It – Is – Alive!

Well, OK, it’s not really "alive" – it’s more like really interactive. ‘It’ being our new web site.

I’ve been working on this project for about three years now. My initial attempt came crashing down like an imploding building when the programmer I hired turned out to be… let’s say; not as reputable as I’d been led to believe. We’re still licking our wounds over that fiasco so I was not real eager to dive right back in again.

Back in the dark ages; in the days of DOS and dinosaurs, I used to be a pretty fair computer programmer. I took some college courses and learned to use half a dozen different languages. This was to help me get ahead in the job I was working in at the time. But this was before Windows™ so none of what I learned there is really of any use today. But it did give me a familiarity with how things work inside a program. Since then I have taught myself to hand code HTML for building web sites, and have picked up a passing familiarity with PHP, a scripting language used in building databased and interactive web pages. So I thought I might have what it takes to set something up myself by modifying a stock script.

I examined many shopping cart programs and scripts, but I’ll spare you the details of that journey and tell you instead that I settled on one called Zen-Cart. It is an Open Source project, making it both affordable and easily modified.

I installed the script first on our Treasures Of Appalachia web site because the traffic there was nowhere near the level of our woodworking site and would not inconvenience so many people if I blew something up. Since PHP does not run in a Windows™ environment I could not build and test a site on my local machine like I can for HTML sites, it had to be done on-line from my leased web server space.

That went well and I learned quite a bit. One of the most important things I learned was that I was NOT up to programming this thing to run the woodworking site the way I hoped it would. So I found Chris Eden of Absolute Solutions. He lives in Bristol England and is one of the Zen-Cart project programmers. He knows this thing inside and out and has been very helpful in getting the new web site up and running. We have a long way to go before it is fully functional, but what we have up works well. We’ll add new functions as we can that will make life even easier for Smoky Mountain Woodworks and our customers.

What we have accomplished to date is to replicate the look and feel of the old web site – because customer feedback indicated that our customers really liked the ‘homey’ feel of it – while adding many new functions. To list them all would probably bore you to death so I’ll just point out the most major improvements.

We can now “build” a product within the system by listing all the materials and hardware used in that product in a hidden section of that product’s listing and the web page will update the price of that product as prices for our materials change. By doing so, the product listing pages will actually provide cost estimates to our customers based on your preferences. The price listed on the page is a ‘starting at’ price, make your option selections from the drop down lists to customize the piece, then add it to your shopping cart to see the new estimated price. You can then delete that version and continue shopping or leave it there and continue to set up a different version. Add multiple versions to your cart to compare their pricing.

We are able to offer a richer variety of options to our customers and (hopefully) not make it so confusing.

Our new payment processor, tied to your customer account, allows us to simplify the periodic payments that are required. Once you enter your credit card information to pay the deposit, we will not have to ask you for it again for the remaining payments. We will e-mail you for approval, but you will not have to go through the whole rigmarole of logging in and entering your card number and address each time. Just say, “Yes, go ahead.”

And you have access to your customer account to review your order’s status and communications to date and to review or update your name and address information. This area is securely password protected, and all credit card information is encrypted and stored in a separate database on a completely different server from the web site.

Navigation has been simplified because important information is now displayed in small boxes along the left hand side of most every page. Information such as definitions or detailed discussions of a topic or word are still linked to the text of each page and those words change color when you place your cursor over them, but otherwise blend in so they are not distracting while you read.

As it always has, our web site offers a tremendous amount of information to those who wish to seek it. Much of this is supportive in nature, but some is critical and we’ve tried to insure that each buyer will see the critical information needed to make informed decisions.

As I said, this is a work in progress, so look for more improvements in the near future. We hope that you will enjoy our new web site. Your comments are welcome.

Till next time,

Doug-Bob