ETEC 692: Work on Shopping Cart/Met with Client

Date:  June 5, 2009 from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Hours: 10

Activities:

  1. Add Facebook app; tested it and had to move shopping cart of screens as it conflicted with thumbnail generated
  2. Cleaned up random glitches with display
  3. Met with client and showed shopping cart features
  4. Explained categories, product listing, how to enable downloads, and shopping cart/Virtuemart features
  5. Enabled Instant Payment Notification in client’s PayPal account–did this without having to upgrade to PayPal Pro!  NO $30 a month fee :-)
  6. First live run was failure–wrong email associated with account
  7. More live runs of shopping cart with PayPal–failure as only worked 2 out of 3 times
  8. Removed notify.php from administrator area and copied it to root with a link inside to administrator–folder permissions might have been messing with IPN communication
  9. Success!
  10. Uploaded several more lessons–client did as I did scaffolded instruction
  11. Spoke about content needed to be added
  12. Spoke about Google Ad words for him to put ads on Google with specific key words
  13. Looked at competitor’s sites and spoke about difference in business model between his own and theirs
  14. Showed client how to use PrintScreen and GIMP with smudge tool, to blur out identifying information and make directions for cart checkout–PayPal module is somewhat confusing–might need to formal tutorial on how to do this as I don’t think client will remember
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2 Responses to “ETEC 692: Work on Shopping Cart/Met with Client”

  • Kenny Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 9:52 am

    Hey Mark, the website looks great! How did you do the log-in? I might need to use that for my schoolonthego.com website I have set up for my thesis project. Are you going to present this quarter? You are doing an awesome job!

  • Mark Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 12:33 pm

    Kenny, thanks for the compliment. This website has been tough–it feels like a thesis :-) . I didn’t create the login, but I styled it. I’m using Joomla, a free, open source CMS. It’s been interesting as Joomla is almost intuitive, but that almost is such a pain. For example, I’ve found that everything is backwards. Meaning, it’s like backward curriculum mapping with the structure. You have to create content first before a menu for example as the menu must link to content. Yet, you better make sure you’ve created sections and categories before all of that. Basically, Joomla is great if you have the whole website mapped out beforehand and work backwards, which has been a pain. That being said, it’s powerful once you get it going. The shopping cart fiasco has been a whole other mess, but if you want to pay good money it becomes easier. My problem has been to try to keep my client’s cost at a minimal in case his business doesn’t take off, right away at least.

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