I recently purchased a microsuede/microfiber couch for my new apartment. (similar but darker than the couch below)

I love it, and the price didn’t break my bank; however, when the sales person asked if I wanted to pay an extra $100+ for a stain guard treatment…I just really couldn’t justify it, I was pretty sure I could find a way to do that myself (for a lot cheaper).

So of course I started at Google, I ran a search for ‘stain protection for microsuede’ the first sponsored link was at Target.com.

I was excited, because I do like Target; however, I was extremely disappointed once I got to their “landing page”…

It simply took me to several irrelevant search results…

Makes you wonder how much money they must be wasting on AdWords, as I’m sure that this isn’t the only instance of an irrelevant landing page. I would love to get my hands in their AdWords account and see what kind of ROI(Return on Investment) they’re getting with their current strategy.

h3. The Moral of the Story

If you’re going to pay-per-click and you expect a sale in return…give the customer a decent landing page with some relevant products.

My favorite part of my daily work is when I get to slice and code a great design using some great markup (xHTML) with smart styling (CSS).

At work I’ve recently been given the opportunity to solely act as the front end developer for a few different projects we launched over at “Groove”:http://www.groovecommerce.com/

* “La Prima Catering”:http://www.laprimacatering.com/
* “Corporate Baskets”:http://www.corporate-baskets.com/
* “Don’t Know Tavern”:http://www.dontknowtavern.com/

_Note: Not my designs, just my code_

The fresh new look for Epic Dental has officially launched! Epic Dental sells Xylitol Gum which I can briefly describe as a sugar alternative that is also a cavity fighting agent.

The new site was built off of our optimized version of the AspDotNetStoreFront and features a sleek and feature filled 1-page checkout. My role in the project was designer / front-end developer (aka the guy that does the photoshop, xhtml, css and javascript stuff). Check out the Groove Commerce eCommerce Blog for more info.

I just found out tonight that an amazing man has passed away. During my small time in Sierra Leone I was blessed enough to live in the village with Pastor Sorie. He always had a smile on his face and a joke to put that smile back on your face. More importantly he was so passionate about the gospel and so much the person that Christ was.

He really cared, and I really don’t understand why he’s gone. Kristen (who spent much more time with him in Sierra Leone) has written his amazing story, if you can just take some time to read about Pastor Sorie. He really has an amazing testimony.

I’ve been an Amazon fan for quite some time now, it was the first place I’ve ordered something online, and recently, the last place I’ve order something online.

Today I received an email today from Amazon about their new service called “WebStore.” Which is basically a build-it-yourself eCommerce Storefront, I’d imagine that it’s very similar to Yahoo! Merchant Solutions.

I’ve checked out many of the “examples”:http://www.amazon.com/Instant-Website-Program-Overview/b?ie=UTF8&node=16269941, and well, it’s definitely safe to say that I still have a job designing eCommerce websites.

Now, don’t get me wrong! There are definitely a some conversion-friendly features in the Amazon WebStore, and it’s probably *not* a bad solution for someone on their first generation eCommerce site. The one thing I really like is that customers can use their existing Amazon.com accounts, and everything is posted through Amazon’s servers, that’s one heck of a security assurance.

But when you’re ready to make the next step, and move on to your 2nd or 3rd generation site, be sure to “give us a call”:http://www.groovecommerce.com/contact-us/

If you’re into eCommerce platforms than I’m sure you’ve heard of Magento. They just launched a “live demo”:http://www.magentocommerce.com/demo of both the storefront (front-end) and the admin panel (back-end) The username is admin and the password is 123123.

I really recommend checking it out… and praying for an early release!

It looks amazing. The only thing I’m not too wild about is the checkout process. It’s “one page” but really it’s 6 pages ajaxed and php’d into 1 page…I’m wondering how easily you can customize things like the checkout progress. At work I know we’ve done substantial customization to our AspDotNetStoreFront without too many computer screens thrown out the window.

Today, over at “Groove Commerce”:http://www.groovecommerce.com we launched our redesign for “A Touch of Brass”:http://www.atouchofbrass.com. I really like how the site came out–plenty of graphical/styling done as well as a lot of work under the hood, more to follow later on at the Groove “eCommerce Blog”:http://www.groovecommerce.com/ecommerce-blog/.

!http://www.rmspangler.com/images/portfolio/web/atb01.jpg(A Touch of Brass Redesign)!:http://www.atouchofbrass.com

My Role in the project was designer and front-end developer.

The eCommerce section is powered by “AspDotNetStoreFront”:http://www.aspdotnetstorefront.com with a lot of custom modifications.

