Web Design For Idiots » Design and Looks

Need a good book to help you with OSCommerce?

Lindsayanng — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:15:29 +0000

Forget about searching through all of those thousands of addons over at addons.oscommerce.com. Just get this book. When I first started designing my first e-commerce store, I went to Borders and sat on the floor in the web developement section, and read through books upon books about php coding, basic mysql, and even Dreamweaver books. Then I realized that all I needed at the moment was to learn OSCommerce. Yes, if you really want to learn how to completely customize Oscommerce, you should learn php and mysql. But for people who just want to adjust their websites to make them look the way they want, and function the way they want.. then, just learn oscommerce inside and out.

While sitting there, and browsing Border’s online books, I found these two books and ordered them right away.

The first is by Monika Mathe. Its a great book written as a recipe book, and its about as easy to follow as a recipe. It gives you step by step instructions on how it impliment the most nessecary changes to you Oscommerce shop. So instead of going in and out of the addons.oscommerce.com web page, and hoping that you chose the right version without any bugs, refer to this book first.

The second book that I purchased was by David Mercer called OSCommerce: Beginners Edition. This is a great book to start out with. It will teach how things work, and why. Its the best option for those who look at their website, and go “WHAT IN THE HELL??” I’m sure thats most of you reading

This book will walk you through installation and basic customization.. But if you need more. If you want something a little bit more indepth, there is a second book called Oscommerce:Professional Edition

The professional edition with just go deeper into customizations and the inner workings. I ended up skipping the “beginners guide” because I had already spent weeks playing with oscommerce. I wish that I had found these books sooner, simply because those weeks could have simply been days. But you live and learn, and this is what I am showing you!

I hope that these help you all out. I know that most people who end up here want to just get an e-commerce store up and running, and want to do it now. Unfortunately, there is a reason why web developers charge a pretty penny for designing websites. Its because it takes a lot of skill and knowledge, and that does not come cheap. If you can give yourself 3 months to get your website up and running, you can have a really nice looking site that works.. Just use as many resources as you can, and start with these books. I promise you that you will get your money’s worth out of them.

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Fixed Width Centered Website

Lindsayanng — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:54:52 +0000

Want to take your entire website and make it a fixed with and have it centered in the middle of everyone’s screen? Well, you should. The great thing about having a fixed width and centered site is that it will look exactly the same on everyone’s computer monitor. It’s a great thing, because fluid websites that take up the entire width of a screen can look great on your monitor, and then you go look at it on a lower resolution monitor, and all of a suddent you have to scroll sideways to see all of it.

So this is going to be one of the EASIEST things that I will teach you, and it will change the look of your website GREATLY. This works on ALL TYPES of websites. Blogs, oscommerce, basic HTML. It does not matter.

do this..
AT THE VERY BEGINING of your HTML code, after the tag, add this:

YOUR WEBSITE CONTENT WILL ALL

BE BETWEEN THESE TWO THINGS.

EVERY SINGLE BIT OF IT – EXCEPT

OF COARSE THE STUFF IN THE HEAD

Don’t DO IT! as cool as it might be!!

Lindsayanng — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:53:03 +0000

Things you REALLY need to stay away from when designing your blog/website.
Read this page to seee the things you WANT to stay away from, and to find out if your web page sucks!

Do NOT put white text on a black background. It is IMPOSSIBLE to read and readers will run as soon as they see it. Use grey on black instead

Just cause its a cool gadget does not mean your blog/website needs it. There are so many plugins and addons and snippets of codes for any type of website. Unless it ads functionality that your visitors will appreciate, fight the urge to add it.

Do NOT add music to your website. These days, everyone already has their own music on their computers. If they way to play it they will. Also, studies have shown that most adults surf the web while at work, do you really want to get a reader in trouble by blasting your latest favorite.

Don’t kill your readers with ads. I know you would like to make some extra money off of them, but the real value in your blog is it’s readers. If there are no readers, there’s no blog. So keep them to a minimum and strategically place them to be non-invasive

Clearly label your navigation. There is such a thing called MYSTERY MEAT NAVIGATION. Does your website have it?

