ecommerce comes to wordpress

Ok its been here a while, but its only just now I'm getting involved.

I build SME websites and try to avoid e-commerce like a plague, unfortunately the internet rather than a bastion of free information seems to have become  a over sized shopping mall with no floor plan.

As such commerce seems unavoidable.
If your going to build a commerce site online there is a dazzling array to Choose from of of teh shelf products. A list can be found on Wikipedia of the open source ones (probably of the others too but that's your choice).

Magento, Zen cart, oscommerce, ubbercart are the most popular from the list and ones I have experiance with. Then you have integrated products such as ubbercart drupal and wp-ecommerce. These are what I want to discuss.

If you want a totally customisable experience with a shopping cart, I'd advocate drupal ubbercart plugin. You start with a drupal install design your site and layout then plugin ubbercart, CCK and Views and develop the look and feel you desire. This is not the easy option this is the option that gets you what you want to the extreme you can with the right skill set control every look and feel, but have a production level back end management system with an excellent UI.

If you don't have the design skills wordpress and wp-ecommerce can be a excellent set, wordpress theme repositary provides some very fluid and good looking theme sand the commercial set are priced well and robust. Build your look and feel and then ecommerce bolts the shop in and holds the look and feel. Again not the easiest choice you still need to know whats going on with wordpress but you can get some dramatic results with a little work.

I'm going to work through a Wordpress ecommerce install this winter, I will attempt to provide ongoing feedback from the process.

Flash and Wix

Flash, a choice on the web with as many benefits as negatives. Almost a design life style choice.
Most if not all the effects that flash was once famous for can now be recreated with alternative products such as silver light, or with javascript and CSS and or AJAX solutions.

I avoid Flash due to the client side reliance on the developer, then Wix came along. Wix offer hosting and templates for flash websites controlled by a flash based WYSIWYG editor. You can make some stunning results, e-commerce, galleries and more. It is worth a look.

Commercially though the service as several bugs and failings. Speed for one. looking around I have found site slow to deliver simple content and in wix.com support forum so have the majority of vocal users. So although for the casual user it seems at first excellent for any kind of service or provision of service it is lacking.

Have a look and play, make up your own Mind.

A comparison of CMSs'

Six Revisions have a updated comparison of CMSs, ive mentioned these twice in recent articles but its always worth keeping up to them, has its these decisions that I rely on day to day.

Cats Who Code

I found this blog a while ago and keep a good eye on it.

Jean is a 27 years old self-taught web developer and WordPress specialist who lives in Wallonia, the French speaking part of Belgium. In addition to Cats Who Code, he also blogs about WordPress at WpRecipes and about Photoshop at PsdVibe.

Jean really knows his stuff and as far as wordpress development this blog is invaluable i suggest every one has a read.

Recently I needed this advise, to fix a theme from Press75. Jeans site was quicker than google and filter.

Wordpress or Drupal

Wordpress is currently my weapon of choice, I wrote a previous article comparing Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress. I am a web developer foremost designer second.

I find Drupal and Wordpress to be my weapons of choice depending upon the task.
Wordpress as matured so much in the last 2 years it is now a CMS in its own right but a blog is what it is really good at, where drupal is a CMS creator.

Drupal allows you to create the CMS your user needs, it finds it hard to do very pretty but very easy to create custom content. Word press allows for the pretty.

Over the next few posts you should find some interesting tips for using wordpress and Drupal as this was always the intention of this blog.

translating the net or Phishing new waters

The BBC had this article about the new allowance for none latin characters in Urls. This means that bbc.co.uk can be registered but so can  \u0622 \u0622 \u0623 .co.uk which is unicode for the arabic letters of bbc! Now my wonder on this subject is I wonder how the phishing attack will use this and the browser will differentiate the two from a English language browser when they ar actually two different entity's on the net.

Just something to think about for a new Phishing attacks anyone?

Its a kind of magic

It took ages to think of a pithy title. this article is not about Queen , Highlander or magic although i know a little about all three.

This article is about Content Management Systems or CMS.

I was going to write a article about CMS and there strengths and weaknesses but i found the one I 'borrowed' the image from so go read it. [Here]

I agree with pretty much all of it, all though I would say that as an addition wordpress can be used for simple CMS with the Blog page hidden and unavailable to the editor and Drupal and Joomla are better suited to form based content submitting of custom content its easier to document than Wordpress custom fields.

