Jump to content
  • Checkout
  • Login
  • Get in touch

osCommerce

The e-commerce.

Revamped Osc Site


Gazonice

Recommended Posts

Hi,

 

I spent about a month re designing the site. I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions.

 

It's not based on a template, all the code I have done myself (which is why it took me over a month to do!)

 

http://www.bearlythere.co.uk/

 

Thank you.

 

Garry

 

How did you get the front page the way you did with the products image along with the buy now buttons?

 

Thanks

 

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How did you get the front page the way you did with the products image along with the buy now buttons?

 

Thanks

 

Chris

 

Hi,

 

I used a copy of the Product Listing in Columns contribution:

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contri...ch,new+products

 

I then created a table in Dreamweaver and carefully picked out the code from the contribution and pasted it into my table.

 

The buy now button was improvised from the 'Buy it now for new products contribution':

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contri.../search,buy+now

 

and merged with the 'Disable Add to cart button if stock 0 or price 0 and display Out Stock contribution':

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contri.../search,buy+now

 

I also added the 'Products_Short_Descriptions_V1' into a cell to achieve the look I wanted:

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contri...scription+short

 

Once the table was finished I placed the code into the 'New_products' module.

 

It took a while but once I figured out what each bit of code did it got easier and I was pleased with the result.

 

I spent many hours pasting and undoing till I got it to work - I'm not really a PHP programmer!

 

Garry.

Garry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice site you have done some great work here.

I wondered about a couple of things.

 

Do you customers really care about what manufacture makes the bears?

 

Your new stock graphic in the middle of the shop to me takes up too much of your most valuable real estate. I would put this banner below the products. Are not the products your most important thing?

Backup before making changes. Backup before making changes! Backup before making changes!!

 

You did do a backup? eh?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Great looking site - so nice that it looks like a template. But, most of the templates that I've seen don't do a very effective job. Your site seems to make very efficient use of space and fits the type of product that you are selling.

 

I don't know what the date added stuff does to the site. After a while, it will make stuff that hasn't sold look old - like why has this item been hanging around for over a year without selling. Or, wow, why is everything so new - did these guys just go into business yesterday? I just don't see a need for it and in my opinion, it shouldn't be there.

 

Your descriptions seem to be sparse on some details, and, I think, should always include the size of the item. I noticed one bear was described as 14 inches long. But, I didn't find any indication of size on a few of the other items that I checked. That is, unless people know the size of things like Slimmy Slammers...

 

Otherwise, it's a great web site - you have a great sense of design and balance. And, from the way that you described your development process, a lot of perseverance. And, no one can accuse you of being stock osCommerce. Excellent job.

 

tony

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you customers really care about what manufacture makes the bears?

For this site, filtering by Manufacturer was very important because some serious collectors will only look for specific makes of Bear. I had toyed with the idea of removing this feature of Osc. but decided to leave it in.

 

Your new stock graphic in the middle of the shop to me takes up too much of your most valuable real estate. I would put this banner below the products. Are not the products your most important thing?

The central banner has the ability to link to a specific product that we choose. Periodically we want to run promotions on a product and this banner can be used to catch the visitors eye and take them straight to the promoted item.

 

I don't know what the date added stuff does to the site.

I thought about what you had written on this and I agree with you, you make a very good point - I have removed this from the product_info page.

 

Maybe change the directory of the card images (at the bottom) from adverts to something else. Im running AdMuncher and it looks like this

[Munched] [Munched] [Munched] [Munched] [Munched] [Munched] [Munched]

I didn't realise the store folder of the images could affect how they are treated by blockers - thanks for that very useful piece of information!

 

Your descriptions seem to be sparse on some details, and, I think, should always include the size of the item.

You're quite right, we know the descriptions need to be more comprehensive and consistent in their details - initially we wanted to just get the stock from the old site onto the new one - now we intend to go through the items and add more detail - thanks for that observation.

 

Garry

Garry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Gary

 

Nice site well done !

 

I have to use a template as I dont have your skills !

 

Tell me how did you remove/supress the Product ID/Numbers ?

 

I have been trying to do this and although they are set at ZERO in Admin they still show !

 

I guess this needs alteration to products_info.php but I am not sure ?

 

Well done again

 

Regards

 

Tom

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tell me how did you remove/supress the Product ID/Numbers ?

I recall this wasn't as easy as it looked.

 

On product_info.php ....

