particle Report post Posted July 9, 2012 I've been working on an updated website for many months now, but only got around to replacing my old site just last week. This new site will allow for a shopping cart purchase system, instead of the old order form I used previously. I'm hoping the instant-pay isn't a turn-off to repeat customers, and I hope new customers won't mind it either... Anyway, what do you think? Anyone see any room for improvement? http://www.adamsleatherworks.com/ Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Northmount Report post Posted July 9, 2012 (edited) Home page came up okay. I attempted to navigate to Products - Belts, no response, then a database error, then could not reconnect. Using Firefox 13.0.1. (Using a 25 Mbps connection.) Edit: It just came back up, looks great. CTG Edited July 9, 2012 by northmount Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
particle Report post Posted July 9, 2012 Interesting - thanks for looking. I have been messing with the site over my lunch break, so maybe that had something to do with it. I just checked the belt page and it came up fine, albeit a little slow - the ecommerce plugin is rather slow and heavily embedded into the template file so not much I can do about it. I need to update the gallery page too - it's pulling too many images onto the same page and taking way too long to load. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cyberthrasher Report post Posted July 9, 2012 The whole thing looks great though. Admittedly, I didn't take a lot of time to analyze individual aspects, but it looked very professional. But, it irritated me too since I'm working on my own site right now and I'm actually having to learn some coding that I never wanted to learn in order to get it done. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
particle Report post Posted July 9, 2012 I hear ya! I used to enjoy playing with the code, so long as I was surrounded by people that knew a lot more than me so I could get coding help. That's when I gave Concrete 5 a try, which is what I used on my previous site. This new site uses Wordpress. It's pretty simple to learn, and there are a lot of great looking templates out there. If you're not super stoked to do your own coding, you owe it to yourself to try a CMS website. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
RMB Custom Leather Report post Posted July 10, 2012 (edited) Looks good! What shopping cart did you use? Both of mine are also wordpress sites. The site ran slow but I have the same problem so I understand. My hosting had some instructions on how to speed mine up, just haven't got around to it yet. Edited July 10, 2012 by RMB Custom Leather Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
particle Report post Posted July 10, 2012 Thanks! It's woocommerce. I've tried all the stuff I could find, which helped a bit. Www.gtmetrix.com gave it a B speed rating last I checked, but it fluctuates a bit. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cyberthrasher Report post Posted July 10, 2012 I hear ya! I used to enjoy playing with the code, so long as I was surrounded by people that knew a lot more than me so I could get coding help. That's when I gave Concrete 5 a try, which is what I used on my previous site. This new site uses Wordpress. It's pretty simple to learn, and there are a lot of great looking templates out there. If you're not super stoked to do your own coding, you owe it to yourself to try a CMS website. That's actually what I'm doing right now. I'm using Umbraco CMS on my own server. I decided to get acquainted with it because our new web-admin on campus is going to use it for our new web server deployment. Since I'm the network/server administrator, I need to be more familiar with it than just knowing how to run the database and the hardware/OS. I've spent the last week trying to figure out how to get a somewhat nice looking lightbox gallery working and finally got it figured out last night (with a compromise on the gallery package, but I can learn more and change it later). It's a lot harder when you don't know anything about web design and the different languages that go with it Umbraco is pretty powerful since you can have complete control over EVERYTHING and not just what the application designers have allowed you to change. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bluesman1951 Report post Posted July 13, 2012 Thank you this was a treat . I went every where tried all the stuff and it worked flawless .Watched the videos and found them very informative and very well done . Only one comment : No need to tell any one you do this in your garage . Your work speaks for itself .You have my compliments and a standing ovation from me . Bluesman1951 I've been working on an updated website for many months now, but only got around to replacing my old site just last week. This new site will allow for a shopping cart purchase system, instead of the old order form I used previously. I'm hoping the instant-pay isn't a turn-off to repeat customers, and I hope new customers won't mind it either... Anyway, what do you think? Anyone see any room for improvement? http://www.adamsleatherworks.com/ Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cobra Steve Report post Posted July 13, 2012 Hi Eric. Looks really good to me. Easy to navigate and easy to understand. Good job! Steve Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mlapaglia Report post Posted July 14, 2012 Eric, On the whole it looks good. Two minor issues. One, the main menu at the bottom of the page is not where people normally expect to see it. That may bother some people. Two, I looked at the Avenger page and the Effect Wipes on the main picture is very slow and annoying. It might speed it up some if you can turn off the wipe transition. Just a thought. It looks much better than anything I could have done. Michael. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cyberthrasher Report post Posted July 14, 2012 One, the main menu at the bottom of the page is not where people normally expect to see it. That may bother some people. That's how a lot of CMS pages are designed now. You have the navigation bar at the top of the page with expanding menus under each header and the footer navigation as kind of a site map for when you get to the bottom of the page - that way you don't have to scroll all the way back up to go somewhere. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mojoewrkn Report post Posted July 20, 2012 Hi Eric, Website looks great and thank you for the videos. The one problem I had was when clicking through the zoomed in photos when I get to the last picture and try to go to the next I get an error. Other than that it worked great! Joe Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
particle Report post Posted July 20, 2012 Thanks for checking it out Joe - For some reason the product pages are showing one extra photo when enlarged that doesn't actually exist. I'll look into it - thanks for pointing it out! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Techsew Ron Report post Posted August 10, 2012 Eric, I like the simple, clean design. Easy to browse products, add to a cart, calculate shipping. Pages seem to load pretty slowly though. Your main page is great, nicely displayed large photos. Good work! Ron Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
particle Report post Posted August 28, 2012 (edited) Ugh - dang hackers! I had customers complaining they couldn't access my site. Turns out one of my files was hacked, causing redirects to other sites. I was never able to detect the problem, because it was working fine for me. To make matters worse, I went on vacation for a week in the hills of SE Oklahoma and I had no internet access (except for my iPhone) almost the entire time because a bad storm knocked out the cabin's modem. A friend of mine pointed out a website that will scan your site for you (for free) and let you know if you have any problems, and if problems are detected, it gives you a bit of information to help you fix the problem. Anyway, I decided the best approach was to simply start over from scratch. I erased my entire website from my FTP folder, erased my database, changed all my passwords and rebuilt everything from scratch. What a pain!!! If anyone is interested in trying out the free site scanner for their own site, it's http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/scanner/. Edited August 28, 2012 by particle Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Horrrk Report post Posted September 5, 2012 Hi Eric Just been and looked at your website..looks very professional, as do the holsters I looked at.. You have clearly spelt out the payment setup too..something which I've read, can cripple some of the talented folk on here.. I also like the links section at the bottom, for portfolio pictures, books, etc..but..when I clicked on the tweet links on the bottom, it came up with Error 404 - page not found Apart from that, looking good.. Regards Phil Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
particle Report post Posted September 5, 2012 Thanks Phil - I hadn't noticed the tweet problem. In case you weren't aware, my site was hacked a few weeks back, so I completely erased and rebuilt the entire site from scratch. Those tweet posts are linking to pages on my previous site. Guess I better start tweeting I can push those off my page! Thanks for the feedback on the site - I appreciate it! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
David8386 Report post Posted September 5, 2012 I looked through the website today and it is very well laid out and has some awesome projects displayed. Good job! David Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
