Testing the whole web site

After spending hours on testing, I was able to correct all the errors, i found in the following sections,
* Shopping cart
* Data transfer from web site to paypal
* Member account creating
* Forum

I spent more than 8 hours on error handling and corrcting.
This is the worst part of web design, as I think.

When the errors come up, there's no one to help me, I have to find my answers by myself.
The forums such as yahoo, oscommerce, siteground, and other private forums and affeliated forums gave a HUGE help through out the error handling process to make the shopping cart a success.

Now, the shopping cart is working perfectly and tested few purchases through paypal.

It seems like the web site is ready to go online.
www.preciousgems.com.au

Integrating Shopping cart with Paypal

Well, this is a huge jump. Its time to start the 24/7 online shop, its time to connect paypal to the web site.
This package is called Paypal Website Payment Standard. Some key features are:
1. Accept Bank Transfers
2. Accept Credit Card Payments
3. Accept Paypal Payments

So, I think this is the best solution for this online shopping web site.

Installation is simple.
Create the paypal account, then just add the Paypal Website Payment Module to the shopping cart, logging in as admin, thats it.

Added Products to the Database

Its time to add products to the database. The client wants us to add few products at first to grab the attention of the customerss to the few products he got, then upload more products depending on the feedback of the customers.

Adding products has to be done through the administration section of the shopping cart,
Check figure 1.

Integrate shopping cart pages to the template structure.

Its time to customize the original shopping cart and integrate the layout to the new template designed. This take a lot of time, since I have to open up all the php files (Figure 1) and play around with the coding one by one(Figure2).
This approximate took me around 4 hours.

Then I have to test all the pages and the links thoroughly.

While transfering the php code to the temple, it was a big hassle to get the css layout right, spent more than 2 hours to verify the layout is working fine.

Web site text content completed

Met up with the client to finalise and finish the text content for "about us" heading, and images for "info" heading.

It was a bit of a hassle to make an appointment with the client since he's busy with his business. So I have to call him up a lot of time to make an appointment and have to be there on time. This experience is priceless, since it helps me to understand and adopt to the real business world.

Even for the next project for studio 2, my plan is to do a real project, probably something else than a web site, but it should bring some money to my pocket.

Cross Browser Compatilbility

The cart is installed and there's a test product uploaded. Now its time to do the cross browser compatibility test.
This site is being made of, PHP, CSS, HTML, and Flash.
I tested the site on the following browsers.
1. Opera 9.27
2. Internet Explorer 7 32bit and 64bit.
3. Internet Explorer 6
4. Mozilla 2.0
5. Mozilla 3.0 (Beta verison)

and after a thorough testing procedure, I found some errors. Some of them are;

1. IE 7 didnt show the CSS layout at all. All the content was aligned to left. After playing around with the php and css scripts, I managed to get it to work.
2. SSL didnt show up sometimes. Managed to correct it

Shopping cart - Done 35%

I have been working on this site for more than 25 hours up to now.


Still programming the shopping cart.

The picture shows the final layout of the site.

Added a login box to each page so that the customers dont have to go to the *particular login page* to log in. (Shown in the picture)

Also installed Secure Socket Layer (SSL) which cost $245. Its already configured in the shopping cart. Check out the *secure login* link , it turns http:// to https://.Thats damn cool!

Installed PHPBB2 Forum on the server . Even though PHPBB3 is out, only version 2 has contributions and extensions on oscommerce forum, so I have to stick with it and I think since version 2 is stable, its a wise choice to install this.

Builsind the shopping cart 35% done

This is the basic layout of the web site's shopping cart. I have done the layout and some added features for the shopping cart up to now. and more to go. :)

Web site is alive and kicking

Bought the hosting server space for $800/year with SSL feature. Then i created an account for the www.preciousgems.com.au domain and its hosted already. At the moment working on the shopping cart. It takes hours to program a proper cart with php.

Learning something every second. !! :)

The Shopping cart

First of all, check the latest update in here. and click "CHECK LEVEL 2" How cool is that? :) you can post your comments. :)

The shopping cart looks uncool as soon as you install the OsCommerce. A demo can be see in here.

So its as uncool as that :) to make it look nice and brilliant, I have to update the code with addons. Damn. it takes a hell of a lot of time, Today I was looking more at the addons and planning which ones to install. If I install the addons without a plan, the whole PHP coding will be a mess and its impossible to rollback. and its a nightmare.

Im planning to install some addons to do the following things at the moment.
1. Make the product display much nicer and professional manner.
2. Should hide the prices as son as the client sees the products, otherwise its like forcing the client to *BUY* which no ones likes to do when forcing.
3. Install Images for PayPal and Credit card tracsactions
4.Add Member login section on right-top of each page.
5. Reduce the number of clicks of the checkout process, since the original process of oscommerce is around 7 clicks and should reduce it to atleast 3. Again addons.


These are the things I feel I should add at the moment. But Im 200% sure that i'll have to add more and play around with coding more in the future. :)

Ah.. Also I changed the look of the main interface pretty much and check it out in here. Man it looks gorgeous. The girl's pic is copyrighted by ShutterShock, But it will be replaced with a HOT girl friend of mine which is an Australian girl. At the same time Jing (Chinese Girl) will be in the web site too. I put the copyrighted pic in there just to show the modeling friends what kind of a pose I'm looking for and when the pics are taken, these copyrighted pics will be removed.

