Homeloan.ca

I have relaunched a website for a great client of mine. Brad Perepolkin of Vintage Valley Mortgage in Vernon BC offers home financing and mortgages for people in British Columbia. He is an overall great guy and knows his stuff! Here is his website URL - www.homeloan.ca

Relaunch of my Personal Site

I have decided to relaunch my own website www.jamieedwards.com. It was getting a bit long in the tooth so to speak, and it was just time for a refreshed design. I will be doing more blogging and will try to keep up with my posts as I develop new things and work on new projects. So if you have a few minutes check it out and let me know what you think.

Blessings to everyone,
Jamie

Posted some of my work on Graphic River

Hey everyone, I just posted some of my graphic design work on www.graphicriver.net. It's a cool website where graphic designers, web developers, and photographers can post their work for sale, and even though you only earn 50% to start, I figure that 50% is better than 0% which is how much I was getting for my designs that I had just laying around anyway.

If you are a graphic designer, 3D artist, musician, theme developer, or photographer, check out the series of Envato sites:

Check it out:

Magento Sucks!

 I've been asked to work on a client's Magento ecommerce website. I have been working on websites as my profession for 14 years now. I have worked on all sorts of things, so many different platforms that there's no way I could name them all. I have built many online stores over the years using at least 5 different software platforms on several different server environments. I've custom coded hundreds of sites, and modified open source software for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  I have NEVER EVER seen anything that is such a crazy bloated mess as Magento.

First of all lets start with the install, remember I am not a novice, I've been doing this a long time. I downloaded the latest version and unzipped the file to have a look, and was astonished to find that there were around 12,000 files!!!!!! 12,000 files!!!!!!!! Compare this to Wordpress 3.4.1 for instance that has under 1,000 files.

I wanted to install sample data so I could get a sense of how the store works right off the bat, so I find the sample data file (its a separate file). After searching for about an hour, i find some instructions on how to install the sample data, you have to create a database, then install the sample data BEFORE you install the actual cart software, strange way to go about it but ok. Then I install the cart following the instructions to a T. Guess what, it doesn't work, gives me some strange error when I try to access the site, so I then spend at least 2 more hours trying to figure out how to get past this error, there are a bunch of people on the forum with similar issues, but I could not find one clear answer anywhere! Seriously! Two hours of searching, nothing... Turns out they keep an older copy of their instructions where everyone can get to them along with an outdated download of the sample data file for everyone to download that apparently isn't compatible with the latest magento install files I installed. Everyone of their instructions are very cryptic and unclear with links that lead to dead pages, and outdated download files. The "support" forums give 30 different answers, none of them seem to work.

So I scrap the whole idea of using sample data and decide to start over with a fresh install... After standing on one foot, wearing a tinfoil hat, and using my left hand on the mouse while whistling the sound of music and drinking a glass of water through a straw, I manage to get it installed. This process took a long time.

So now I have a site with no sample data to play with so I decide to go exploring. A lot of the admin panel is not intuitive at all, and I encountered many bugs and several 404's while clicking around. There were a bunch of things that didn't work, and overall even without any products in the store, it was super super slow.

As soon as I login after installing the latest most up to date version I could find, i see this "You have 1 critical, 4 major, 19 minor and 52 notice unread message(s)". The 1 critical is a Zend platform security issue, the instructions involve going into the framework files and commenting out some actions. Why not just fix this and make an updated version of the software for people to download?

Then I try making a backup of the existing client's site. The backup functionality eventually just times out and doesn't work at all. I finally use phpmyadmin to get a backup of the database, but this results in downloading when uncompressed a close to 300 meg database!!! Crazy!!!! There are something like 67 different tables just to manage products!!! Super crazy!

If you want to try to customize any of the look or layout of Magento, forget any of the typical ways of doing things. This from what I can see so far, and by now I am into it for about 10 hours, is that everything is done with uploading snippets of xml code into the admin panel. There are no drag and drop widgets, or simple divs with css, ala Wordpress, no no, that would be too easy :) It's complicated, and takes many many hours of digging and learning, and learning, and reading, and hitting up forums, and hiring experts, etc. etc. Not simple, not intuitive, in fact its starting to be pretty obvious, that this so called "community" open source edition, is purposefully, and intentionally convoluted, complicated, and confusing, in nearly every way. Sure there are some nice features, but from a developers point of view, you better be prepared to spend multiple hours and hours, potentially weeks and weeks to get anywhere near comfortable to work on this. That's my experience anyway. Apparently this is an industry leader and a standard go-to platform for large corporations. I actually don't buy that, I think it's propaganda from their marketing team. If you have big bucks, and a dedicated team of magento experts, or are willing to dish out bucks for their support, while purchasing the paid for version, then I would suggest you find a different platform! You could do much better than this. Woocommerce (free), or Interspire (paid).

