This is my blog about the trials and tribulations of setting up our web site.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Just seeing if this will get my Mom's site reindexed

This is a rather B.S. post just to see if having a site listed here will get my Mom's web site reindexed by the SE's. It has been neglected and has fallen into oblivion so I am moving it to my server and going to see if what I can do. Please feel free to check it out if you want.

Friday, November 25, 2005

Just when you think you made a really dumb move

I was working on my site today and wanted to get of a few 's that were at the beginning of some lines and use cellpadding instead. A easy task but when I hit the search and replace button I soon realized it was NOT set for the current document but for the entire site. Sitting there watching disappear from every page in my entire site, well, the panic started to set in. I called my host and of course the screen was still working away destroying ALL my hard work. I asked him if he had a backup as I had not made on in a few days, luckily he did have a daily backup. It was still working away when I realized that it only does it on the local site and NOT the one on the server. Deep breath .... relax .... all is okay. :)

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Version #2

I have been working on version #2 of my web site. The reason for this was there were a lot of functions that I wasn't using, and a lot of functions I found out I should have. Always a work in progress. When JR's site was built I liked the 760px width but after a year my computer screen has moved past that and I am sure lots of others have also, I was finding it looked smaller and smaller every time I upgrade. This site is 95% width which I think will better reflect the multitude of screen sizes out there. Also the SEO of the site was built around "Java Roasters" and no one searches for Java Roasters. I hired Jack_mcs awhile ago to go over my site (mostly SEO) and he had a lot of good ideas, now it is time to implement them along with some others. The look of the site still remains the same (almost), but that is still a work in progress.
The coding on this one was a lot tougher than I thought as a lot of the contributions seemed to change the same few lines, that was a huge PHP acceivement for me.
This version also has the capabilities to do wholesale from it as well as fundraising for schools. The wholesale will mostly be for Toronto area (I think) but fundraising for schools is a huge opportunity that we have done in the past and the schools have done very well with it, as well as us.
This site is also integrated into Sugar so all my wholesale and retail will all be in one place. Still working on QB integration (damn Canadian QB), I might have to go to a 3rd party program to get the osC info into QB.
Most of the DB moved over easily, the customers will be hard to move over. The old site had second address lines added as well as PWA, they are both gone from this site so all the fields are totally different, worse than the other fields. And I have to get them into Sugar also. Another work in progress. :( Don't create account on this site as that will just make my job harder.
The "new" URL is www.beancoffeeshop.com . Let me know what you think.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Needed some encouragement

This week or even the past month has been tough and I needed something positive to think about besides Liverpool winning 3-0. Yesterday 765 people visited my site which is the most ever in a day. No sales from it as they were there for the feeds. Today whenever I have looked there have usually been 3-5 people online at a time. Some checking out the feeds and others were actually looking at the coffees. And got an email order from someone who didn't know how to checkout and a phone order he wants to pick-up. Two orders today totalling 15 lbs. :)
Yahoo feed spider hit my site 1200 times yesterday. The news feeds are going to generate traffic if yesterday was any indication. I will keep you posted on how the progress is.
I still have some work to finish on them and also going to add another 500 feeds next week for 1,000 in total (3,000 is my target).
I "think" I have enough to say about my site/coffee for the daily sales pitch when they are displayed in the RSS readers but still working on catchy phrases for when they are displayed on other web sites. Right now at the bottom of those feeds it says "Courtesy of Java Roasters". I was thinking about changing this weekly and have come up with "Powered by Coffee" as a second slogan. I still need 2 more ideas....that is a hint to all the creative people out there. ;)