Multiple concerns with outsourced website...

[GrumpierOldMan]

Well I outsourced someone to build my website and I'm planning on making my store live this week. Some things have come up which make me concerned.

 

1) some of my pages would periodically blank, I had asked that I retain the ability to edit the text of my pages (greetings on front page, customer service/return policy etc). The text on those pages began to blank towards the end of the project once every week or so, several pages never had that problem although they were also editable. As a test he disabled the editing feature and the problem has stopped. Is there any reasonable explanation for why that text would be lost other than my contractor wanting to force me to go to him when I want to make changes?

 

2) I noticed that when adding an item to inventory if I set an item as 'taxable' that the gross price went up an absurd amount, is that something I need to be concerned about, or once I start checkout should it charge the tax I assigned to the appropriate zones etc. Unfortunately I've had a few problems with my merchant account setup so haven't been able to do a full test as yet.

 

3) I downloaded the contents of my site to see if I can just figure things out on my own, since I'm not feeling very trusting of my contractor, what do you suggest is the best course of action to understand the nuts and bolts? I have rudementary programming skills, and have been making some small edits to pictures/banners via finding them on the server, and uploading the changed picture to the appropriate location.

 

4) I've also noticed that several features that I asked for were not included or 'lost' some point in the process. Do you think with the appropriate books I should be able to restore a search feature to my store and add/reattach/repoint the customer account and shopping cart to the store? [there's no problem adding items to the cart, you just can't navigate to the cart any other way].

 

I am rather frustrated. I want to avoid working with this individual as I'm not sure I'll be able to hold my temper and I don't think they deserve another cent. Thanks for your time and any responses.

[♥ecartz]

1) some of my pages would periodically blank, I had asked that I retain the ability to edit the text of my pages (greetings on front page, customer service/return policy etc). The text on those pages began to blank towards the end of the project once every week or so, several pages never had that problem although they were also editable. As a test he disabled the editing feature and the problem has stopped. Is there any reasonable explanation for why that text would be lost other than my contractor wanting to force me to go to him when I want to make changes?

If you are storing them in the database (to allow you to edit them through a tool), this could indicate a database issue. This could also be caused by a bad edit of the text that breaks something. Or a bug in the display code. Etc. I would find it unlikely for this to be deliberate. It's more likely to be a bug.

 

2) I noticed that when adding an item to inventory if I set an item as 'taxable' that the gross price went up an absurd amount, is that something I need to be concerned about, or once I start checkout should it charge the tax I assigned to the appropriate zones etc. Unfortunately I've had a few problems with my merchant account setup so haven't been able to do a full test as yet.

This is normal behavior. When you have multiple taxes for different zones, it uses all the taxes at once when displaying the gross price.

 

3) I downloaded the contents of my site to see if I can just figure things out on my own, since I'm not feeling very trusting of my contractor, what do you suggest is the best course of action to understand the nuts and bolts? I have rudementary programming skills, and have been making some small edits to pictures/banners via finding them on the server, and uploading the changed picture to the appropriate location.

The best method to learn is to try. To help you with this, you might look for various resources. If you Google things like osCommerce books, osCommerce eBooks, and osCommerce tutorials, you might find some resources that would be helpful. Same thing for PHP in general. PHP also offers reasonably decent documentation on their site: http://www.php.net/

 

4) I've also noticed that several features that I asked for were not included or 'lost' some point in the process. Do you think with the appropriate books I should be able to restore a search feature to my store and add/reattach/repoint the customer account and shopping cart to the store? [there's no problem adding items to the cart, you just can't navigate to the cart any other way].

The shopping cart can be reached by a normal link:

<a href="<?php echo tep_href_link(FILENAME_SHOPPING_CART); ?>"><?php echo HEADER_TITLE_CART_CONTENTS; ?></a>

My Account is a little more complicated:

<a href="<?php echo tep_href_link(FILENAME_ACCOUNT, '', 'SSL'); ?>"><?php echo HEADER_TITLE_MY_ACCOUNT; ?></a>

To do search with a link would be

<a href="<?php echo tep_href_link(FILENAME_ADVANCED_SEARCH); ?>"><?php echo BOX_SEARCH_ADVANCED_SEARCH; ?></a>

To do search with an infoBox would be

  require(DIR_WS_BOXES . 'search.php');

in either column file. People have posted how to do search in the header as well, but that is not as straight forward to integrate into your template.