A dream accomplished

AbleMods · Post by **AbleMods** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 9:18 pm

For those that have followed my (rather painful) saga, here is the culmination of 9 months of work.

I have succeeded with integrating a Google map into an AC7 product page. It properly pushes map marker coordinates into the existing product template fields. It is all done through an ASP.Net 2.0 server-side control saved as a custom user control.

http://test.solunar.com/Solunar-Times-I ... l-P92.aspx

This was the final step to being able to bring my storefront live.

I would enjoy any feedback anyone might have on it. I'm no web designer, so the next step will be a professional skinning and branding. At least the technology portion appears to be done.

Now I have a full-featured online storefront, running on my own web server equipment. I can process payments right on my site, vastly improving my customer experience. Coupons and gift certificates will boost sales. Email marketing capabilities are greatly enhanced.

Now if I could just figure out how to mesh my existing logo into the AC7 header background. I swear one of these days I'm gonna buy a book on Paintshop Pro. Really, I am.

Post by **Shopping Cart Admin** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 9:33 pm

Hello Joe,

Congratulations! On getting the technical aspects of the site accomplished.

I do wish to clarify one point to the community. You purchased AC7 less than two months ago (Order Date: 09/25/2007 1:41 pm), so I'm hopeful you spent the first 7 months looking for a cart worthly of your time!

Thank you for choosing AbleCommerce and being part of the community.

AbleMods · Post by **AbleMods** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 5:51 am

LOL! Yes, for clarity sake I have NOT been trying to get AC7 to work for 9 months. Actually, AC7 has been the easiest step.

9 months ago, this business was 8 HTML pages written in FrontPage over 10 years ago. Ran strictly as a retirement hobby, I took it over after my father passed away. Nothing was computerized. Dad did no advertising whatsoever. He just enjoyed sharing the product with people. He didn't even take credit card - "Just mail me a check" was his way of doing business on the internet.

I always felt the business could be more, but my father simply wasn't interested in more work at his age. I couldn't blame him. He and my mother raised 7 seven children on mostly one income.

My dream for Solunar was a complete storefront solution that could provide backend product marketing and customer management features. At the same time, I wanted flexibility in the frontend without sacrificing the customer experience. The end result would be a seamless integration of useful information with quality products to sell. All on a hardware platform that is reliable and under my complete control.

I believe this is it.

Now I can add countless categories with dozens of products. I can push products for sale into other online markets using the feeds. Advertising with coupon codes will greatly improve my ability to track marketing campaigns. Gift certificates will be a huge hit.

Next stop, the roll-out

jmestep · Post by **jmestep** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 6:56 am

I'm glad to see you are getting so far along. I'm learning from your posts as I'm just starting on AC7.
BTW, I think there is a problem with the basket. When I went to this page
http://xxxxxxxxxxtest.solunar.com/Produ ... oductId=18
and add one of the items down at the bottom- Crestfire for example, it adds two to the cart instead of one.
Also, you might want to change the URL in your post above. Google will pick it up right away and you'll have traffic and links you don't want.

AbleMods · Post by **AbleMods** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 7:34 am

Judy thank you for you help and kind words.

The basket seems to be working ok for me - I'll do some more testing and see what I can reproduce.

I'm not too worried about the URL going public - the test site URL will not be valid when I go live.

Just noticed my Contact us page was broke - that's fixed now. Oh the joys of go-live testing.

Will · Post by **Will** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 8:13 am

The map turned out great. Very cool.

jmestep · Post by **jmestep** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 9:59 am

The only reason I was bringing up the URL was that if Google has that URL and a live one, they might ding you for duplicate content.

AbleMods · Post by **AbleMods** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 11:10 am

Ohhhhhh. Good to know.

They do that??