Big Trousers, Web, Design, Photography and new media.

E-Commerce now refined

2011-12-07T20:51:51Z

After many years building e-commerce sites using platforms like OsCommerce, Shopify, WPECommerece, Magento and others, we think we finally have a solution that looks like it has all the answers. Woo Commerece.

Jigoshop was a ground up build as a WordPress plugin and although it looked like it could be a great solution it was hard to integrate with our Existing Theme structures and Frameworks. Jigoshop was then “Forked” as an Open Source project by Woo Themes and Woo Commerce was born. With a financial backing the software has been on a rapid development curve for a few months now and although stable the whole time new components have been added making it truly powerful.

We are working with Woo Commerce on a number of development sites and testing each addition as it becomes available. Notably Edison Style Globes is a site we built for ourselves so testing of systems could be fast tracked where we are the builder and website customer.

We are testing software that can import data for those existing online shops using WP ECommerce and we have completed a few. This needs a bit more testing especially if there are a large number of products or variations. Calypsoflash is one such completed transformation. Soundacoustics is a similar theme and is also well on the way to conversion (see before and after screen shots)

If you are looking for a way to improve your sales with ecommerce or just interested to see how it all works, take a look at the sites we have built or get in touch. We have some interesting new solutions including SMS messaging for client purchase notifications.

You may also notice the speed with which these sites load also. This is a new development we have been testing in relation to server software. More about that later….

SEO and the slimy salesmen

2011-09-22T23:39:32Z

Great SEO article by Matt Gemmell that gets to the heart of my distaste for paid SEO services. We have warned clients over a number of years that SEO salesmen are selling a short term fix with a long term failure rate. Matt Gemmell places the emphasis exactly where it should be.

I recently read an account of John McElborough’s talk at Brighton SEO 2011, wherein he advocated some ethically questionable SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) tactics involving creating a private network of fake blogs.

John McElborough - Brighton SEO

Now that is sounding familiar. We suggest that simple ideas that make sense and over time will create traffic through natural SEO.

Make sure the page title matches the first heading
Sounds sort of simple but test this with your own SEO approach

Incoming links are good.
This is how the web knows your stuff is good

Use titles that are relevant to the content.
How many times do I have to read “New story” or “Sale on now” as a post title? As Matt puts it, this is High School essay writing stuff.

Use descriptive anchor-text for links.
This does happen quite a lot and we often see the link click here.. or read more…

Keep writing
This is the mantra, write.. write again… write more, and keep doing it.

Stop wilfully conflating optimisation with being a slimy liar. Stop being a dick on the internet. Write something interesting, and keep doing it for months and years. SEO will then follow naturally.

Web navigation for news sites

2011-08-16T12:46:24Z

Category navigation for news, shopping carts and general page navigation is often misunderstood or completely ignored by some content managers.

Andy Rutledge posted an article ( News redux ) recently that attempted to explain how news websites have gone wrong in navigation design. Worth a look even if you don’t have any news articles on your site. This is the sort of stuff that seems obvious once you have read it but mistake are all too common.

Navigation should be user focused and as simple to understand as possible visually.

It is hard to believe that the Times, or any other similar publication, actually cares about the news when they treat it with this sort of indignity. Worse, the design makes it quite hard and often frustrating to simply scan the news and find stories that one might be interested in. As a news reader, I want to be able to scan headlines and logically find news I’m interested in reading. And by logically, I mean according to clear, usable, undistracted organization and filtering.

Using the New York Times as an example, let’s look at what helps make for a confusing and complex experience.

Thanks to Woo Themes who have taken this concept on board and have gone to work on this concept as a WordPress theme.

Online support ticket system with knowledgebase

2011-07-12T02:27:23Z

Big Trousers online ticketing and support introduced today.

It is designed for all customers who register to report problems with content management, wordpress, computer hardware and software, email, photography and general IT. Also available are articles in the knowledge base designed to assist your and your business.

The web is no longer prohibited by desktop and laptop computers. With exponentially growing numbers users surfing the web with handheld devices we’ve ensured that our support site is optimised whether you’re viewing it on your 27″ iMac or your iPhone 4. Also, the support site is hosted away from our main server so that in the event of server malfunction or maintenance, the support site will still be live and operational. Server maintenance or server downtime is reported by as as it occurs live in the support site.

Tickets are only visible to the registered user and Big Trousers admin. Once a ticket has been resolved however we can convert it’s contents into a knowledgebase item. As a result, questions that are answered and published become available by search in the knowledgebase. From time to time we will also publish tips and tricks in the knowledgebase.

We hope this will be a value to you, our customers.

Click here to register.

WordPress 3.2

2011-07-06T08:22:47Z

Fantastic improvements in WordPress backend speed and a beautiful interface update.

WordPress specialised Web Hosting

2011-06-14T07:05:15Z

WordPress as a CMS has been of great value to most of our clients and as such is now the only web CMS we use. In this specialisation we have become aware that server requirements can be quite specific. Whilst WordPress itself is fairly straight forward requiring only reasonable hosting in the past, we have seen of lot of hosting environments place limits on server access in an attempt to either save money or maintain server wide security where multiple sites reside on one server.
In an attempt to head off some of these ongoing problem we have decided to invest in a dedicated server housed for us in a secure data centre.

