jgandjz Posted August 9, 2004 Posted August 9, 2004 I've been working on my website for about a week now. I think I've worked out a lot of the kinks and glitches. I'm a novice to php and mysql and have a book I've been studying as well as the information on the forum and the knowledgebase. Bascially I'd like feedback or comments about my website. What I can improve or change or any other recommendations. Currently I have an html index page on the front but I'm thinking of chaning it, either getting rid of it or just improving the entrance. Thanks in advance for the feedback. My Site The Giftcolony
julianpuje Posted August 9, 2004 Posted August 9, 2004 The site is neat, tidy and simple. I suggest you use the thumbnail contribution The sizes are way too big at 30000 +, you want to get these down to @1-3000. I've checked out the download speeds as it is at the mo. Connection Rate Download Time 14.4K 214.12 seconds 28.8K 107.16 seconds 33.6K 91.88 seconds 56K 55.21 seconds ISDN 128K 17.05 seconds T1 1.44Mbps 1.66 seconds hope this helps Julian A little knowledge is dangerous, I SHOULD KNOW. If Life Begins At 40, What ends????
ryanf Posted August 9, 2004 Posted August 9, 2004 Get rid of the flash intro page, they are annoying and worthless. Drop your catalog down a level so it's just http://www.giftcolony.com/ without the catalog. Get rid of "top" in the breadcrumbs Get rid of the three icons in the header that are the exact same thing as the text links right below them. Get rid of "Lets see what we have here" Don't squash the thumbnails. You might need a thumbnail contrib so that doesn't happen. You Need an thumbnail contrib after looking at your image sizes for them. they are way too big and will slow the site down. If I was crafty, this would be a funny signature.
AfterDark Posted August 9, 2004 Posted August 9, 2004 Vote #2 for getting rid of the intro - didnt even wait for it to load. Also - pretty much everything else Ryan said.
♥bruyndoncx Posted August 9, 2004 Posted August 9, 2004 it's always nice to know that you will ship worldwide for only $7.00 :D 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
Spellcaster Posted August 9, 2004 Posted August 9, 2004 I agree with what everyone else said. Believe me it is all very good advice, the little picture icons (shopping cart and cash register...) you really don't need that any more thatn you need the intro. Still it is very nice. Good luck with it all. Sincerely, Bianca
jgandjz Posted August 10, 2004 Author Posted August 10, 2004 :) Thanks for all the advice. I'm slowly implementing each of the changes. Thanks for the advice on the thumbnail contribution, it's working great! :D Additionally I've clarified the shipping, thanks for pointing that out. I've also removed the top 3 icons. I was looking at them and they are redundant. I'll probably work on a better store banner at the top or just move the bottom banner to the top of the page for advertising purposes. The final step will be moving the whole site up a level. I'll have to read on how to edit the config file with the appropriate paths in order to make that work. Thanks for the improvement advice. :)
jgandjz Posted August 10, 2004 Author Posted August 10, 2004 Ok made the final change, instead of moving everything up a level, I made a subdomain called www. So when people type www.giftcolony.com it goes straight to the store instead of www.giftcolony.com/catalog. Additionally to take care of the issue of someone typing just giftcolony.com I added a redirect so it goes to www.giftcolony.com. Everything seems fine except I noticed the links were a little longer. Any final comments on this or my store? Thanks
ryanf Posted August 11, 2004 Posted August 11, 2004 A subdomain? dont do that, I doubt it can be good for search engines. Change "catalog" in the breadcrumbs to Home Get rid of "lets see what we have here" and "whats new here" you can be more creative than that. If I was crafty, this would be a funny signature.
jgandjz Posted August 11, 2004 Author Posted August 11, 2004 You are right about that. I've been trying to use the admin tool with the subdomain format and I have to do a lot of edits on the configuration files to make it work properly. Since I've spent over a week working on this I've figured out and learned how to do all the things correctly. I've also made notes of when and where I made changes, included all the contributions used. Since the link below shows me the proper way to install the catalog in the root directory what I'm going to do is reinstall oscommerce the right way. http://wiki.oscommerce.com/docsInstallNew I currently use Yahoo web hosting and some of the functions are limited. I have not been able to just move all the files up a level or just copy them over. Too many difficulties. So I'll just reinstall from scratch and since I have the site backed up on my laptop I'll just copy over all the modified files. That should provide the quickest reinstall with all proper paths and connections. Thanks for the feed back.
ryanf Posted August 11, 2004 Posted August 11, 2004 whats yahoo webhosting cost? I bet you there are better ones than them for cheaper or the same price. I can't list anyhere since thats not allowed but look around. If I was crafty, this would be a funny signature.
jgandjz Posted August 11, 2004 Author Posted August 11, 2004 The prices are about the same as others except the premium services are more. Cheapest price is $11.95. There are a few reasons why I use Yahoo. A couple are I get the domain free as long as I'm with them. Second, Yahoo has been around a long time and their services keep updating. Perhaps not at the rate as other, but I'm really just looking at reliability. Since I'm using them and I've figured out how to use them I'll probably stick with them for a while. If there are other users that are using Yahoo web service and have some questions that they can't figure out I might be able to answer some. Anyway that's basically why I use them. I've used other services but have had bad experiences. One of them even went out of business and that really sucked. I had to look for another service right after that.
Guest Posted August 11, 2004 Posted August 11, 2004 Check into ipowerweb, i think there great, i get free subdomains, i dont even remember what i ended up paying for a month, i paid a full 2 years upfront. I never once was limited to anything cause they keep up on top of things. So far since i had them i was only down 2 times and each one was for no longer then 5 mins.
jgandjz Posted August 13, 2004 Author Posted August 13, 2004 Are there any recommendations on meta tags or promoting my site?
zawohn Posted August 13, 2004 Posted August 13, 2004 I like what you done with your store. I would like to know how to change color ? And how to move search box to top right corner ( inside header )? Thank advance .
jgandjz Posted August 14, 2004 Author Posted August 14, 2004 The color I changed on the css file. Below is a link that can help you with editing the layout of the site: http://wiki.oscommerce.com/docsCat The specific edit that I used to put the search at the top was from this help link: http://wiki.oscommerce.com/docsCatFormSearchDesc Everything else was just adjusting the table in the header file to make my search available. Additionally I took the advance search link and put it in the top nav bar.
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