To follow on with yesterday’s theme on my adoration of Open Source developers, I thought I should add my experience of premier shopping cart programs and the resolution of it all.

When I first started TheGeekPolice, the course advisors suggested using a hosted shop company called Magellan Commerce. Being that they were the ones who where in the know, I took their advice and signed up for $30-$40 a month for the package. What I got was an online shop, with some decent back of house stuff, but no real malleability with the design. There were about 10 different themes that I could choose from, but to personalise it (not knowing anything about CSS) was going to cost me, at the very, very least, $500.

Over time too, access to the back area became very slow, and to upload stuff was tedious and long winded. One day it took 5 mins just to get in. I don’t know if the server was slow or what the problem was. We became really bored of it all!

Tbh, I think it probably serves me right for turning my back on my trusting ally, WordPress. I started to look into Shopping cart plugins and found a few, ending up using eShop. Why I hadn’t thought of this before baffles me! Installation was a doddle , as it always is with WordPress and to use the Cart was simple too (all you have to do is input some criteria and post the product!)

In a nutshell, I would seriously look at the WordPress options before you sign into a premier scheme!

WordPress is King!! (sorry, I should stop blowing smoke up its a*se)

I had to stop and think for a little today at what the internet would be like without Open Source developers. Personally, my life on the web would be rubbish!

I have to give a special mention to the guys who have created WordPress, and those who have created the plethora of add-ons. Also, the troopers who have created Open Office and particularly the PDF creation saving button!

Without you the Internet would not be the playing field it is today. You have, and will continue to, affect and change peoples lives for the better with you invaluable work.

Thank you all

By the looks of it I’m not!

Some of you may have noticed that there are a few posts missing. I would like to say that that was intentional… but it wasn’t. I have been trying to sort out my shopping cart for a different site on the same hosting package that I have and managed to get all of the posts from here to disappear!

I spoke to my hosting helpdesk and they rolled back the site to a point which was last sunday, so I have lost the last 4 days work.

On the plus side, I have learned more stuff about WordPress (which is still rocking my world) and more about uploading to the server. So, you could probably say that this ballsup was actually a good thing. In fact, I seem to get more out of screwups than I do out of doing things right. I better understand the mechanism within which I am working when I break it!

My message, therefore, is (from experience) don’t be scared about messing stuff up, you will learn a lot from doing it!!