This means we are have total control over the server, including the total number of domains, RAM access, installation and configuration of Apache, PHP, SQL and other software, backup systems, email, spam filters, virus checks and total space allocation per domain.
If an individual domain or site is causing issues, we are in control and can switch off that domain while me make repairs, keeping other sites live. If a client requires more storage often we can allocate more for no charge. If a site requires SSL or unique IP we can arrange very quickly.
Over the last few weeks we have been migrating all site files from various shared servers and VPS servers to this new server and as some of you may be aware we have hit some bad patches. In most cases our hand was forced due to ongoing existing problems or lack of capacity for existing sites. For some, unlimited POP email has been the great benefit.
For most of you all issues have been addressed and IP addresses redelegated. Email is the single biggest issue that causes us grief and in this process domains using GOOGLE IMAP email came out far better off. At times DNS caching was a problem and again users on OPTUS connections fared worse.
In the end this process has cost us a bomb in both time and money but with all our client accounts now under one solution we can improve our web hosting plans with better storage and bandwidth constraints. We can also offer a new lower price solution for those just starting out.
We are still working on the final server configuration and from time to time we still are seeing issues with uptime. As we refine the configuration these outages will decline. This server caper is often an enormously complex beast to control but we are aiming high and intend to succeed.
We apologise for any delays you may have experienced in the process but we hope that it will be better for the long haul. Most of you will see a bigger storage allocation for your site files and POP email accounts over the next few weeks as we reset all accounts allocations.

CDN – Content Delivery Network

2011-04-19T08:30:19Z

Over the last few months we have been testing various methods of achieving an effective method of speeding up page load times for WordPress for our client sites. Along with numerous site caching plugins and file optimisation we have found a Content Delivery Network (CDN) Amazon Web Services, is the best way to achieve fast page load and protection from server overload. Search engines like Google, measure and factor in the speed of web sites in their ranking algorithm. When they recommend a site they want to make sure users find what they’re looking for quickly. So in effect you and Google should have the same objective.

A CDN is a high performance cache that stores static assets like media, CSS files and javascript in various locations throughout the world in order to provide low latency access to them by readers in those regions.

Benefits

At least 10x improvement in overall site performance (Significant Google Page Speed improvements) when fully configured
Improve conversion rates and “site performance” which affect your site’s rank on Google.com
“Instant” second page views (browser caching after first page view)
Optimized progressive render (pages start rendering immediately)
Reduced page load time: increased visitor time on site (visitors view more pages)
Improved web server performance (sustain high traffic periods)
Up to 80% bandwidth savings via minify and HTTP compression of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and feeds

Whilst we have hit some bumps along the way we have done enough trials to get a number of sites fully optimised for this purpose. Some existing sites require a fair degree of coaxing on the Amazon server with various permissions errors, and some plugin data (wp e-commerce installations prior to vers 3.8) has been difficult to manage, we feel that it is now time to deploy CDN functionality for our clients.

We are in the process of finishing a site with wp-e commerce plugin version 3.8 with positive results and in time we will have a test of a full site with and without CDN so as to provide a direct test example. In the meantime take a look at Treelogic.com.au. There site is a good example of one that does require speed of delivery. They post images, stories, pdf fact sheets and video as solid content that drives traffic and promotes use of their online store. The examples below show page design and source code showing links to the cdn.

If you have been experiencing slow load times for your site contact Big Trousers to deploy a CDN. If we already host you site it should be fairly straight forward. If not then perhaps we should.

Using an iPad as video monitor for DSLR

2011-04-18T23:33:32Z

We tried a bit of an experiment today using the Apple iPad and onOne DSLR Camera Remote software. A new pro version now runs in HD on the iPad so we thought it might be a good way to monitor video.

Althogh this app is primarily designed to allow remote management for camera functions is also acts as a monitor for stills and can show you previous shots taken. It works but tethering the Camera via USB to a Mac laptop running the free onOne server software, this then is detected by the iPad app and so the camera is connected to the iPad. My big question was however, would this work in the field away from our WIFI network. Given the nature of the software both the iPad and the Mac Laptop need to be on the same network.

I remembered that a recent ios update 4.3 allows tethering via WIFI personal hotspot to 5 devices. With the iPad and the MacBook on this iPhone network, would the system still work?

To my surprise it did work and with a quite nice result. The framerate is not at camera speed but looked about 15 fps which is fine for most applications. No audio is passed through and so audio monitoring will have to be sorted some other way. Perhaps via the AV out we will get audio.

With this system you will need USB tethered computer and iPhone and an iPad. Bit of a mess but it does allow you to make camera settings like color temp, exposure and focus on the iPads touch screen. You also have a fire button for stills and a shoot button for video.

Other advantages are that you can shoot HDR exposures using the intervalometer setting within the app. Seems a bit too much gear to be carrying on a landscape shoot however.

Live webcam view of Cyclone Yasi from Townsville

2011-02-10T04:18:50Z

Now past and all seems to have gone well. Fantastic service from various Ustream and Justin TV clients. Remarkable work by Storm Chaser Shane Williams broadcasting live from Townsville in his car during the night and next morning. Looks like the mobile data network remained intact.
I am installing Ustream Broadcaster app for iPhone4 just in case it comes in handy in future.
Ustream also have a viewer application for mobile devices as their regular Flash based web page is not visable on devices like the iPad.

Video streaming by Ustream

Conditional Logic Form builder

2011-02-10T04:24:27Z

This is a demo of the sort of form you can build with conditional logic. Using our Gravity Forms plugin available to those who build and host with Big Trousers, you too can use this technology to get your clients details into a database. Use it for data collection, application forms, or even some form of competition or questionnaire.

If you get stuck refresh the page. In normal use there would be a single correct answer for the client, however you may wish to answer in different ways to test the way it works.

Of course it is not a requirement that Gravity Forms are used with Conditional Logic, you can use them for more ordinary form fields and option fields.