ali_razorback Posted March 16, 2007 Share Posted March 16, 2007 Howdy! After a year working on my osCommerce site on-and-off, it’s pretty much done. Scheduled release date is April 1st, huzzah! I haven’t posted much as I’ve become a bit of a whiz at narrowing down search results on the forums haha. Couldn’t have done it without you guys, so thumbs up for the community. I’d greatly value your feedback on it, you can view the shop at www.bigcheesebadges.com/index.php The main .com domain does not redirect to this page yet, but it will once everything’s 100%. Things I’m interested in hearing from you about, include the sites overall image, the loading time (I have 10meg so not that useful for testing lol), the obviousness of what the actual products are, does it make you feel like impulse-buying (the best type of buying there is!), and anything else like that. I am very much a perfectionist, so if you spot anything slightly off, do say! I’ve done a lot of hand-coding to get it how I want, and used a lot of contributions too, which I’ll list below. Fortunately I have been coding HTML for several years, I don’t think I would have coped if I hadn’t. I still don’t really get php and SQL frightens the pants off of me! All processed are tested and appear to be working, test reviews are displayed etc. Things I have done myself include: - making sure the site is accessible; people can increase the page text size in both IE and Firefox two levels above normal and everything is still in place - keeping line breaks equal and other obsessive compulsive behaviour - all product images are in line - keeping the website as a ‘sink’ – that is, only linking within itself (no ads etc) save the osCommerce bit at the bottom - spending hours with the Simple Template System, giving the site happy vibes! - I hate square edges – everything is smooooooth - bold text only for headings and links where necessary, makes it look less ‘weighty’ - moved as far from the stock osCommerce layout as possible for uniqueness - bigger more clickable infobox arrows and headings - made sure that the ‘specials’ infobox always displays ‘custom’ items that have an image of the reverse side of the product, for better understanding of what the products are. Size is always in the item title too (save them saying ‘OH but it looked so much bigger on my screen…’ to which I would reply; ‘of course it’s not the correct size, you don’t go online and buy a laptop that looks 2 inches in height because you’re babysitting Tom Thumb for the weekend do you?’ Idiots. Bitching over). Contributions used include: - STS (my favourite!) - Multiple categories per item - Ultimate SEO URLs - Custom search (the search infobox searches within item descriptions by default) - Product listing in columns - UK shipping methods - Tell a friend about site too - On the fly thumbnails (it wasn’t obvious what this did until I installed it, for those who don’t know, it shrinks your large image to the thumbnail size but retains its quality, so you only need one image per product) - Product name in breadcrumbs - Best loginbox - Auto conditions & privacy info - PayPal payment screen - Unique order number (this is awesome – order numbers are ddmmyyhhmmss, much more professional, customers can’t see that they’re only the 10th customer if you’ve only recently opened you store!) - Spiders updates - Discount coupon codes - Remove product from cart button (the nice rubbish bin instead of updating) - Preset order comments (very handy indeed) - Days (new products and the best sellers box only show items from the last X number of days) Things I am debating over: - SSL. I know it’s kinda important but might be switching hosts soon - PayPal. People are starting to realise they are crooks – am considering accepting my own online payments but can’t find a lot of useful help on osCommerce about this - Order without account? I’d love that but the contribution appears to be messed around with too much, and there aren’t instructions for installing onto a modified store - Assassinating the next Royal Mail employee who steals my post And other things that I’m sorting out at the moment are displaying the payment methods available in an infobox, the fact we ship worldwide, the fact that new designs will be added daily, my registered company number, oh and that cute icon that appears next to the URL in your browser and bookmarks, it should be sorted but isn’t showing up yet hehe. I also need to sort out HTML newsletters, but I’ve stuck to plain text for the order confirmations for ease of use. I think that’s about everything, not expecting anyone to read it all but it’s there if anyone has any questions! Of course, if anyone has any queries or comments that would be awesome. Once I get feedback from people who actually understand osCommerce then I’ll launch it on to some friends and family and see how they react to it, and how easy it is for them to use. I think that’s very important, as us lot know where everything is on osCommerce, will be interesting to see if those who are unfamiliar with it run into usability problems or anything! I’d better stop before I give you my life story. Cheers, look forward to hearing from you chaps and chapettes! Alice 20/f/uk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♥bruyndoncx Posted March 17, 2007 Share Posted March 17, 2007 I LIKE YOUR SITE ! and it is really nice to see someone having really perfected their site and then ask for a review. The only things I noticed are: - infobox headings and contents are too far apart, if they were slightly closer together it might be easier to understand that the contents in white goes with the heading on top. - given the overall boldness of the site, I found the buttons too tiny. - the contrast of the infobox header orange on yellow is not that great - it would really be nice if your infobox headings were images with some anti-aliasing to ease the eye - skip navigation would be a nice touch especially if you have accessibility in mind - strange to have a buynow button on the product listing without seeing the actual price ? Question, the related searches paragraph, is this dynamic or just added as text to the products description ? KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON I do not use the responsive bootstrap version since i coded my responsive version earlier, but i have bought every 28d of code package to support burts effort and keep this forum alive (albeit more like on life support). So if you are still here ? What are you waiting for ?! Find the most frequent unique errors to fix: grep "PHP" php_error_log.txt | sed "s/^.