MSIT Capstone 2010 – Melissa Miller

Capstone is officially finished. This was a great learning experience, and I am really happy with the project that I chose. This opens up so many opportunities for me moving foward.

Feel free to take a peek at the ecommerce site that I built:

www.hogbackgifts.com

Thank you,

Melissa

www.dappledesignsonline.com

I just set up the actual payment method with VitueMart… it was a breeze. It was something that I was sweating a little bit, but it really was painless. I also set up a webmaster account with google, and added the analytics code to the templates. Oddly enough, I’m having a few issues with positioning with CSS, but everything else seems to be moving forward smoothly.

I also have the opportunity to meet with a developer to show me about an image caching tool. This will help with the overload of unused images moving forward.

My problem: I am having an unknown amount added to the product amount that I have entered. I have disabled every tax option I can find, and it still persists.

After several hours of searching resources, and throughout the VirtueMart dashboard, I have found that there is a tiny checkbox that is prechecked for “virtual tax”. This is decided by where the owner of the store is located. It is a great tool….UNLESS you have prices that already include a tax. This is definitely a checkbox that I will never forget where it is, and what it is for within the site.

Flex Shipping, Standard Shipping, UPS and POSTAL shipping and flat rate shipping. After going though each of these (for the learning experience of it of course) I have realized that you must keep Standard shipping enables along with your flat rate shipping for it to work properly. At this time, I can’t explain why, but I’m happy I figured out how. Once the shipping module is in place, the shipping component is a breeze.

The last few days I have been trying to figure out how to make Tienda’s shopping art show up in IE. I have also been trying to figure out a way to incorporate a usability feature with shipping that my sponsor was hoping to have on his site.  Unfortunately I have not been able to do so, and have also been experimenting with VirtueMart on another site before I switched. I have decided that because my sponsor wants a specific usability feature for the shipping, Tienda will just not work and I will be going with VirtueMart. Honestly, I’m not unhappy at all about the fact that I am switching, I feel it was a great learning experience, and a true hurdle. In the end I am now comfortable with both extension platforms, and I am really impressed with VirtueMart. When Tienda is out with more support, I will definitely be going back and trying it out. The usability of Tienda was very intuitive and easy to work with on the site.

In the end, the decision to switch wasn’t because I couldn’t find a solution that would fix the IE problem, or that it was an easy route. The decision was made solely on the fact that what my sponsor was looking for, was something that VirtueMart offered and Tienda did not offer, which is the most important part of the project. If I did not run into the issues with Tienda, I would have most likely not looked for other options which in the end turned out better than I had hoped. So with problems not only comes solutions but great discoveries as well.

I am currently toying around with VirtueMart on another site I am working on to see if I can use it on my capstone. Tienda is an excellent extension, if only we could do away with IE. Because it is still in it’s beta format, I have decided to switch over to VirtueMart (if all goes well) but still keep tienda close to watch how they will fix the problem. I have tried to search forums and contact the company, but no reply yet. Just creating a back up plan.

I am finally at the point with the site that the template is in place (liquid yay!), the categories for the shop are in place and accesible three different ways, and the cart is set up where I want it – convenient but not obtrusive. My sponsor is happy with how the site is coming along, and the cart / ecommerce extensions that I have chosen. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to fix the problem that the cart will not show up in IE, but does in firefox. It is not the entire extension, just the cart part…. still researching this.

I just added “MyAppi” for social media on the web site. I also added rapid contact for the contact form on the site.

I also have been having issues with getting my template to work correctly with a second navigation for the products which will line the top of the site under the masthead.

After several days of trying to decide which shopping cart to use on my site, I decided to go with Tienda. So far it seems to be easy to use, and the best part is that it has an user friendly dashboard that I will be able to train my sponsor to use after the project is complete.

I just installed the Akeeba Backup component for the website. It is made by the same developer as Joomlapack and has excellent reviews, so I decided to try it for this site.