There is so much more, I could go on, but I won't, i just tried creating a development site to test updates and modifications on, but that didn't go so well. I was able to duplicate the existing site, but when i restored the database there is no data in the tables, nothing, not even admin login information. Anyway, enough said, Magento sucks :)

Check out these other articles:

• http://kapsdave.blogspot.ca/2012/06/magento-sucks.html
• http://nickbartlett.com/wordpress/magento-is-difficult-to-modify-and-customize/

Wow, that felt good to rant! :)

My own personal website

I am trying to figure out what to do with my own personal website www.jamieedwards.com
I have had the domain for something like 12 years, and have not ever really had a website up and running at the domain. I did recently decide to put together a simple site to showcase some of my photography, but from here I am not sure where to go. Maybe I will make it into a blog site eventually, but for now I have just a few photos.

Let me know what you think!

Harmony Homes Relaunch

I just did a re-design and re-launch of the award winning Harmony Homes website. Here is a link:
http://www.harmonyhomes.net, I think it turned out nicely!

This week I will be starting a SEO campaign, should be fun!

New Site

Just finished a simple website for the Disabled Sailing Association of Kelowna, here's a link.

http://disabledsailingkelowna.ca/

Angry Birds Chrome 7th Dimension Egg Location

Hello Everyone, after much searching around on Google, only to find a bunch of sites that have ads but no answer, I found where the Chrome Icon Egg that unlocks the Angry Birds 7th Dimension level. It is located to the LEFT of the bird launcher on level 3-14. Have a look at this video:

New Site Launched - Janmills.net

We have launched yet another website, this time for Dynamic Public Speaker Jan Mills! Jan helps people create an action plan to reach their health and wellness goals. Jan’s proven consistently she helps companies on multiple bottom lines by inspiring change and as a Health Coach Jan believes in a preventative and holistic approach to achieving optimal health.

Here is a link to her website:

www.janmills.net

Social Network Experts

For the last three solid years, we here at Landmark Internet have been working almost exclusively in the Social Network space. We have created several custom stand alone Social Networks for clients that realize they need to stand out from the crowd and have their very own niche social network. If this is you, and you need your very own custom social network, we are here to help. We have the experience and expertise to make it happen. Contact us for a list of social networking sites we have worked on. Our contact information is on our website at www.landmarkinternet.ca

Starbucks UK and Fairtrade Foundation Announce Industry Leading Support for Small-Scale Coffee Farmers

I was just reading that Starbucks in the UK is now using 100% fair trade certified coffee for their Espresso. That is good news for the third world people that produce the stuff and its good to know that their growers will be treated fairly.

Kelowna Kayak Winter Sale

Hey everyone, if you are into the great Outdoor sport of Kayaking and you live in Kelowna, go and check out Kelowna Kayak & Outdoor http://www.kelownakayak.com/

They have a great winter clearance sale on right now. Most in-stock merchandise is available at great discounts, head on in to the store to check out what they have.

Also, I like the graphic I did for the sale, I think it turned out great!

Kelowna Snow Sleds - Fun in the snow

I have just launched a temporary mini site for a friend and client of mine. Kelowna Kayak & Outdoor is diversifying for the winter months by offering four lines of amazing and fun snow sleds.

(This site is no longer available, sorry)

2008: The year of Social Networking!

We're hearing a lot about the importance of social networking these days. Some folks are suggesting that this is the "Year of Social Networking" and we here at gibLink.com couldn't agree more!One of the reasons for this expected growth is the actual burden posed by email communication. What was once a simple and effective way to communicate...

read more | digg story

Kiva.org

Hey everyone, I just thought I would tell you all about a cool website that I like to support. It's called http://www.kiva.org/. It is a great way to help people in developing nations get a bit further ahead in life. They provide microloans to help fund small businesses. It's a great idea so check it out!

Free Press Release Website

I just found a new free resource for Press Releases. So I am trying it out for Ray Chelini and his website www.chelinisculpture.com to promote his new bronze sculpture entitled "Searching for the Will of God".

Here is the link:
http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200706/1181679287.html

Linkedin.com and my experiments with chelinisculpture.com

Hello Everyone,
I am researching SEO and came upon Linkedin.com, its a site that allows you to create a profile of yourself then link other people into your network. These people that you add to your network could be people you have worked for in the past, or people that have worked for you, or just people that you know one way or another. It seems like a pretty good idea, so I have created a site for my friend and client Ray Chelini in another attempt to get his site higher up in the rankings for the Google search term "chelini", which he is currently on page four of the results. Google puts a lot of emphasis on link popularity. Here is Ray's Linkedin.com profile:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/raychelini


Jamie

New Site - Graham Ord

Hi Everyone,
I just finished a site re-do for Graham Ord. Graham is an amazing guitar player and songwriter. Check out his new CMS driven website. We are using Dotnetnuke for the Content Management System.

Have a look. www.grahamord.com

RAY CHELINI - New Site

I just finished a website for my good friend Ray Chelini. It has been such a joy to work on this site that showcases Ray's incredible works of art. Ray is inspired by Jesus Christ and creates these amazing hand carved and shaped sculptures in both wood and bronze.

Check out his site - www.chelinisculpture.com

Hi! I'm a Mac (Southpark Style)

I found this to be pretty funny! I think its kinda funny that these Mac ads like to say that PC's only come with Calculator and a Clock and Pie Charts. Like you can't have digital photos or games, or Windows Movie Maker, or MP3 music on a PC, the Mac ads are just silly. In a couple more years, it isnt going to matter what OS you have anyway, everything will be web based as soon as the Google OS starts to become ubiquitous.