Newbie effort

[soulbrew]

Ok Community!

 

here you are:

 

Soulbrew

 

Soulbrew : Catalog

 

Live and almost out of Beta, when I'll figure out how to blen EasyPopulate with ExtraFields.

At the mo' the EP doesn't bother to show the New Fields (Artist, Label... so on for the records...)

 

Let me know what you think!

 

Marco

[dakatone]

I love your Soulbrew main site. The colors, the images, it screams soul! Alot of people dislike dark backgrounds with bright colors, but I do not get tired of it. The yellow is a bit wild, but then we are talking soul not blues entirely :)

 

The catalog is an extremely noble effort to tie it with the main site. Colors match nicely, and the product images a pretty nice. I like the Soul Queens prints. Nice design.

 

Ready for my overall recommendation? Here goes:

 

I would remove the mass majority of your infoBoxes. They help to contribute to the catalog being isolated from the main site, which is bad, since the main site is totally professional and cool as a Monk!

 

InfoBoxes I would lose include Manufacturer info, Notifications (that can be incorporated into the product description instead if needed), Languages (you only have one), Reviews, Manufacturers (only have one anyhow), Search (put it in header if you want it). Then I would find a way to make the categories listing to appear with images instead of text to resemble main site.

 

I know you said you had little to no PHP experience (I didn't either), but if you could turn your catalog into your main site, you'd have hands down a winner!

 

It is evident you have put in some mad work on the main site (and the catalog), so do the site justice and keep up the hard work on the catalog.

 

I RARELY bookmark sites here, but I want you to know you caused me to bookmark Soulbrew. Partly out of loving the site and genre, partly out of anticipation to see what you end up with in the catalog.

 

Best of luck!

 

Ruhl

[burt]

match a little closer:

 

stylesheet.css:

 

.bordered {
   border-width: 0px 10px 0px 10px;
   border-color:  transparent #CC3300 transparent #FFCC33;
   border-style: solid;
}

 

/includes/header.php:

 

<table width="640" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="bordered" align="center">
 <tr>
   <td>

 

includes/footer.php:

 

    </td>
 </tr>
</table>

 

Hope this helps.

[RikR]

I would install a thumbnail contrib. Those images on the first page are big files, slows download of site.

 

I use:

 

Automatic Thumbnail Creator v1.0

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,841

[soulbrew]

Thanks pips!

You made my day! I didn't expect such a feedback...

I was actually ready to be chewed up by script masters or so!!!

 

I'll keep you posted on what's going on...

 

Marco

 

Rock ya feet to the smoking beat!

[soulbrew]

Ok! Have a look now!

 

I'd say it's much better - I had to grab my brother and get him to double check

the /* asjkf akls */ business thouhg -

 

Layout:

 

- The table size is not always 640px horiz. How do I "force-squeeze" the page into

that size?

- Side coloured columns: on logout they don't reach the bottom of the page

- I managed to get rid of column_right on index.php, but it seems the other pages have kept it into their layout. Do I need to manually edit them one by one? Which ones are they?

[dakatone]

Smokin'!

 

I like that you have customized the welcome message as well. Changes will always present themselves. Just as a note, I have made over 10,000 changes (large and small) to my site to date and it isn't even live.

 

Your quick search is producing an invalid image call. Check it to make sure it is calling to an actual image.

 

You have a grammatical error in the welcome message "This is a Soulbrew-tailored shop. We do our best to developping it as funky as Maceo and hotter than chilli!". It should read "This is a Soulbrew-tailored shop. We do our best to develop (or use word 'serve') it as funky as Maceo and hotter than chilli!"

 

One thing I really love about your site: it looks great while still loading pretty fast.

 

I'll keep checking back, but fix the few things left and you have a site I would buy from. From the states so if shipping doesn't kill me I'll test your products out too :D

 

Keep up the great work!

 

Ruhl

[soulbrew]

Your quick search is producing an invalid image call.  Check it to make sure it is calling to an actual image.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Thanks Ruhl!

 

I don't understand what you mean with the "invalid image call". Could you explain that to me?

 

Grammar: will sort it out this afternoon

Postage: Rates are the standard rates of Italian PO - almost at cost price -

+ ?1.00 max for packaging. I'd love to negotiate cheap rates with UPS. Now it's

a bit too early.

 

Bear in mind that if you are my first customer, I'll throw in a freebie!

 

See you later!

 

Marco

[PartyMania]

Site looks great. Just might need to work on the little things. For example, your purchase button says, 'Add to Cart'. While the button in the top right is called 'Trolley!'. You should make these the same.

 

I would get a new picture for table_background_cart.gif.

 

Get a SSL cert and you should be good to go!

[soulbrew]

Thanks Kev,

 

I'm receiving a lot of positive feedback and the more I tweak with the OSC files, the more I feel confident....

 

The buttons are driving me crazy... Those you see are the third set I've done. Having to put them against different colour backgrounds is a pain in the neck. I cannot understand how to make sure there is no contrast between the borderline pixels and the backgrounds themselves. I'll give it another go soon(ish). Any suggestion there?

 

As for the gifs, I tried to re-draw my own ones, especially those you see when you're not logged in. The others wil be modified ASAP.

 

And today's news is that I'm now a VAT registered busoness owner :-) ;-)

 

You mentioned SSL... Any suggestion where to start looking for?

 

That's it for now, gotta draw the catalogue as tomorrow I'll do a bit of D2D....

 

Take it easy,

 

Marco