Wow! what a busy week I have just had, I have barely been able to keep up with comments here and I’ve sorely neglected my blogging brethren by not popping in for a cup of tea, sorry about that everyone but I’ve been busy with some commercial projects for work which turned out to be great fun!
I have been working on some ecommerce sites and CMS scripts to get a ‘proof of concept’ site up for a client and it went really well, one of the proofs turned out so well that I think it may become the one that we use! (that’ll save some time when it comes to launch day!)
Part of the ecommerce research I did to see what would work led me to trying lots of different things, one of them being a simple wordpress theme with an added shopping cart which turned out to be a very simple and cheap solution. It worked really well and was up and running in a couple of hours so that got me thinking about writing a series of posts later explaining how to sell products direct from your blog with the minimum amount of fuss.
I also bought a book about AJAX called “The AJAX construction kit”. I bought it after browsing through it’s pages in the local book shop, a nice place where you can sit down and read through any of the books on display before you buy…. or do as I do and use the free wifi provided to get my PDA online and type in the ISBN number on Amazon and then order it for 1/3 of the price of the shop! (teehee)
So far it’s been a great read and I particularly like the way it teaches you how to do things with the construction kit rather than try and teach you every single nut and bolt of Javascript and PHP. It’s a much better way to learn how to get AJAX scripts running on your site and I can see some very useful plugins coming this way when I’ve finished the book. In fact, a way to get me to read more will be to share what I learn with a series of AJAX tutorials here!
I am also considering getting a professional redesign done for here, I think a few hundred dollars will get me a fine looking site. I’m not even sure what I want yet and I had to abandon my idea of doing it all myself since the new work projects came in. Anyone out there use a professional designer and could recommend them?
You were missed! I’ve been trying to catch up on my blog buddies also.
I would love an update on Ajax if you can do so at a later time. I have a business website and have been looking at using Ajax for my Healing Yourself Naturally website. I use oscommerce for my business website and want to see which one I like better. I might have to pick up the book since I believe it will be helpful to me.
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Well, you miss me, because I make a habit in reading your blog
I work with a professional designer, who is also my friend, Mihai. You can see his work here:
http://www.vectorpixel.ro/en/ and you can see also what redesign has made on my other blogs, http://www.viewanimal.net and http://www.mysoulmusic.com. For these 2 blogs I ask him just to redesign the existing elements. He also makes the header in 134u.
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Sorry for all those links, I don’t intented
You can remove the links, and after that, you can delete this post either 
Diana13′s last blog post..13 Things for a Shiny Day
@Opal: you are quick on the draw! I was still wading through the whole set of firefox tabs of my favourite bloggers and you’ve already commented on this post. I will definitely be doing a series of AJAX posts here and you’ll probably like the in depth post I’ll be doing about adding a shopping cart to your blog too. thanks for missing me! I feel all fluffy now
@diana: thanks for the links, i’ll see how they look like!
Have you tried asking for some help in blogging forums? Who knows, somebody might be generous enough to give you a discount.
You are, after all, the author of an all-star plugin!
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thanks for the tip Pelf, I don’t think I need a discount just for making a plugin!
I’m quite happy to pay for a redesign as long as it turns out nice, my recent extra work will fund the design anyway. yey!
Andy!
Great I look forward to reading your review. I’ve though about adding a shopping cart to my main blog but have not got around to it yet. I think I would put it on it’s own page and link to it now and again.
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Explain what you have in mind and I might be able to point you to someone. I’ve just started dabbling in wordpress designs otherwise I’d do it for you myself!
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Neat! I’ve been thinking about an e-commerce lately that I will hopefully start soon using WordPress.
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That means we’ll be seeing a new ajax-based plugin from you right? Very nice.
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Andy, I am very curious about what you did. I know of one currently existing wp plugin for use with e-commerce and while it’s pretty good and fairly easy, the developers lack a great deal of customer service. I need some shopping cart work done myself, but the funds are extremely low. If you have something boiling I’d love to look at it. Do you plan to go public with it soon?
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@ opal: it’s actually quite powerful, you can add a shopping cart widget to your sidebar and you make a separate page for the products and as soon as someone clicks buy now, it AJAX’s it over to the shopping cart.
@ antiB: I’m just after a unique design with web 2.0 colours and look, you know, rounded corners and pretty stripes here and there!
I do want something unique with the sidebars though, it’s a shame to have so much whitespace after the sidebars have finished so I’d like some way of extending the main content into the unused sidebar space (if that makes any sense!)
@ mira: the post will come soon, as soon as I can add it to here and I will take screen shots and type explanations for each step..
@ brown baron: I am really up for adding some AJAX functions to the CL plugin, maybe having it show the last blog post for a user as soon as they have finished entering their blog url and an option to include it or not with their comment..
@ SmockLady: I didn’t make the plugin myself (I did alter a fair bit of it’s code though!) but it will work straight out of the box with some fiddling, hopefully we can save you some time and money by using the one I will explain about..
the post will come soon, it’ll take me a little while to get all the screenshots and explanations up but, it’s coming soon!
Nice work mate. Busy just like most people round christmas. Have a happy holiday.
Richard.
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Thanx for commentluv, a really great wordpress plugin!
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great blog, our shopping cart software is one of the best around – check it http://www.absoluteshoppingcart.co.uk/