Animated gifs are for 1990, and they should stay there! Blinking things and animations over your cursor are NOT cool and do NOT add quality to your site content. (see example here )

Do not try to stuff too much content on your main page. Instead, link to the content from a single, well defined button. This will free up space for some more important things

Do not leave the default page titles on there. When you look at your tabs in your browser, you see a custom name that I created. You can do this too! Its very easy – it’s called the TITLE tag and it is in your head section of your web page

If you want a COMPLETE checklist of “Does My Website Suck?” GO HERE

I do not mean to hurt anyone’s feelings, but you have a website to get people to look at it. Make sure those people ENJOY their experience so they come back again and again.

Want some honest feedback and critique,

POST YOUR WEBSITE HERE

I will be honest and give useful answers, but do not post if you are sensitive. I will be blunt, and I am known for being blunt in giving feedback, but never mean.

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Inner Website Advertising

Lindsayanng — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 04:58:03 +0000

Did this little graphic catch your eye? It’s simple, to the point, but it is eye catching, RIGHT?

I do a LOT of feedback posts in forums for people’s websites. The main reason I do it is because in looking at their websites and critiquing them, I am getting new ideas for my websites. One of the main things I seem to recommend to everyone is inner website advertising.

You must be thinking, “They already made it to my website, why do I have to advertise to them on my own site?”

My response to you would be simply, just because people made it TO your website doesn’t mean that they will purchase. Google Analytics has something called “Bounce Rate.” This is something that you should pay CLOSE attention to, but you MUST have google analytics installed on your website first. So head over here and get it working. Its not too hard, but if you need help, just email me.

“Bounce Rate” is when people go on your website and then just leave. They do not click any deeper and they decide that they don’t want to be there without reading into any of your content. The average bounce rate for a blog is around 60% so don’t feel bad if yours is up there. It is ok. However, you would not want a 90% bounce rate because that means almost all of the people that visit your site just leave.

So the goal is to get people on your website and then get them to click further into your website, and Inner Website Advertising is the way to do it.

I see a LOT of people who have an e-commerce website that, when you go to the home page (or landing page) there is a paragraph or two of text explaining their mission statement and their strive for excellence. Now, this is all fine and dandy, but when you think about it, when was the last time you read anything on an e-commerce site other than a product description. And with blogs, when was the last time you read through the entire list of text links in those side bar columns? Rarely.

So your goal is to get people to CLICK. So what you should do is look at the text that you are using to get across your idea and pull just a line or a few words out of it, turn it into a headline, and make it fun and enticing.

Blogs are all about words, so having a lot of text on your home page isn’t a bad thing, but if you have pages that you really want people to read. Maybe its a mission statement, or something about yourself, or your favorite blog post. You should create a funky little graphic with some enticing text to get people to go there.

If you want to see an example of inner website advertising, go here. You can see on the side column there is an advertisement for BRIDAL REGISTRY. Its a graphic that could go on ANY website and entice people to click to ours, but it is being well used right there on the front of it’s own website.

You can see LOADS of examples by just clicking through some of the most popular websites.
If your a blogger, check out these:
Huffington Post You can see that even when you are on a post about one thing, there are pictures with text that are trying to get you to click on the next post up there at the top. AND on the right there’s a box called “10 Top Huffington Post” with pictures! Adding images makes a world of difference!
Gizmodo has little advertisements right in it’s header with little blurbs of posts and the little “bestmodo” button is a little addition as well.
It might be as simple as changing your template, or just adding an image into a widget, but it will make a WORLD of difference in not only your bouce rate, but also the overall LOOK of your site.

For E-Tailers
You can look at just about ANY big time e-tailer, but I will post a link just because.
Wal-Mart You don’t get any bigger than Wal-Mart, and right there you see a barrage of graphics and advertisements for their own website to get you to click. If Wal-mart is doing it, that means there HAS to be something to it.

E-tailers have a little more as far as content to work with. Sometimes it’s as easy as putting a product on your home page as a featured product, or offering free shipping using a graphic instead of text.