Well I finally got my hands on a “Nintendo Wii”:http://wii.nintendo.com! I have to say, I haven’t had this much fun on a video game system since I was a kid.

!(float-right)http://www.rmspangler.com/images/2.jpg (Nintendo Wii)! It really is amazing. One thing that I’ve really grown to love is the Wii Shop area and I figured that since I’ve been specializing in eCommerce based sites I would comment on Wii’s eCommerce Section (Wii Shop).

So far I’ve only purchased two games, “Super Mario Bros.”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros (the original) and “The Adventures of Lolo”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_of_Lolo (which you’ve probably never played).

Ordering was very easy, one thing I love the most is the giant buttons, I really really love big buttons, I don’t know why but when I see those giant WordPress style buttons I get all hot and bothered.

Nintendo is pretty brilliant, they used a point based system to make your purchases (similar to “iStockPhoto”:http://www.istockphoto.com/, only in much larger increments) It costs about $1 for every 100 credits, but somehow they made it feel like 500 credits is cheaper than $5. I couldn’t recommend that eCommerce sites start doing that (by any means!) but credits do have their place for specific eCommerce applications.

Another thing that was very helpful was the “Shopping Guide” It is very quick about telling you what all the icons mean, and what steps you need to go through to make your purchase.

The only flaw I saw in their system was the ability to purchase credits while buying an item. For example, If I’m going in to buy Ninja Turtles for 600 credits, but I only have 500 credits I simply get an error telling me that I don’t have enough, I should get a option along with that message to buy more credits on the fly via my Visa card, I really think that would increase their conversions by up to 1%.

h2. Conclusion

Wii is truly an amazing game system, and there’s some good stuff to learn from their eCommerce system, WiiShop.

I’ve always used a custom built solution for my blogging, originally just with some custom PHP, then I eventually added the FCK Editor but last month I decided that it was finally time to move on.

Lets Try WordPress

My initial thought was WordPress, I had a bit of experience with it from Shirts That Matter (which I have yet to complete…) so it seemed like the logical choice; However, I just kept running into more and more problems, and needing more and more plugins (which didn’t always work as promised).

Lets Try Textpattern

So I started to think Textpattern, one of my secret mentors (secret as in: I stalk his blog but he doesn’t really know who I am), Nathan Smith, co-authored an amazing book called TextPattern Solutions. I pre-ordered the book through Amazon as soon as he mentioned it but never really got around to reading it until now (now that I needed his TXP wisdom).

It was a bit difficult! I definitely didn’t pick up on Textpattern as quickly as I picked up on WordPress, I spent few late nights staring at my MacBook with a puzzled face. It did however pay off, Textpattern is extremely customizable, The thing I like most is how the “Articles” work, you can post them anywhere—so it took me just a couple minutes to make my resources section completely dynamic, which is huge for me!

The Breakdown (Pros and Cons)

There are a lot of things I like about both, and I always find it easier to compare things with bullet points, so here’s a breakdown of my pros and cons for the two:

WordPress

Pros

• Beautiful! The Admin interface is very intuitive and aesthetically pleasing
• Themes are easy to make and copy
• Easy Plugin Installation
• I can use my favorite HTML editor and just upload the files

Cons

• You can only have one blog and post entries to that one blog page
• Very buggy, I ran into several oddities with the navigation and a few other minor things
• A lot of plugins with a lot of false promises and bugs
• Not very flexible

Textpattern

Pros

• Amazing Article system, you can post articles anywhere and use Forms to present them as you want them presented
• Very flexible, there’s even a case study in Textpattern Solutions about an entire eCommerce site built off of TXP
• Amazing Plugins – I had no problems installing / using plugins on the fly

Cons

• The admin interface is a bit unattractive
• Bigger learning curve
• I’m not a huge fan of Textile yet

Conclusion

Well, I hope you found this helpful – I did not start out to become a Textpattern advocate but I feel that after building my website/blog in WordPress and then in TextPattern I’m sold on it.

Note: Building my site in WordPress and then rebuilding it in Textpattern happened in the span of a month, using WordPress 2.2 and Textpattern 4.05.

Also, if you’re going to use Textpattern, buy Textpattern Solutions.

Note: As of version 2.7 I decided to revisit WordPress and there are definitely a lot of improvements. I am now using WordPress to power this blog.

It’s easy to get spammed. One way to get spammed is to have email links on your websites because bots search through websites looking for <emailaddress>@<host>.<com>.

So, this is the best solution I came across. Type in your email address below and it will shoot back an encrypted mailto link for you to use. It is amazing, works great, and the results validate xHTML Strict.
Original Code by: zapyon.de.