I have not made a static site in over a year, Wordpress is easy enough to role out i'd feel like i was robbing a client not giving them it as a base. Any template can be applied to any CMS so that's not a sticking point.

ABC Development

ABC Development, or abcdevelopment.co.uk is up and live.

This is my next development a move on a growth from what I was, vagabond solutions still exists but will not survive.

Vagabond is what I was the company will slowly cease to be and cease to trade. ABCD is what I have become. The bold letters and bright colours I hope reflect this.

I want to retain my core ideal, cost effective hosting and support, cost effective web development for those who need it.

A small business for smaller clients, offering large agency results at affordable cost.

Wave first impressions

Currently Wave is Read write only, so below this you will see a embedded Google sign in box, anyone with a wave account can sign in and see a wave conversation. in read mode then ping me to be added.

initial thoughts are for what could be done for collaborative web sites and what also could happen in a Wicki way with this.

Google Wave

My google wave invite arrived this morning, I'm a big fan of Google Apps and web tools etc.

If your on wave drop me a message and see if we have time to make something! buxton.adam[@]googlewave.com

What is It?
The basics are here, but it won't make as much sense as if your signed in!



Basically its a workflow system for cooperative working via google, the tie ins with google docs etc and google apps make it quiet possibly a very good product.

The collaboration aspect and embedding features are rather special i've been told this is all doable with flash media server! but something about that doe snot ring true, or as easy as this seems to work.

The best article i've found so far is over at mashables

No to IE6

IE6 is not dead but it surely should be, i support IE6 in my en devours not out of love but necessity. Too many people are stuck using the product large clients such as the NHS who have no choice at this time. Its not a choice if the IT management for a government department say you will use XXXX.

But unrest is still growing now you have several groups running anti ie6 campaigsn and some large sites refusing to support it. Lets be honest the alternative sare fre eand well known in the wild, Firefox as IE by the throat, and Opera, Safari and Chrome are biting at its heals.

Such campaigns as http://www.ie6nomore.com/ and http://ie6.forteller.net/index.php?title=Main_Page
 are not against ie but specifically ie6.

I have just had top install a copy of windows 2000k in parallels just to get ie6 working and am amused to find pre-service pack1 ie6 breaks when pointed at the Microsoft home page!

Interestingly coincidental smashingmagazine.com leads today with this.

User Interfaces and the User Experiance.

I'm a fan of interface design and development, I like to see whats coming and play with the future. from the Iphone, to the simple track ball I find the idea of new interfaces intriguing.

Below is the newest idea I came across on Digg.


10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

Also worth a look is the items I mentioned in my other blog here

Really it is like this some days

The following was not inspirational exactly but it amused me, it is very honest appraisal of some client developer relationships.

NOT safe for Work.

I know this as been a rapid start but this will not be the normal I'm sure.

Inspiration

To develop anything I believe you need inspiration. developers are not just people who have an answer, its in the title developer you develop every time you work. everything you produce is a development the same job is never just that the tools and solutions will develop in every job every time the same task is set the answer can be subtle different.

Part of inspiration is sources, I have many, some I read every day some appear around me, others are memories of things I encounter.

Project cartoon reminds me how abstract the art of development can be.


Its not just about art, its music, people, places, things and ideas anything can inspire, if your distracted you need a new inspiration or to allow the distraction to play out.

ABCDevelopment what is it good for?

In 2004 I started a computer media degree at Manchester Metropolitan University with a  view to getting work as a web developer.
I realised quickly that I did not just want to be a web developer more than a I wanted to work in IT. My degree changed to computer science and in my third year i took up residence as the Department of Computing and Maths developer for student services. A placement role that became my part time job in my final year and a position I still fulfill.


In 2008 I graduated with a 2:1 in computer science BSc and holding a part time post set up self employed to make ends meet, working as a network administrator for some clients, web developer, Java developer and all round IT trouble shooter. The first year was a roller coaster of work, successes and failures and one of the steepest personal learning curves imaginable. This was vagabondsolutions.co.uk

.

ABCDevelopment.co.uk is a development from that and this is its blog space. this default theme will change when i get time and ABCDs growth will be slow but i hope to fill this space with observations and tutorials, useful links and feeds of note from all over my areas of the internet.

Its not a new idea, its nothing large that you can't live with out but just maybe some of it will be useful, worth a digg or a RT.

Its a beginning.