 

The line: <?php echo $products_name; ?> actually gets it data from an if / else routine around line 83:

 

	if (tep_not_null($product_info['products_model'])) {
  $products_name = $product_info['products_name'] . '<br><span class="smallText">[' . $product_info['products_model'] . ']</span>';
} else {
  $products_name = $product_info['products_name'];
}

 

All I did was remove the reference to the model so it looked like this:

 

$products_name = $product_info['products_name'];

 

Garry

Garry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I recall this wasn't as easy as it looked.

 

On product_info.php ....

 

The line: <?php echo $products_name; ?> actually gets it data from an if / else routine around line 83:

 

	if (tep_not_null($product_info['products_model'])) {
  $products_name = $product_info['products_name'] . '<br><span class="smallText">[' . $product_info['products_model'] . ']</span>';
} else {
  $products_name = $product_info['products_name'];
}

 

All I did was remove the reference to the model so it looked like this:

 

$products_name = $product_info['products_name'];

 

Garry

 

Hi Garry

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

I have tried this but still the numbers appear !

 

http://usalakeballs.eu/index.php

 

The numbers are the 2 digits below the Product Description.

 

I must admit this is pretty new to me but I did alter the code as you suggested

but it didnt work for me :

 

if

(tep_not_null($product_info['products_model'

])) {

$products_name =

$product_info['products_name'] . '<br><span class="smallText">[' .

$product_info['products_model'] . ']</span>';

} else {

$products_name = $product_info['products_name'];

}

 

Sorry to be a pest !

 

Your views would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

Tom

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

 

Replacing that whole code snippet of yours:

 

if 
(tep_not_null($product_info['products_model'
])) {
$products_name = 
$product_info['products_name'] . '<br><span class="smallText">[' . 
$product_info['products_model'] . ']</span>';
} else {
$products_name = $product_info['products_name'];
}

 

with

 

$products_name = $product_info['products_name'];

 

should work but, a simplified change might be to alter your code to:

 

if 
(tep_not_null($product_info['products_model'
])) {
$products_name = $product_info['products_name'];
} else {
$products_name = $product_info['products_name'];
}

 

This should force the name only even if there is a model number present.

 

Garry

Garry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

 

Replacing that whole code snippet of yours:

 

if 
(tep_not_null($product_info['products_model'
])) {
$products_name = 
$product_info['products_name'] . '<br><span class="smallText">[' . 
$product_info['products_model'] . ']</span>';
} else {
$products_name = $product_info['products_name'];
}

 

with

 

$products_name = $product_info['products_name'];

 

should work but, a simplified change might be to alter your code to:

 

if 
(tep_not_null($product_info['products_model'
])) {
$products_name = $product_info['products_name'];
} else {
$products_name = $product_info['products_name'];
}

 

This should force the name only even if there is a model number present.

 

Garry

 

 

Hi Garry

 

Thanks but it still wont shift those two digits !!

 

I am lost really !

 

I appreciate your time and help.

 

Thanks very much indeed.

 

Best regards

 

Tom

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Garry

 

Thanks but it still wont shift those two digits !!

 

I am lost really !

 

I appreciate your time and help.

 

Thanks very much indeed.

 

Best regards

 

Tom

 

Hi,

 

If you are referring to the "Item# 123" on your product_info pages - it looks like it may be hard coded somewhere because it's the same for each product you have rather than actually pulling out the item model number from the database.

 

Garry

Garry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

 

If you are referring to the "Item# 123" on your product_info pages - it looks like it may be hard coded somewhere because it's the same for each product you have rather than actually pulling out the item model number from the database.

 

Garry

 

 

Hi Garry

 

Thats not what I am referring to - thats is a problem as well !

 

http://usalakeballs.eu/index.php?cPath=1_16

 

If you look at this page I am referring to the 2 digit number "41-42 etc" that is jsut below the description.

 

Thanks again

 

Regards

 

Tom

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't realise the store folder of the images could affect how they are treated by blockers - thanks for that very useful piece of information!

 

Garry

 

No problem! Just noticed some other images arent displaying with AdMuncher either. It would appear that the directory 'banner' also is regarded as adverts because the logo, main banner and the new stock banner dont display!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

 

I spent about a month re designing the site. I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions.

 

It's not based on a template, all the code I have done myself (which is why it took me over a month to do!)

 

http://www.bearlythere.co.uk/

 

Thank you.

 

Garry

 

Hi,

 

I spent about a month re designing the site. I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions.