* PHP/PHP/g" |grep "line" |sort | uniq -c | sort -r > counterrors.txt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tastar Posted March 17, 2007 Share Posted March 17, 2007 Very nice site - everything seems to be very effectively done. I do agree with the previous poster re. the button size and the missing prices. Your search box is below the fold on my screen (1024 x 768) and you do have space in the header - to the right of the breadcrumb area - I think that people are used to seeing it at the top of the page. Your payment method info box dominates the right hand column - you could minimize the Paypal portion to make it smaller. And, your left and right columns do go on and on - and seem to be too tall. If you do some of the compression that was previously mentioned; show only a What's New link and drop the product display below it (What's New shows up on the home page anyway), etc., you could reduce the column height. And, in terms of info box placement, I would move the Further Info box above the payment methods box. I would drop the "this product was added to our shop on...." - if you have a new shop, then it advertises that fact. If you have the same items on there for a couple of years, then they look old. I just don't see the value in listing that info. Since you have such a large selection, how about offering a grab bag special - like 10 random buttons from 3 different categories, or 20 buttons from 5 - for a special price? Great site, great job. Good luck. Tony Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bkellum Posted March 17, 2007 Share Posted March 17, 2007 Nice site Alice! Just curious, what version of STS did you use and are you using the infobox template features within STS? Also, is On the fly thumbnails the only image contribution that you used on your site? Thanks and good luck with your buttons! -Bill Kellum Bill Kellum Sounds Good Productions STS Tutorials & more: STSv4.6, STS Add-ons (STS Power Pack), STS V4 Forum STS Forum FREE TEMPLATE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ali_razorback Posted March 18, 2007 Author Share Posted March 18, 2007 Hey folks, thanks for all the valuble feedback, it's really helpful to get an outsider's opinion! Very glad that you've all said you like it for a start haha. Carine - I initially removed the prices as it looked very samey, they were all the same price so either I should put the prices back in above the 'Buy Now' button (which I'm gonna change to 'Add To Cart' - 'Buy Now' scares me when I'm shopping!) or perhaps I could advertise more that they are all the same price of 99p. Any thoughts on that? I agree with you about the heading spacing in relation to their info boxes, i'll have a play and see if it looks better with them closer together, or moving the separate infoboxes further apart. What is 'skip navigation'? The 'related searches' paragraph in the descriptions isn't dynamic yet, I will probably go ahead and make the words clickable, but for the time being they're just there so that when the quick search is used, similar products show too rather than just ones with the search word in the title. Tony - Yeah I'll have a fiddle with the buttons etc, I actually just edited some that came with a contribution but perhaps I'll do some nicer round ones! You're right about the Quick Search, I'll have a re-think of the top banner. I can't give up any of the breadcrumb space as some titles are rather long and take up all the space haha. I'll get out a piece of paper (old-skool) and see how one could fit in. I'd probably have that in addition to the search infobox. I'll explain the length of the columns, I know they're long but for a good reason! I currently have over 700 designs and so I really want a lot of items per page in the categories, otherwise people see how many pages there are and think 'ugh I can't be bothered!' - well I do anyway hehe. With a lot of products (it's set at 30 right now - 10 rows, 3 a line) this makes the page very long and the sides look quite empty. The infoboxes are really just 'padding', with the important ones like 'shopping cart' and 'categories' at the top. I recently put in that payment info stuff just to even out the columns! I usually expect 'Further Info' to be at the bottom, don't you? I'm gonna watch some friends and family using the site and see if they can find that sort of stuff ok. I've got a lot to think about! Will definitely get rid of the 'product added on' text - totally forgot about that, thanks! Cheers for the ideas on grab bags too. Bill - The STS I used was v 4.1. There might be newer ones by now, as I installed that almost a year ago! I'm not using individual page or infobox templates, just one template for the pages and one template for the infoboxes. Instead of using different ones for the right and left hand columns, I just used transparent tables and corner images, allowing me to change the background colour keeping it looking right! If you'd like a screenshot of what the page template looked like then let me know hehe. And yes On the Fly Thumbnails was the only actual contribution used for the images - I tried some others like small/medium/large images etc but it all got a bit silly. In the end I just removed the 'enlarge' link and all that by hand. I noticed that no one has mentioned page loading times or that it wasn't obvious what the products I'm selling are, so that must be good! :) I'm glad that all the things you've mentioned are little tweaks rather than big problems that might hinder sales - looks like it's on target for being released! Can't wait haha. I think I'm gonna go and play with some bigger and nicer button designs now :D Cheers again! Alice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♥bruyndoncx Posted March 18, 2007 Share Posted March 18, 2007 Here's a little background on skip navigation, particularly important if you have a rather long left column: http://www.jimthatcher.com/webcourse4.htm KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON I do not use the responsive bootstrap version since i coded my responsive version earlier, but i have bought every 28d of code package to support burts effort and keep this forum alive (albeit more like on life support). So if you are still here ? What are you waiting for ?! Find the most frequent unique errors to fix: grep "PHP" php_error_log.txt | sed "s/^.