A customer asked me today about transforming his site into something he could maintain himself.  I pointed him to WordPress.org.  He asked about setting it up himself and their support record.

We actually use their software quite a bit.  It’s good software and it’s widely used and respected.

The setup time I mentioned, 1-3 hours, is for us to install and configure it for you.  We install the software, we create a template, we convert your site.  In general, we don’t need any of your time to get it going.

Can you do it on your own?  Probably.  Although it can be tricky, it’s not difficult.  It’s just a matter of figuring out what to put where. Also, during the setup process, you do need to understand how the code works and what it does in order to get your site configured properly.

Re: support.  Since I don’t use their monthly service, I have never called them for support.  In general, the companies that sell services
for $10-15 per month can’t do that and provide decent detailed personal support.

So, you want to product catalog and shopping cart system? Good for you! My advice: if you don’t absolutely have to pay for a custom cart or buy a commercial solution, DON’T.

This particular problem–how to track information about products and how to complete sales–is well understood and not at all worth spending a lot for a custom solution.

We install, recommend and customize ZenCart for this type of need. ZenCart is a well tested, tried and true solution. It’s highly customizable and, best of all, it’s free. Hooray!

Contact us for more information on it.

I’ve been playing with WordPress as a new blogging solution. It’s pretty darn good. The template system is useful and the code is pretty accessible so it’s easy to get in and make it do what you need it to do.

We have been working on a transfer form Agora to Zen Cart for a client. We’ve done a few Zen Cart implementations, but this one is requiring a bit more in the way of custom code. Zen Cart’s built in classes weren’t quite enough, so we created a couple of new classes and added what we needed to the mix. Super fun: hijacking the cart for any member of a particular category.