And this is a candid post (the usual techie rant, notes to remind me when I revisit what it took to rebuild something) … 🙂
This T-Shirt Shop has moved so many different times … lemme count the times ….
- From Shopify
- To WooCommerce
- From One webhosting company to this one now (BlueHost)
- From one Server to another
- From one domain name to another domain name / subfolder.
… three or (was it four?) times of migrating 34 products and product variations (each t-shirt design can have as much as 80 different variations – so if you are selling a variable product – different sizes and different colors and different designs, you have to check and re-check that if your customer is clicking ONE specific color for ONE specific design, for ONE specific size, we have to make sure that the picture on your product page would be as what you described.
… I tried doing the “techie” way of migrating – exporting, importing, and all that jazz… lost about 48 billable hours doing that because it kept on piling up the database (and corrupting) the database with all these different variations (it was crazy, one product I noticed had about 100+ different variations!)- it’s just a simple shirt, ya know! And then so I went with … okay … just start from scratch!).
Brand new database
Brand new WP installation
Same old products, pictures, posts and pages, and payment gateway, prices and tax calculations and shipping clauses. Same privacy policies and all that good stuff.
And then 24 hours later, like NOW, it’s back up. 🙂
.. and it’s been fun! 🙂
Take-aways .. Lessons Learned ..
If you are a small business owner, yes, of course you need a website. (Who doesn’t have a website these days?)
Some may have an FB Business Page, and that’s it. But you do not own the site – you just have a page. That is not online presence.
Some new business owners don’t want to deal with the technical overwhelm that may come to a new business owner – they went into business to “sell something” – not to be a techie, because building a website, takes time. It can be a business-owner’s time, or a web-developer’s time. It takes time, nonetheless.
Now a new Business Owner building a Shopping Cart? Â
Now THAT requires dedication!
What does that take?
- Good product pictures in good, I mean, large pixel dimensions. (Each product here has about 1000 x 1000 px). A way to discourage copying – put your logo in EVERY picture. There are graphic designers one can hire and then those will just be your “official product pictures”.
- A good Content Management System (CMS). WordPress is what we use. It’s the most robust, and yes, user-friendly, among the CMS’s we’ve worked on. WordPress is also OpenSource and free and highly customizable. There are “one-click installs” available from webhosting companies, but in my own personal experience, I have just noticed that “some” – not – all installations, have a whole lot of ads in there – makes me think to just go back to the original creators of WordPress (WP) and do your own pure – core – ads free – installation.  WordPress has a pretty good documentation on how to do it. They even have that famous “5 minute installation”. THAT is much easier than hunting down malicious codes or conflicting plugins that auto-update themselves and can really wreck up a website! Sometimes, you think you build a website and then somebody else messes it up without you knowing it, or a customer just tells you your website is all out of whack! So doing your own installation, will help avoid the “avoidable” issues.
- A good stable and core WP Theme. When you install WP, it comes with at least 3 WP-designed themes. Images included and stored in your WP Database installation. You can use that and just customize that. I’ve had many experiences with using themes, with all their nice free pictures that are housed in the theme developers’ websites. The issue with that though, is IF and WHEN they change those pictures, they also change on YOUR website! So be careful with the themes you may use which has the images NOT housed in your own website. Since you don’t know when or if it changes. There are companies that give out nice free website images, you can check them out in the “Credits” section on this website – we use some of them. They are free. Majority of our pictures here on the website though are original copyright pictures.
- For this store, I use “either” the theme I myself created called “Simplified” or a “WordPress” created theme.
- For the Online Shopping Cart – I use WooCommerce. I have also used Shopify in the past. How does it compare? Shopify is a “Software As A Service” (SAAS) paid platform.  WooCommerce is a “WordPress Shopping Cart Plug-in” and free OpenSource platform. And in BOTH platforms, the business owner (or their staff), will have to put in the time to upload pictures and create product descriptions and all that good stuff. What happens if you decide to stop using Shopify? You can pause your shop (for a fee of course). For me personally, since I know there’s ALSO WooCommerce, I switched over to WooCommerce. They also have a free theme called “StoreFront”. I like OpenSource and there’s a lot of developers working together to create something beneficial to the world. 🙂 There’s a whole lot of documentation you can read and tutorial videos that can help you, if you want to try it out. (I’m not affiliated with WooCommerce, I just use their Cart because it’s something I can work on too!). And the Simplified theme I created works with it too!
- Okay .. so I guess it’s time to hit the “publish” button. This is what php developers, or anyone, can do. 🙂