No matter WHAT type of website you have, you should realize that internet browsers are visual people. They get pulled in by fancy graphics and enticing head lines. If you can put those on your home page in order to get people to delve deeper into your blog, you will see a lower bounce rate, more subscribers, and hopefully more sales.

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Easy way to change ANY website image

Lindsayanng — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:48:23 +0000

There is a SUPER simple way to change any image that you see on your website and make it into something complete custom, and guess what, IT DOESN’T REQUIRE ANY CODING!!!!

Its a simple 9 step process.

1. Go to your website and find the page with the image that you want to change
2. Right click (or if using a mac ctrl click) and click SAVE IMAGE to your desktop.
3. Right click (or if using a mac ctrl click) on the image and choose PROPERTIES – this will open a new pop up window. There you will see all the information you need to know about this image
4. Look at the IMAGE LOCATION and copy and paste it or write it down somewhere so you remember
5. Open the image in your favorite graphic program and build a new button (on a new layer if you can) over the old one and delete the layer with the old image.
6. Click SAVE (you HAVE to keep the exact same file name and type. All osc buttons are .gif)
7. Open your FTP program and upload the button the to folder that you copied and pasted or wrote down from the IMAGE LOCATION properties window.
8. Visit your website and now go to the page that the image was on, hold down SHIFT and click refresh and your new button will be there!!
9. Repeat steps 7-8 for every image on your website.

Thats it. Its totally easy and completely fool proof. By building the button OVER the old one and deleting the old you, you are making sure that your button is as close to the same size as possible.

So go crazy replacing buttons, and other images. You can literally do this with ANY type of website out there. All images reside in a folder somewhere on your server, and the code is calling for that particular image with that particular name in that particular spot. So when you just change the image and nothing else, you are STILL calling for that particular image, but you made the image LOOK different.

IS IT STARTING TO MAKE SENSE NOW??

So if you have wordpress and desperately want to change your header but theres no easy way to do it, USE THIS PROCESS.. If you have oscommerce and HATE those blue buttons, USE THIS PROCESS.. It works for ANYTHING

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Step AWAY from the osc template!!

Lindsayanng — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:19:05 +0000

Here is probably the most important thing you should know when deciding how you want your oscommerce store to look like.

If you have used wordpress or any other blogging system before, you have been conditioned to think that templates are a great way to get a somewhat unique looking website without too much hassle and coding.

Well, in the world of OSCommerce, that could not be further from the truth! Templates can really kill your website!

1. A template will never be entirely unique. This may or may not be a big deal to some, but if your company is focused on being cutting edge and unique, you should stay away from the template.

The people who create templates can be very lazy. I mean, the only way to pump out so many “different” designs is to cut corners.

2. You do not know when that template was built. For all you know, that template can be using the oldest version of oscommerce available. This means you will have 2 major problems. You are open to all of the known security holes that have since been fixed by the developers. ALSO, a lot of the new contributions that will be what you depend on to add functionality will simply not work on the older installs. This issue can MOST of the times be fixed by going through the upgrade process, but wasn’t the reason you purchased a template to save you time?

3. People who create templates COMPLETE hack into the oscommerce code. It may look pretty, but it can be VERY messy behind the scenes. This will make it VERY frustrating when you are trying to look for that piece of code that someone told you to change in the forums to get a certain look, and adding contributions again, will be a nightmare.

4. FINALLY, templates rarely have the same layout as a stock oscommerce. The people who create templates will completely remove a file and add a new one in it’s place. They will change around the code so much that no one but the person who created the template will be able to help you. And guess what, THAT will always cost you money – if you can even get a hold of them.

I have seen templates that are completely devoid of the column_left.php or column_right.php.. Or sometimes instead of having a header.php it will have a top.php All of these things will really confuse a newbie when you are trying very hard to follow along in a tutorial or in the instructions of a contribution.

I have personally never used a template, but I have tried to help people who have them. In my experience, you actually have to be BETTER at coding than a the average person because you will REALLY need to look only at the code to be able to tell what is going on.

My suggestion to those who want a nice look but are completely lost when it comes to designing a website, CHECK OUT THIS E-BOOK. I even dedicated and entire post about it here if you want to see more. I have it, and i used it and i learned a lot from it.