* PHP/PHP/g" |grep "line" |sort | uniq -c | sort -r > counterrors.txt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ali_razorback Posted March 18, 2007 Author Share Posted March 18, 2007 Hey, thanks for the link, looks interesting, I'll have a good read of that when I'm a bit more awake! I'm currently trying to sort out the listings - you said "strange to have a buynow button on the product listing without seeing the actual price?" - but I can't seem to find where to edit that info! I changed it ages ago and can't for the life of me find it. Any ideas where that might be found? All your help and suggestions are really appreciated, thanks very much again! Alice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♥bruyndoncx Posted March 18, 2007 Share Posted March 18, 2007 Hey, thanks for the link, looks interesting, I'll have a good read of that when I'm a bit more awake! I'm currently trying to sort out the listings - you said "strange to have a buynow button on the product listing without seeing the actual price?" - but I can't seem to find where to edit that info! I changed it ages ago and can't for the life of me find it. Any ideas where that might be found? All your help and suggestions are really appreciated, thanks very much again! Alice you iether have it coded in includes/modules/product_listing.php or product_listing_col.php or disabled in the configuration/product listing section. KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON I do not use the responsive bootstrap version since i coded my responsive version earlier, but i have bought every 28d of code package to support burts effort and keep this forum alive (albeit more like on life support). So if you are still here ? What are you waiting for ?! Find the most frequent unique errors to fix: grep "PHP" php_error_log.txt | sed "s/^.* PHP/PHP/g" |grep "line" |sort | uniq -c | sort -r > counterrors.txt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chooch Posted March 21, 2007 Share Posted March 21, 2007 It's a very nice site that is very much in your face. Wow, what a powerful yellow punch in the face :lol: Only for colour contrast sake, I think the white infobox background should be changed to be a little more pale (maybe just a hint of colour) I know that will mean changing the paypal infobox image and of course all images because they all have white backgrounds so you probably won't but it would make it look good - not that it doesn't now... I think it'll look better. Maybe the logo area can have more info put in it somewhere - it seems a bit empty. And the rollover images to the header right could do with a better text/font. Other than that, the only other thing that you can't really do much about is the length of the page when pages like product info and login are clicked - there is a vast emptiness in the middle alongside two huge columns full of colour. Good Luck 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 More sharing options...
ali_razorback Posted March 22, 2007 Author Share Posted March 22, 2007 Carine - thanks for that, I had completely forgotten that there was a 'Product Listing' section under 'Configuration' - that's all sorted now! I edited the distance between the price and the item title in includes/modules/product_listing_col.php as well Aleem - thanks for your feedback! I'm glad that it's in your face haha :P I know what you mean about havign a hint of colour rather than white, I originally wanted this, but unfortunately that would mean I'd have to re-do 700+ item images because of their background! They would be better as transparent, but I couldn't use gif images because the image quality would go down so much. And the product image is the most important thing on the whole site. I'm definitely going to do something about the heading, a search box was suggested earlier and that would do nicely! Maybe I'll put a slogan up there or something as well. I'll reconsider the rollover image font but you gotta love Spongebob! :P The length as far as I can see will have to stay, I know what you mean about it being rather long and shows big gaps on certain pages, but I don't want a billion 'next' pages for customers who are browsing, trying to fit as many items on per page as possible without it lookign silly! Have just cut it down from 30 to 21 due to the extra space that the price takes up. Still a few more fiddly things to do but looks like everything is on target for release! Thanks again for everyone's help. Oooh, what are people's opinions on FavIcons? (the little picture next to your web URL). So many possibilities, spent hours just thinking of what to do! Transparancies are a must in my opinion, unless you want just a square image. I've noticed that these don't show in IE7?! Lame. I'll stick to Firefox haha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 24, 2007 Share Posted March 24, 2007 Your site definitely stands out from the crowd. I would suggest that you change the info box at the bottom from all caps to mixed case. It's really hard to read all caps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ali_razorback Posted March 26, 2007 Author Share Posted March 26, 2007 Sarah, you mean the footer? I'd not thought of that before! It's mainly there for keywords, and I thought it looked quite neat & tidy in capitals (all letters are the same height) but I'll have a try changing it and see what it looks like! I've just installed Dynamenu which seems to be working nicely, makes it a bit easier to navigate etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 27, 2007 Share Posted March 27, 2007 i like your site too. by the way , alice , how do you add the picture ( The small cheese pic ) next to the URL ? It is nice. I want to add a pic too. appreciate if you may help. regards jason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonquil Posted March 27, 2007 Share Posted March 27, 2007 Outstanding :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: It's all just ones and zeros.