Some new headers for Wordpress pages

[HeavyHitter]

Whats up everyone? I have not been on the board much over the past few weeks. We have been very busy moving 509 Media into a new location. Moving sucks, but getting broken into a few days after moving in sucks even more. Not to mention all of the extra money I had to spend because of the break in.

Anyway I thought I would post up a link to a couple custom Wordpress headers I have been working on. I have a few more that are going to go live soon that I will add to the post.

The first one is for Busted Knuckle Films. Their Wordpress page is still under construction but the header is complete. The header was built in Photoshop. The header does have a seperate CSS page from the Wordpress style sheet. The Busted Knuckle Films header and Wordpress page can be found at the following link. Be sure to click on the Busted Knuckle link.

http://www.509media.com/web-design/wordpress-themed-for-busted-knuckle-films/


I am also working on JMR Manufacturing's Wordpress and X-Cart install. The JMR header layout was also designed in Photoshop and has its own CSS page away from Wordpress. If you would like to check it out more information on the JMR Header can be found here:

http://www.509media.com/web-design/jmr-manufacturing-website-design/

Now that we have completed the move into the new location I plan to get our new Wordpress theme up very soon. I have some big changes in the works for the 509 site. I am also adding X-Cart to the site. If you would like to see how Wordpress and X-Cart work together be sure to check out the JMR Manufacturing site in the link above. I am still in the process of building out the JMR Online Store. In other words it needs a lot of work.

Thanks
Dan

 

[Jon Aston]

Curious: What made you choose X-Cart? What other solutions did you rule out and why? Please and thanks!

 

[HeavyHitter]

Curious: What made you choose X-Cart? What other solutions did you rule out and why? Please and thanks!

Jon,

In the past I have primarily used CRE Loaded which is a hopped up version of OSCommerce. CRE Loaded version 6.3 and up was supposed to have clean SEO friendly URL's, but if you dig a little deeper you will find there are problems with them. Additional plugins can be installed for SEO URL's on CRE Loaded, but that is an added cost. Not too mention one more thing I would have to do.

For 110 dollars X-Cart does a very good job with SEO. With a couple simple clicks you can activate X-Cart's SEO friendly URLs. No additional money to spend. SEO is very important when marketing your products. When listing the parts you need to take the time to fill in the areas for keywords, meta descriptions, and so on. You need to plan what keywords you are going to use and not put too many different ones in. You want a short effective list and make them count.

I have sold a lot of product over the internet. One of the biggest problems is shipping and making sure you charge enough to cover your shipping bill with UPS. X-Cart offers Dimensional Shipping with a live quote from your UPS account to more accurately quote shipping. JMR Manufacturing sells product in large over sized boxes that would risk loosing big money if the box size is not accounted for.

In X-Cart you can also set a flat shipping for individual parts as well. We are making some custom mods to the JMR X-Cart install to allow for multiple boxes for one part number so UPS can account for them. Example... Lets say part number AAA requires 6 boxes of different weights and dimensions to complete the one part number. In most online stores the shipping is quoted from total weight of the part number. Well when you enter the part into UPS as 6 boxes you will find the total for shipping is much different than what one box with the total weight totals to. Not to mention many of the parts offered by JMR are over the 150 pound weight limit if considered as one box being shipped. Hope that makes sense.

In a business I recently sold I would have a weekly UPS bill around 10,000 dollars. Paying UPS sucks. You learn to do everything you can to make sure you are charging the correct amount for shipping. If not you are going to be paying UPS out of your profit. I know I want to keep my profit in the bank.

For me X-Cart offered a good solution to some of the problems I have been faced with in years past for a very affordable price. 110 dollars is not a lot of money for a cart that you can hit the ground running with. Grant it you will need a basic understanding of HTML and PHP in order to make changes to the cart. Changing the look of the cart to incorporate the Wordpress theme I made for JMR was not too difficult.

There are some other really neat features to X-Cart, but the above is the main reasons why I choose to go this direction.

Hope that helps answer your questions. Let me know if you want to know anything else.

Dan

 

[Jon Aston]

Thanks Dan - That was very helpful!

 

[HeavyHitter]

Thanks Dan - That was very helpful!

No worries. Let me know if you have other questions.

Dan

 

[HeavyHitter]

Jon, I had the chance to work on the X-Cart install a little today with the Wordpress theme. You can check it out here if you want.

http://www.509media.com/web-design/online-store-design-for-jmr-manufacturing/