 

It's not based on a template, all the code I have done myself (which is why it took me over a month to do!)

 

http://www.bearlythere.co.uk/

 

Thank you.

 

Garry

 

Hi Garry,

 

Very nice site! Looks very professional and like someone said, looks like a pro template. Can I ask how you achieved a couple of stuff on the site?

 

1. How did you manage to add the extra links like 'home' into the header bar?

 

2. I like the way you displayed the search results. Did you use a contribution to get the grey lines seperating the products?

 

Thanks

 

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It would appear that the directory 'banner' also is regarded as adverts because the logo, main banner and the new stock banner dont display!

The thought had occurred, but I was hoping to get away with that one - I've changed the store folder of those images now and updated the 31 links around the cart but I find global 'search and replace' very scary! If anyone spots anything broken please let me know. Thanks for the tip!

 

How did you manage to add the extra links like 'home' into the header bar?

Those links are tiny images with text on them, they simply replaced the stock Osc. images top right of the header, apart from 'Home' which replaced what was the Oscommerce logo.

 

I like the way you displayed the search results. Did you use a contribution to get the grey lines seperating the products?

The vertical line is an image 3px wide. The horizontal line is an HTML horizontal Line <hr>. Their display is governed by counting the number of the column being displayed:

For Vertical: if column = 1 then the text includes the code to display a table column with the graphic in, then insert another table column for the next product ($column ++;).

For Horizontal: if column > 2, then insert an extra table row, merge the cells (colspan) and put a <hr> in it, before resetting the column count back to zero ($column = 0;).

 

Here's the code:

 

	$column ++;

if ($column == 1) {		
$list_box_contents[$row][$column] = array('text' => '<img src="images/sections/listing_table_divider.gif"  width=3 height=156 >');	
$column ++;
}	

if ($column > 2) {	
$row ++;	
$list_box_contents[$row] = array('align' => 'center',
									   'params' => 'colspan="3" valign="top"',
									   'text' => '<hr width="100%" size="1" noshade color="#CCCCCC">');	
$column = 0;
$row ++;
}

I used a similar method for the new products module.

 

Garry

Garry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

very good site, hard to believe it is not a template - full credit to you.

 

the layout is simple and the site is easy to navigate. i think you can add detailed descriptions on the product info pages but the site is really nice.

 

please explain how you managed to get the create account fields seperated with curved borders like that - it looks really nice and so customer friendly!

Upon receiving fixes and advice, too many people don't bother to post updates informing the forum of how it went. Until of course they need help again on other issues and they come running back!

 

Why receive the information you require in good faith for free, only to then have the attitude to ignore the people who gave it to you?

 

There's no harm in saying, 'Thanks, it worked'. On the contrary, it creates a better atmosphere.

 

CHOOCH

Link to comment
Share on other sites

please explain how you managed to get the create account fields separated with curved borders like that

Hi,

 

To get that effect I simply created a table in Dreamweaver with 3 images: top, background and bottom (I didn't observe any of the Oscommerce conventions I'm afraid - it's hard coded). I then cut each section of create_account.php out and pasted it into the table, then copied it all back into create_account. I did this section by section.

 

I repeated this with the login page and various pages in the 'My Account' section.

 

I think forms look easier and less intimidating to fill in when they are broken down into sections rather than a list of questions to answer.

 

Garry

Garry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think forms look easier and less intimidating to fill in when they are broken down into sections rather than a list of questions to answer.

precisely, that's exactly what i thought..... again, well done.

Upon receiving fixes and advice, too many people don't bother to post updates informing the forum of how it went. Until of course they need help again on other issues and they come running back!

 

Why receive the information you require in good faith for free, only to then have the attitude to ignore the people who gave it to you?

 

There's no harm in saying, 'Thanks, it worked'. On the contrary, it creates a better atmosphere.

 

CHOOCH

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
Hi,

 

I spent about a month re designing the site. I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions.

 

It's not based on a template, all the code I have done myself (which is why it took me over a month to do!)

 

http://www.bearlythere.co.uk/

 

Thank you.

 

Garry

 

Hi Gary,

 

Thanks for posting such a great looking shop. This shows others what's possible with oscommerce. I got a question about your category box.

 

1) How did you create the horizontal line between each product?? I really like that and I have seen it before but i can't seem to get the same effect.

2) I also would like to know if it's possible to let the background of the product name light up, eachtime somebody hoveres over the products.

 

Hope you can help me out.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Grtz

DTE

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...