Web Design Company, Hampshire UK

Much of the last month has been taken up building Antheaturner.com. Initially, myself and another designer built the site to a suitable standard and then showed the product to Anthea’s media agency. At this point Anthea decided that the design of the site was not actually wanted and so drastically changed the design. After much protesting we realised that the design agency had not bothered to have the inital designs signed off, meaning we would have to re-build the site. This coupled with the fact that the other designer has been off for the last couple weeks due to a family problem, has meant a vast workload. Considering the other projects we have on at the moment it is a real effort just to keep up!

We are aiming to have finished the site by the end of the week.. Though this will mean a gargantuan effort, I am sure we can do it.

Though the full site is not finished yet, here is the holding page and the eventual home of the site.

http://www.antheaturner.com/

I know a lot of people are looking forward to the launch of this site, though I dont know quite how oftern I will be using it .

This week in the evenings I have also been carrying on with building the Yamaha Solent shop. One of the issues which cropped up was uploading images via csv to Magento.. A process which saves having to add all images individually to products. After making mistakes this is the process that I followed successfully.

• On the CSV, make sure the path to your images is /yourimage.jpg
• Upload the images to the import folder within the media foler via ftp.
• Upload the csv via the import mechanism within the Magento backend.
• Refresh the cache.
• Voila!

Id I had not followed this method it would have taken hours to upload the images.

More updates next week.

What a couple of months!

I have been so busy that the blog has been left alone for almost two months. I have moved to Portsmouth and now live with my girlfriend in a small gatehouse with  a balcony and a mezzanine floor. Very strange but surprisingly homely.

This blog is something I write at home. I am not sure how happy my boss would be with me writing this whilst at work. It has taken a month for my provider to enable my broadband, so that is the reason for the gap in writing. Hopefully normal service will resume .

The last month has see me start my first solo Magento build. The client is Solent Yamaha, who sell outboard engines for boats and yachts. They have asked me to upgrade their current installation from 1.1 to 1.4. Initially I thought, how hard can this be, surely you just press the upgrade button and away it goes but the reality is that this process has many pitfalls to which the uninformed may fall foul. I have look at many processes for completing this task but the most efficient and risk free goes something like this.

• Install the latest version of Magento
• Backup the media file, products and  customers from the original installation.
• Research the compatibility of extensions existing in the original installation to the new installation.
• Install these extensions.
• Install the template.
• Upload the CSV.
• Upload the customers.
• Remove all mention of the demo store and try as best as you can to mimic the settings of the original installation.
• Et Voila!

I am currently in the process of adding the products csv. It seems to me that each client will have some part of their product list which adds a layer of complexity. For Yamaha it is the presence of an extra set of attributes which must be shown on the front end in a tabbed view. The trials and tribulations of a Magento Designer !! The way of solving this issue is to add the attributes to the new installation and download this csv. Then add the products from the initial csv to the new version. This takes time but is necessary.

As things progress, I will let you know about other issues I am having (hopefully there will be none).