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The Best Gifts Online


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Hi all,

 

6 weeks ago I hadn't even heard of osCommerce.

 

Today I've got a shiny new store with nearly 2,000 of my products available online :D

 

Well I nearly have anyways... It'll be going fully live in around a week when I've got my new IP and SSL sorted - but it's still a live store so if you order anything you'll have to pay for it and we'll deliver it :)

 

I've still got two images left to make but that's it.

 

So please take a look and tell me what you think:

 

http://www.the-best-gifts-online.com/index.php

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p.s. I will be changing the home page text before going live. I've also had problems with the two christmas images on the home page in that they link to individual product/category but the session ID is not maintained, so anything added to the cart previously is cleared and the user is logged out.

 

Anyone know how I'd do it as a tep_link for the individual product/category?

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p.p.s. I will also be removing the eBooks and software sections since I have not been able to find a way to give free shipping for these individual downloadable products.

 

I use table rate shipping for everything physical but it is price based rather than weight so I can't set it to zero.

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Not bad

 

A few thing I noticed.

 

1) It has horizontal scroll bars in 800x600 (yes there are people who still use it . . .)

2) In your made_of page, you have a typo: Just chooose from the following links

 

3) on the same page, you have run together the word of some of your materials

 

Alabastrite BoneChina Porcelain

JadePorcelain Stoneware Patchwork

CubicZircon Diamond Gold

Gemstones Pearl SterlingSilver

HongTze FrostedAcrylic Gypsum

Dolomite Plumb

 

4) On your shipping page, you have the statement "At this time we can only ship to the 48 contiguous states of the USA - Sorry if you live outside of these states."

 

Is your average Joe Q Public going to know what contiguous means? Perhaps continental might be a better word.

 

5) Privacy Policy. At the bottom, you have:

 

Questions regarding our Conditions of Usage, Privacy Policy, or other policy related material can be directed to our support staff by clicking on the "Contact Us" link in the side menu. Or you can email us at: [email protected] or by calling us toll free on 1 866 209 7421.

 

I would make all of the text I have emboldened link to the appropriate pages.

 

6) In Conditions you have:

 

Privacy

 

Please review our Privacy Notice, which also governs your visit to TBGO, to understand our practices.

 

Make this a link also.

 

 

These are all just little nitpicks though - overall it looks good.

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Thanks for the extensive review and proof reading Julie :)

 

1) Eewww the dreaded horizontal scroll bar... I make all of my sites to fit 800x600 but usually with a frameset that keeps them within this size... I've now changed my containing table to 790 wide hopefully that will take care of the scroll bar :)

 

2) Thanks :)

 

3) Oops - I made that page early on, before I had discovered about definitions in english.php so at the time I thought I couldn't have spaces in there... Thanks for finding it 'cos I'd completely forgotten :)

 

4) Cool - I'll change it to continental :)

 

5 & 6) Good idea... I'll change all of them to links :)

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All changes made :)

 

And as an added bonus for me, while I was adding the links I had a little brainwave on how to solve my problem of creating tep_link's to maintain the session ID with my christmas images on the front page which had been bugging me for a couple of weeks :D

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Ouch - thanks Raijen.

 

I'm toying with the idea of losing the what's new, best sellers and reviews infoboxes altogether and moving the shopping cart to the left eliminating the need for the right column.

 

Anyone got any opinions on that?

 

Alternatively I may just make the infoboxes a little narrower.

 

I'm also considering losing the about us infobox and putting the links from it across the bottom.

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Julie's a chick what more do you want?

 

But yeah she took care of pretty much every thing :P

 

But I say get a new 'image not currently available'

Your one just seems weird and dosent fit in the rest of the store too much ae

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For 800 x 600 I've made box widths smaller... Can anyone check that for me please? (My laptop won't go below 1024 x 768 - with favored res at 1600 x 1200).

 

Weird sounds a good description Xplod :P It's meant to look like a square has been cut out of the page and the text is beneath it... guess it didn't work too well then... I'll try something else later... now I'm going out to shoot some people (actually I'm staying in and playing Counter-Strike).

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I tried removing the infoboxes from the right hand side but it just didn't look right and would really have called for a complete redesign - which it's much too late a stage to look at now...

 

So instead I've resized all of my category and header images and a couple of tables... hopefully now everything fits for 800x600?

 

I think I'm going to change the layout of the front page a little next - nothing too drastic though.

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Just picking up on something you mentioned at the start of this thread tbgo about your eBooks. It isn't something silly like you forgot to enable downloads in your admin? Without this setting everything is assumed to be physical even if the weight is zero.

 

Regards,

Brian.

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Nice thought... unfortunately doesn't appear to be the solution tho... Downloads wasn't enabled because I'd planned to e-mail e-books to purchasers but I just tried enabling it and it didn't offer any extra options in product listings to designate whether something is downloadable or not... I'll have a further look at the download stuff in a couple of days tho just in case I'm missing something obvious :)

 

My new IP and SSL should be implemented tonight so the site will disappear for a day or two then we'll be live :-d

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Thanks Burt :)

 

I'll look into the tabs thing at the weekend... since I'm gonna be going live any time now I'll set up a working copy on a dev box to try it out.

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Info and link posted today by "iiinetworks" Just passing it on.....

 

More Info: Wiki Documents - Configuring Downloads in Administration Panel

 

Enabling "Downloads" in the admin panel lets you add the "downloadable product URL" in the Product Attributes area.

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it seems that your site is down.  i get a customized 404 page when i try to go to your site.

 

My new IP and SSL should be implemented tonight so the site will disappear for a day or two then we'll be live :-d

 

Thanks for mentioning it though :) SSL is all installed so just waiting for DNS propogation :)

 

In-Overtime, thank you so much - that totally fixed the problem :D

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6 weeks for a website like yours, including all the products, that's not bad at all! I'm pretty sure the functionality hasn't changes much but you have given it your own look more or less. I think it could still do with a little bit more customizing, I think the osC buttons for writing a review etc are still a bit silly.

 

If you really want to get a great shop, take a close look at succesful ones like Amazon. As you can see, they don't have a seperate window for reviews for example. All these little things can make your site look more professional.

 

But overall, not bad. Congrats!

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Raijen Cool, thanks for checking :)

 

WillemB Thanks for looking :) It was 6 weeks in my spare time to design and implement the shop though spare time did involve staying up till 5am some mornings and working most of the weekends. My wife put 95% of the products in :)

 

Not quite sure what you mean by more button customizing... as far as I'm aware I've remade EVERY button/graphic including the write reviews button, (well a slightly lazy one with it just being a photo of my hand holding a pen), except the 'whats_new' and 'man_on_board'. I'd be grateful to know of any others I've inadvertantly missed :)

 

Getting me to look at the reviews section was helpful though because I noticed some weird ugly thing going on with the header on those pages... That'll keep me busy for a little while tonight.

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WooHoo my store is live and kicking :D

 

SSL took a bit of sodding about because I'd used lots of absolute links rather than relative so when the pages were loaded as https they were still loading http images causing a secure/insecure items warning. 45 page edits later and it's all fixed though :D

 

I've just signed up with the ShareaSale affiliate program (thanks farrukh for the contribution or I'd never have heard of the company).

 

I'm also starting an e-mail campaign to 800,000 people on monday (at around 10,000 a day) so with a bit of luck I may make a sale or two :D

 

Thanks to osCommerce for some fantastic software (I'll be making a few donations as soon as I start turning a profit) and thanks to all of you in the forums for reviewing my shop and pointing out a few things.

 

I'm thinking of making a few graphical contributions when I get the time... any ideas on what ya'll would like?

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