Changes and Your Own Website
CHANGING DELIVERY FREQUENCY
You may have noticed that I have set the RSS feed to go out every Sunday now instead of every time I do a post here.
This is so that if I have a lot of posts in a short time period you won't be over flooded with email if you have an email subscription.
If I have time sensitive information, I will send it out separately.
The best way to be sure that you receive this would be to sign up for an email subscription to this blog with the form in the top right hand corner. You will receive one update once per week and an email if there is something that can't wait.
I'll gear sales etc towards posting date so there won't be very many additional mailings, if any. (unless the RSS feeder decides to have a burp. Just to let you know, I NEVER intentionally send out all of the back posts of my blog for the past year or so at one time!)
BIG NEWS FOR HANDMADESOAP.CA
I have finally found a shopping cart that is much advanced over the one I have been using.
The new one will have better navigation and a search feature as well as a few more bells and whistles that I haven't even checked into yet – such as an easy way to set sale prices – which means that I can feature items more regularly AND bulk discounts on multiple item orders for those of you who like to split with friends or order a few at a time.
All in all, this is going to make shopping much more pleasant, make discounts and specials more frequent and the site will be much easier to navigate.
I'm hoping to have it up soon. I'd like to post the live link right now so that you could watch the progress but it may be confusing with both carts up at the same time so for now, I'll keep it under wraps.
Watch for it coming asap, I'm really anxious to get it up and running.
THINKING OF PUTTING UP YOUR OWN WEBSITE OR BLOG IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS SALES?
For those of you who have been wanting to put up a new site, or revamp your old, I can highly recommend the services that I am using.
SHOPPING CART
The first one is the shopping cart.
There are a few packages available, you can start with the basic and add on, or choose the services that you need.
This is the same cart that many are using. I had thought it was too expensive but it is actually $10 per month cheaper than the one I was looking at AND it plugs into your website. That means that you can move it to any site, very handy if you ever switch domains or webhosts.
One thing I've learned over the years is that any service or software is far better if it is independent and not locked in to one host or domain in the event that things change. You can have this peace of mind with Cartville.
CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
The other thing that I have switched all of my websites over to is WordPress.
It's the easiest content manager that I have found (sure beats the days… and days… of hand coding every page with the WYSIWYG editor), and there are lots of people who know how to set it up if you need to hire someone to help.
It is especially easy if you use a hosting service with cpanel, the behind the scenes administration panel that makes it all really easy. With cpanel you can install wordpress with the click of a button.
HOSTING
The hosting service that seems to have everything, has excellent customer support and is the cheapest to boot is hostgator.
TEMPLATES
The templates that I have been using come from a company called WOO Themes.
They have a complete community forum to answer any questions or solve any problems, tutorials to do customization as well as a fast response support system.
The themes are cutting edge, with features and ease that I haven't see before.
The new theme on this blog is a WOO theme, I am still playing a little with it.
And I also have another network of sites using Flashnews from WOO themes here
http://www.queenofkaos.com/WAHMblog
They aren't free, but they are a great deal for all that you get and for all of the time they will free up for you. One of the things that I have always wished I had done when I first started was to have splurged for a professional template.
Not only would it have looked better (maybe I can dig up a picture somehow of my first site, some of you may even remember it) but it would have saved me so much time that I could have put to better use in behind the scenes coding and set up.
JUMP IN
One thing that you may like to know if you are planning on putting up a website or a blog to have online sales and/or an online brochure to refer your customers from craft sales, farmers markets etc for the Christmas season is that often new sites take awhile to get listed on the search engines (like google)
They call it a sandbox. So it is better to get started on it now than to wait to give it time. Also, it is far better to have it finished before the busy season hits, which isn't very long factoring in soap making time.
One more thing, it's another reason that using wordpress, or any blog is a good idea. Apparently blogs do get indexed faster.
So, if it's something you've been considering, I hope you find this information helpful.
It can be confusing and almost like a second job to learn all this stuff, not to mention the trial and error (LOL!) behind the scenes.
I also have something in mind that you may like if you have a soap website and pictures that you'd like to share, I will have more on that shortly.
Stay tuned!
