Windowlight site offline

[toprob]

My website host has advised that the site may be offline for maintenance later tonight. Hopefully not longer than an hour, but you never know.

I suspect that this is the first step in a promised site upgrade, which should result in more disc space. As my site is pretty full at the moment, this will be very welcome.

There are a couple of things I have planned when and if this upgrade happens. First, I really need to move to a Content Management System (CMS) to make it easier to keep the site up to date, so there may be a whole new look and feel to the site next month.

I'll keep the other major change under wraps at the moment, until I can do some testing.

[Michael]

toprob, I could code you a custom CMS if you want in exchange for some sceneries. I have a good 3 years experience with php, xhtml, css and javascript and hold my ability very highly.

[toprob]

QUOTE (Michael @ Mar 25 2009, 09:41 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

toprob, I could code you a custom CMS if you want in exchange for some sceneries. I have a good 3 years experience with php, xhtml, css and javascript and hold my ability very highly.

Thanks, I'll bear that in mind, Michael. At the moment I'm using Joomla, and it's working out well. I will eventually want to integrate the ecommerce store into the site, but until then I'm sure that Joomla can cope. I rather like doing this myself, anyway, at it keeps my brain working:)

[NZ255]

Could you put an RS feed on your News page? I like keeping up with it all!

[toprob]

QUOTE (NZ255 @ Mar 25 2009, 10:32 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Could you put an RS feed on your News page? I like keeping up with it all!

I did cut down on the number of news items on my site a while ago, and if I continue that way then a feed may not be all that useful. However since updating will be easier, I may go to a more chatty, blog-type site, so you never know.

[Christian]

Hi Robin

I'm also using Joomla. It's fairly powerful and you probably can do just about anything with it. If you want a cart have a look at virtuemart. Easy to setup and what I use with Joomla. Mind you it looks cr@p like pretty much all carts and took me months to customize the design, but I did a lot of php coding. Out of the box it's probably not worse than osCommerce.

RSS feeds are really easy to set up. You basically just need to enable the module, I think that's even enabled by default. (Once again I coded my own solution using feedburner and to get it better looking, but that's just me). I find RSS feeds useful for sites that don't update frequently either. I'm not checking these sites frequently and with an RSS feed I get an update immediately - handy!

The only disadvantage of Joomla is the slowdown due to the sql database (you get that with all CMS though). I find that on cheap shared hosting the sites run slow because the processors can't cope with the database load. Then again, I'm not going to shell out $200 a month for dedicated hosting, so the slow speed is not ideal but workable...

Cheers,
Christian

[toprob]

QUOTE (Christian @ Mar 26 2009, 03:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Robin

I'm also using Joomla. It's fairly powerful and you probably can do just about anything with it. If you want a cart have a look at virtuemart. Easy to setup and what I use with Joomla. Mind you it looks cr@p like pretty much all carts and took me months to customize the design, but I did a lot of php coding. Out of the box it's probably not worse than osCommerce.

RSS feeds are really easy to set up. You basically just need to enable the module, I think that's even enabled by default. (Once again I coded my own solution using feedburner and to get it better looking, but that's just me). I find RSS feeds useful for sites that don't update frequently either. I'm not checking these sites frequently and with an RSS feed I get an update immediately - handy!

The only disadvantage of Joomla is the slowdown due to the sql database (you get that with all CMS though). I find that on cheap shared hosting the sites run slow because the processors can't cope with the database load. Then again, I'm not going to shell out $200 a month for dedicated hosting, so the slow speed is not ideal but workable...

Cheers,
Christian

Thanks for that. You are right about the feeds, of course, it did cross my mind that it probably makes more sense on an infrequently updated site.

Since I've used osCommerce all along, I'd like to keep it if I can, as it means that I have just one database covering all store orders, and my customers can keep track of what they've ordered since day one. However it does depend on how it works out, otherwise I'll look at the options. My osCommerce installation is a bit of a house of cards, come to think of it, I'm made so many little changes I'm surprised it still works:) I can't upgrade it, because the changes I've made stop the upgrade from working. It is beginning to make sense that I just start over.

I admit that database-driven sites have always annoyed me because of the delays when things get busy, but sooner or later the benefits outweigh this. I will monitor this, though, the last thing I want is a lot of 'server busy' issues, when good old HTML just keeps chugging along.

[toprob]

Hmmm, I did plan to release my new site this week, but I may need to rethink Joomla. I've actually made a very nice site, but there are some problems which I don't think I can overcome. They really only showed up when I installed Virtuemart, but I suspect they'll appear with any online store integration -- Joomla just doesn't cope well with a shared SSL site. It sort of works, and I may be able to build a store within the limitations, but at the moment I'm sick of it:)

[Christian]

I think if you have a look around there is a joomla-oscommerce bridge available. That way you may be able to keep oscommerce. Never gave it a try though.

What are the SSL problems you're having? (I'm not really happy with my current setup either, but I heard that oscommerce also causes headaches...)

Christian

[toprob]

QUOTE (Christian @ Apr 2 2009, 04:25 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think if you have a look around there is a joomla-oscommerce bridge available. That way you may be able to keep oscommerce. Never gave it a try though.

What are the SSL problems you're having? (I'm not really happy with my current setup either, but I heard that oscommerce also causes headaches...)

Christian

In some instances Joomla expects the SSL site to be the same as the normal site -- so it wants http://www.windowlight.co.nz to become https://www.windowlight.co.nz when secured. In reality, my site become https://www.myhost.com/~mysite.
Most things work fine, but some elements -- which include some images -- are expected at the wrong location. So instead of looking for images at https://www.myhost.com/~mysite/images, it looks for them at https://www.myhost.com/images.

This coupled with the problem that SSL switching doesn't work well -- the site is only meant to go secure when I want it to -- means that sometimes images won't show up.

In the end I decided to work within the limitations, which means that the store becomes its own little sub-site, and you really need to leave the store by the one open door to return to the main site, rather than jumping in and out at will.

This worked well enough to just go with it.

I did try an osCommerce bridge, but I'm made so many alterations to the database format that it didn't work:) The only real reason to keep it was to keep the current accounts intact, which won't happen anyway.

[Christian]

I see. The images in virtuemart where a bit tricky. I remember I recoded that in the php file so it makes more sense and handles the paths better.

[NZ255]

Old topic I know, but is Virtuemart completely free? I mean no is there fee for using it or anything? I won't get a bill in the mail?

Just like to clear it up

Thanks

Nick

[toprob]

VirtueMart is completely free, but you can make a donation if you wish.

[NZ255]

Just been reading....do you need to get a vender(?) like paypal (which costs money) to make it work?

[toprob]

Well, if you want to collect payment then you'd have to pay something. Paypal is free to use, but you do pay a percentage of every payment. I've had real trouble with Paypal using Virtuemart, though.
Most of my sales are credit card, but it does cost a bit for a merchant account.
The cheapest way to collect payment may be direct to bank -- then the only thing you'd pay is bank fees.