Finally found the best hosting company

Even though I had serversaustralia.com in my mind, I still wanted to go for something better. I didn't stop researching. Then I found this company called AusWeb Hosting . They provide reseller hosting accounts so I can handle upto 20 accounts in one server.

Im planning of buying this because since I do web designing as a business, I can host all my client's web sites in this server and its going to get me some money too. The package is called Starter Pack and it has its own CPanel, and the features are much more better than ServersAustralia . This AusWeb package is about $50/m, but If i can manage to host about 10 web sites, I can cover the cost and get some income too.

Preliminary Presentations were good

Got lots of ideas from the presentations delivered by the students. I think this feature which is showing off what they are doing is very useful. So the students know whether they are on the right track with right people.
I guess I delivered the presentation well covering all the points right.
At the same time, informed the client about web Hosting package which is $9.95, he'll pay for it very soon. Then I can start off the shopping cart.

Its gone online :)

Uploaded the site for css and html testing purposes.
Its sitting on my domain as a sub. check it out. pg link.
The client is very happy with the overall look and feel of the web site.
The color combination scored well by the client.

In search of a web server

After a hell lot of a research I found that hostmonster.com is a very cheap and an updated web server based in America. But what my client wants is to host the web site in an Australian web server. Then i started to research again. Thanks to whiripool forum, I came up with this cheap hosting package which is offered by serversaustralia.com.au. Its just $9.95 per month and the features are brilliant.

Lets get it On.!!

Designed the basic layout of the web site. This home page will be used as a template with minor changes through out the web site. Check it out
Since this web site is about gems, I thought of using light colors such as white and gray, so the gems will be contrasting when shown in the product gallery.

OsCommerce addons are great.

Trying out some addons for oscommerce. addons.oscommerce.com The paypal account installing feature and learning about Secure Socket Layers and Security of the sensitive information. Afterall its my responsibility to ensure the site is high in security.

Layout sketching

Sketched some layouts for the web site. Planning a web site is tricky. Specially a site with a cart. Enjoying the work. :)

Project Proposal & Meeting

Gave a copy of the Project Proposal to the client. He likes the idea and the flow of the web site.
Talked about the pages, and its contents and the process of the shopping cart.
We asked for the images of the gems that is to be put in the web site and he has an idea of taking the photos by a professional photographer. He said he'll let us know about it in few days.

Meeting with the client

Had another meeting with the client to talk more about the web site. At the same time I showed him some previous site I developed such as Raux, DLegal, Concept Tours, Chamara, my portfolio, and some site thats under construction such as kanleo, contractmarketing.

Researching Researching and Researching.

Researching about oscommerce. Playing around with it online. Its fun but php sucks.

Meeting was goooooood! and Money Matters!!

The client is happy with the web site idea, but at 1st he didn't like selling gems online. His point was that people wont buy gems online until they touch it and see. Then I had to show him some live gem shops i bookmarked in my laptop's Mozilla.

After a small chat, he liked the idea of doing the online shop. Then he asked the cost for this site. Yes, I have heard that its very unprofessional to give a quote as soon as a designer get the order. So I said to the client that I'll go home and calculate the hours I will be working and let him know the price by an email.

After calculating the hours, it was around 40. But how much could I charge per hour? Best way is to research some web sites and quote a price slightly lower than other companies.I researched some Aussie web sites to get an idea of quoting a price for an online shop, and they are much expensive than I thought. So I thought of charging about $1000 for this web site.

Shopping cart coding?? No way

Adding a shopping cart to the web site was my main idea. But How?? Im not a php or coldfusion programmer...This was stressing me every minute.

I look up on google, for shopping cart softwares. If I have no choice , i'll have to buy a shopping cart software from the internet, and i felt it isn't a good idea.

Researched more and more.. Then I found this "OsCommerce" web site which looks really simple.Went to its live shops section. WooWWW.. This is what I wanted. An Open source shopping cart. But I was curious whether I can edit the php files in it even though its free. I went to it's "forum" forums.oscommerce.com and read all the postings till my head blasts. It doesn't look hard, and it doesn't look simple either. But I know This Is My ONLY choice unless i buy a software.

Installed it for the 1st time in my server www.u-d-a-r-a.com

Looks alright and Im extremely happy that I found what I really needed.

Then I made up a mock web site to show to the client. Eventhough I didn't really have a good idea of the online shopping cart feature, I made a real looking mock to show the client that i'm experienced in it. :)

Finding a client

I went out looking for a client to do a web site. Through another client of mine, I heard about Mr.Indunil Arambawela, who is a gem seller in Australia. He didn't have a web site but he has already taken his domain name which is http://preciousgems.com.au/

I rang him up and explained about my idea of designing a web site for him and made an appointment to talk about the web site. He liked the idea of designing a web site. The appointment is on the 22nd of March.

I researched for gem sellers web sites and designed a mock site to give him an idea of how his web site will look like.

Project

I'm planning of doing a realistic project for studio1. Afterall its putting what you learn into practice. Few choice I came across are, Doing a short video clip with after effect's help and doing a beautiful web site with some new features. Then i wanted to do a real project to a real client, as it is almost the end of the course and I felt that I should be able to find a real client. I am experienced in doing web sites for real cients, so I thought doing a better web site for a client is a good choice.

Since I go only 2 members in my team, I was able to take the decision of doing a web site becasue i feel im good at designing web sites.