That little book will give you a quick, step by step guide to creating an interesting looking layout that you an now completely customize. Also, while you create your website using that book, and occasionally read some of the posts here, you will get real world knowledge of the inner workings of oscommerce.

Most people are a LEARN BY DOING type of person, and if you are one of those, spend the few bucks and actually DO a customized website and you will learn A LOT.

So thats my little warning to you all.. PLEASE stay away from the templates. There are a few out there that are pretty good and have a solid core, but DO YOUR HOMEWORK! And if you really want a unique site that you don’t have to do any work for, HIRE A DESIGNER!

this post is dedicated to Chris

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Adding a background to entire column

Lindsayanng — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 03:40:53 +0000

First time to your site. Nice work! I’ve been searching the ole osforum and made a post for my question, yet no love shown as of yet. Here’s the dealy-O. I’d like to extend the light green background on the left column of my mothers site, so that it extends to the bottom for the page. OR – let’s take it up a notch – put a background picture behind the entire left column. I just hate the way it just stops and there’s just blank white.
-Chris

Well, when you first look at the site, your instinct would be to just stretch the entire category box to reach the footer and there you have a consistent color. This would not be wise. The reason is, once this box takes up the ENTIRE left column, you will not be able to add another box to that column in the future.

There is a MUCH better option, and that option is to give the ENTIRE column a background color to match the background color of the green categories box. The solution in the long run is better, but it might be a tad time consuming.

What you want to do is start by creating an id for the left column. You will insert this code into your catalog/stylesheet.css at the bottom after the last ‘}’ We will call the id “left” and give it a background color of PINK. You can change the color to anything you want.

Here is your style code:

#left { background-color:#E41B4B; }
You will change the color # to suit your own needs.

Now you need to tell the left column to use that id. This is where it might get a little tedious, but not in the LEAST difficult.

Go to your catalog/index.php file and search for this:

You will then change the code to include the id that we created in the that holds the entire left column as seen here:

And that is IT!! You are DONE………. with the index.php page. OOPS!! Did i forget to mention that this was tedious?? Well, once you have finished this, you will be completely comfortable with it.

Now you have to go to EVERY file in your catalog folder (not those in the sub folders though) and find the EXACT same code and add the style id to those as well.

The code will look exactly the same in every folder so you don’t have to get worried about searching around for it. It will always be directly above the following:

So this is what you would see before in a stock install of oscommerce:

and this is after we make the left column PINK!!

BONUS

If you want to add a background IMAGE to this, you would simply change the code that you add into the stylesheet.css to this:

#left { background:url('yoururlthere.com/picture.jpg'); }

HAVE FUN!!! Any questions, please post your question in a comment, or CONTACT ME!!

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A rare Gem in a Sea of Information

Lindsayanng — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 03:33:32 +0000

I think I found it. The perfect solution to teaching yourself HOW to make oscommerce LOOK good.

We all know that the stock oscommerce will NOT turn your e-commerce business into a world dominating retailer. Its made to be a skeleton which you should build on.. The thing is, unless you are an expert coder, you can’t just jump in and make it look like the professional store that you want. You can have all of the graphic design skills in the world, but you NEED to know how to change what you see on your screen into what you see in your mind.

So this is the book i URGE you to pick up:
oscbook designing oscommerce

WHY buy a book when you can get all the info you ever want on the internet for free??
Well, thats an easy one. Because contrary to popular belief, forums do NOT give you instant feedback.. Books do! The only thing you have to do with a book is look in the index. With a forum you have to first search your question, then weed through all of the useless posts, then when you can’t find the answer, ask the question and HOPE someone sees it before it gets buried in the sea of useless stupid ANNOYING questions like “How do I change the text on my website”
BOOKS will always be sitting there on your shelf, so when you need to re-teach something to yourself, you don’t have to pull your hair out because you didn’t bookmark that page.
IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN GETTING STARTED MAKING YOUR SITE LOOK LIKE YOU ENVISION IT – click the BUY NOW button to go to paypal and checkout to get your book ASAP

If you want more information, you can visit the writer’s website HERE

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