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ali_razorback Posted March 28, 2007 Author Share Posted March 28, 2007 Hi guys, thanks for the compliments! :) Jason, the image/icon next to the URL is called a 'favicon'. If you're using STS, then all you need to do is put this bit of code just under the <head> tag in your .html STS template: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.yoursite.com/images/favicon.ico" /> So the very top of your .html file might look like this: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html $htmlparams> <head> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.yoursite.com/images/favicon.ico" /> <!--$headcontent--> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css"> <title>Untitled Document</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> If you don't use STS, you might need to put it in application_top.php? I'm not 100% sure, you might have to search the forums or experiment - but do post your findings here! You'll need an image that you want to use and the convert it into a .ico file, you can do that at this site here: http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ Create an image (16x16 pixels), upload it with this site and it will convert it to .ico - then upload it to www.yoursite.com/images/ They look best using transparant gifs, otherwise you get a square white border which doesn't look too good. I used the G.I.M.P. (GNU Image Manipulation Program), it takes some getting used to but I found it ideal for making a transparent icon! http://www.gimp.org/ Hope this helps ^_^ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 28, 2007 Share Posted March 28, 2007 Hi guys, thanks for the compliments! :) Jason, the image/icon next to the URL is called a 'favicon'. If you're using STS, then all you need to do is put this bit of code just under the <head> tag in your .html STS template: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.yoursite.com/images/favicon.ico" /> So the very top of your .html file might look like this: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html $htmlparams> <head> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.yoursite.com/images/favicon.ico" /> <!--$headcontent--> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css"> <title>Untitled Document</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> If you don't use STS, you might need to put it in application_top.php? I'm not 100% sure, you might have to search the forums or experiment - but do post your findings here! You'll need an image that you want to use and the convert it into a .ico file, you can do that at this site here: http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ Create an image (16x16 pixels), upload it with this site and it will convert it to .ico - then upload it to www.yoursite.com/images/ They look best using transparant gifs, otherwise you get a square white border which doesn't look too good. I used the G.I.M.P. (GNU Image Manipulation Program), it takes some getting used to but I found it ideal for making a transparent icon! http://www.gimp.org/ Hope this helps ^_^ Thanks , Alice. I'm using STS ,too. I've followed you advice and created my favorites icon. It looks great. Thanks for your help !! Regards jason :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ragtime27 Posted July 22, 2007 Share Posted July 22, 2007 Thanks , Alice. I'm using STS ,too. I've followed you advice and created my favorites icon. It looks great. Thanks for your help !! Regards jason :) hi guys newbie needs help i'm about to order a template+logo unique and customised,good designer and reasonable price. the problem is he only does them in plain html template,no knowledge to integrate it into osc . as far as i understood,i have 2 options if i'm not wrong 1)use sts,the question is it just adding a codes when i get my html template(not much knowledge on html? or basic copy paste converter? any link to latest sts version(not beta) to download? in term of browsing is it any slower than php or faster? the second option is if i'm right 2)use php,as far as i read it's more difficult i looked in google that you can convert html to php with single button is it true? any future files to upload do i need to convert them to php? i really appreciate your help. many thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pamelasplayroom Posted July 23, 2007 Share Posted July 23, 2007 hi there. i must say ........ NICE SITE!!......it really stands out. im working on my own site at the moment and was wondering how long it took you to do yours. i have spent about a week (editing time) on mine so far, and a lot of that was working out what i wanted it to do. also, i noticed that you have changed (added) text to the contact us page, and was wondering what files you edited and what code you used to do it. im not using a template system, just modifying the original files and manually adding the mods. also, as im here, do you do other sizes of badge, and i will be in contact about a wholesale deal on some custom badges in the near future. do you mind if i ask about how you did some other things on your site? all the best, and keep up the good work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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