consultation.

 

What do others of you think about displaying pricing information?

 

David, thanks for your comments, I will consider them...

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  • 4 weeks later...

This is very interesting. I have been looking for an event photography store for a while and wanted to try it first with oscommerce. The site looks really good!

 

Can you explain more about how you enhanced your store. I am looking to do the same thing.

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Excellent site design, I think it looks nice on the left side too.

Only thing I noticed was the banner graphic up top has a single pixel vertical grey line on its border, which is barely visible. It was probably created when you resized your image in photoshop, it does that usually. All you have to do to fix that is just do select all, edit-> stroke 1px black inside. Should take care of that.

Good luck to ya!

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Excellent site design, I think it looks nice on the left side too.

Only thing I noticed was the banner graphic up top has a single pixel vertical grey line on its border, which is barely visible. It was probably created when you resized your image in photoshop, it does that usually. All you have to do to fix that is just do select all, edit-> stroke 1px black inside. Should take care of that.

Good luck to ya!

 

Thanks, I never noticed the border. I fixed it.

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Kris,

 

Site looks great. I want to get my products set up like that, so there are 3 or 4 in a row instead of only one product per row. Is there a tutorial you would recommend to do that?

 

Thanks

 

Thanks,

 

There is a contribution that will allow the site admin to choose the original list style layout, or the layout like I'm using with columns.

 

See: osC-ProductListingSelect for MS2

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This is very interesting. I have been looking for an event photography store for a while and wanted to try it first with oscommerce. The site looks really good!

 

Can you explain more about how you enhanced your store. I am looking to do the same thing.

 

There's not much more to say besides what I said in my original post. I added a few contributions in addition to the changes I made.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi Kris,

 

This is very close to what I need for my store as well. So far, I've just rolled my own, but I don't have all the login/payment/db features that osCommerce would provide. Sounds like good work! However, I can't find your contribs! Apparently, you can't search by username, and they don't list usernames by the contribs. Can you provide links?

 

Thanks!

mike

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  • 11 months later...

Nice site-

 

One suggestion s that you use the Disable right click to protect your pictures.

 

Can you post links to your photo contribution, and what you use for gallery login.

Jeff

 

Contributions I use: DynaMenus - Light Box - Best Sellers Content Box - Related Products 3.2 - UPS XML - Secure Admin Login - Vendor Locator - Graphical Borders.

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  • 1 year later...
There's not much more to say besides what I said in my original post. I added a few contributions in addition to the changes I made.

 

 

Hi Khenn,

 

Great site, I am attempting to create a photography site at the moment. Any chance you could add the password protected categories as a contribution? Or even point me in the right direction?

 

Many thanks,

Richard

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It looks great. I like the black, and it looks fine on the left. The header is beautiful.

 

Your "Seniors" category has pics of people who aren't senior... That baby in the 3013bw pic is the cutest kid ever!

 

Very nice site, clean and simple, which shows off the photos even better.

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this is an OLD OLD OLD post!

A great place for newbies to start

Road Map to oscommerce File Structure

DO NOT PM ME FOR HELP. My time is valuable, unless i ask you to PM me, please dont. You will get better help if you post publicly. I am not as good at this as you think anyways!

 

HOWEVER, you can visit my blog (go to my profile to see it) and post a question there, i will find time to get back and answer you

 

Proud Memeber of the CODE BREAKERS CLUB!!

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  • 1 year later...

After about a month and a half tweaking and enhancing OSC, my website is finally up and running.

 

Blue Mountain Outdoors Photography - www.bmophoto.com

 

Please take a look at the site and let me know what you think. Here are a few features that you might find interesting, especially if you are a photographer trying to use OSC.

 

- Password protected categories so only my clients (or those they give the password too) can see their images.

 

- Since this is a photography only website, I obviously sell photos. But as you know if you have ever tried to add multiple products into OSC, there is no easy way to do it. Well I implemented some code similar to that of Coppermine Photo Gallery to allow batch upload of images/products. I create categories and a directory structure to match on the server. For instance, If I create a category called Weddings and a subcategory of that called Wedding1, then on the server file system, I create an images/weddings/wedding1 subdirectory and FTP my images for that wedding into the directory. I drill to the Wedding1 category on the admin side, and then click on a Batch Add Products button that I added. At this point, it goes out to the server and reads all of the images from the images/weddings/wedding1 directory and builds a page with all of the images and checkboxes beside each image. By default the checkboxes are checked unless the image has already been added to the database previously. At the bottom is a list of checkboxes for all of the option values that I want to be associated with each image/product. So, if I want to sell those images as 4x6, 5x7 and 8x10, I check off those options (which come from the product attributes page), and then I click the Insert button. At this point, all of the checked images are stored into the database as products, and the selected option value attributes are associated with each product/image. I've uploaded 150 images into OCS as new products in about 5 seconds using this method!

 

- A filmstrip that is on the product_info page to view other images in that category. To see this in action, click on the Weddings gallery from the homepage, and then click on one of the images to go to the product_info page. The filmstrip will be displayed below the image. Mouseover the arrows to scroll left or right, or click on a thumbnail to view that image.

 

- The shopping cart is sorted and grouped so that when a customer adds a picture to their cart multiple times, it will only be displayed once. For instance if I add an image to the cart with 4 - 4x6s and 2 - 5x7s, it will display the thumbnail in the cart, and then beside it, it will list the 4x6 and 5x7 options with their quantities in the text fields. You can try this out if you go to Weddings>>Albums and add some album options to the cart. I have also modified my customer invoices and order history to display in this same manner.

 

Please give me some feedback as to what you like/dislike.

 

Thank You

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