Web Design For Idiots

I have officially been working with oscommerce for 2 years now, and I started by learning the good old fashioned way – that is MAKING MISTAKES!! Thank god that I have the good frame of mind to backup my work before i even START thinking about making changes to my site.. But here’s the thing, there are a few tips that can make doing things in oscommerce a tad bit easier.

First is ALWAYS MAKE A BACKUP because you WILL mess up, and you WILL cry long hours if you don’t
Second, USE A MERGE PROGRAM! Its so obvious, but yet people still forget that they exist. When you install contributions, dont go through the code piece by piece, just open the contribution file and your file side by side and merge them. You can use WinMerge(for PC) or DiffMerge(for mac) BOTH are free, and both will save you a LOT of time.

and FINALLY. GOOGLE YOUR ISSUES!! There is nothing more annoying than going to a user forum and seeing the same issue posted over and over again. And the thing is, these people THINK they will get instant gratification because they THINK people will just come by and give them an answer. Well, that’s rarely true. If you simply go head over to google and type in the following into the search form:
site:forums.oscommerce.com then paste your error here
You will get ALL of the threads on that site that reference your particular error.

Now there is one bit of info that I have to give you that might be common sense to one person, but not to the others.. When you copy your error, DONT include your file path. No one else in the world is going to have the same file path as you. So JUST include the error. PLEASE.

We all know that the user forums are VERY helpful, but we all have to remember that oscommerce is FREE and that the support given is literally people giving their own FREE TIME to answer your questions. No one is ENTITLED to any support, and no one has to give YOU customer support, but we do. We all have a passion for what we do, and I personally am a strong believer in that you should put back what you take away. So if you are getting answers to all of your questions in the forum, then you should also answer other people’s questions. Who cares HOW newbie you are, you will still have someone else in there that has a question that you already answered. So when you get a problem solved, head over to the installation or general forum and see what newbie YOU can help!

So that’s it for now. It know its been a while since I updated, but i promise, i will be back more often. I will try to update at minumum once a week. In the meantime, if you have questions about oscommerce, please post them here or CONTACT ME I will be happy to answer them.

Want to know who is offering this awesome content? Here it is! Someone who is relatively new to web design. I am new enough to still remember how absolutely frustrating it was to try and get anything done in this field, but have also been around long enough to be able to help those that are where I was a year ago. Aside from web design, I run the office of my dad's engineering business, and do book keeping by trade. I love my pets.. All 6 cats, 1 peg legged dogs, and 1 hedgehog. LOVE THEM!! Oh yea, and my husband. He lets me chase my dreams and I let him do the same. We are happy people because of it. Read more from this author

Tags: easy web design, help with oscommerce, learn oscommer, OsCommerce, oscommerce newbies, oscommerce tips, shared SSL, web design for newbies, web design tips and tricks, web hosting, web hosts

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 7:20 pm and is filed under How-To, OsCommerce, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.