Triumphcollectors.com is built on WordPress 2.7, and uses PHPBay Pro, an excellent WordPress plugin that turns a basic blog into an Ebay reseller. In this case, the site provides targeted keyword content on the Icon British sports cars from Triumph Motor Corporation.

The theme for triumphcollectors.com is customized version of a basic two column theme. The objective was to customize the theme as much as possible to accomodate PHPBayPro, since this was my first experience with the software, and I did not want to go too crazy with a complicated theme.

I was able to easily add the customized features to the theme, such as a rotating header image, splitting the header to show the Union Jack, having separately designed sidebars appear within select categories. This was key because the site required different Amazon reseller ads for each topic. Now the articles in the Triumph Spitfire category are matched with relevant ads. I also rewrote most of the CSS, changed the formating some and customized the background images as well as the other framework images.

Installing PHPbay Pro was a breeze. This $50 plugin is worth every penny. The license is for a single user, but you can put it on as many sites as you own. There are many documents and videos explaining how to use the plugin. Actually I found it very intuitive and only had to refer the PDF manual a couple of times. In fact I hate Ebay and have not been to the site in a few years. So I can image how quickly someone could set this up if they were more acclimated to Ebay and how the categories are set up and such.

The site also features my normal roster of recommended WordPress plugins.

Nexugen.com is an ecommerce store that features natural anti-aging skin care products. The store is built with Zen-Cart, and is wrapped in Word Press, which I configured as a content management system. A central homepage mixes elements from Word Press and from Zen-Cart. The customer can easily navigate either to a blog to read articles about skin care products, or they can go to the store to shop.

This site encompasses several features for natural search optimization including dozens of relevant articles that are keyword centric, various modules to support meta-tagging and keyword featuring tools to attract search engine spiders.

This configuration has proven to be immensely more successful than the old site in terms of SEO and customer experience. Since I launched it in November 2007, sales has steadily increased, as well has natural search terms list ranking.

Technology: WordPress (used as CMS). Zen-Cart. Various modules and extensions added as well.

Description: Customized WordPress blog with Flash audio player, featured site video display, Zen Cart Store.

George is a talented jazz pianist that wanted a site to promote and sell his albums and tickets to his show. With his long list of contacts in the world of Jazz, George wanted to build a comprehensive jazz site to showcase and reflect his expertise and interest in the world of jazz. This would include interviews, music, and video posts. To achieve this I decided to use the Structure WordPress Theme by Justin Tadlock. Just is doing some really innovative development with WordPress themes, so I had been wanting to use one to learn his methods.

I considered WP-Ecommerce for the store portion of this site, but once I got into I realized it is a very flawed product. It’s built in tables, which is always horrible, and there is no easy way to set it up for a SSL (encrypted connection). I used Zen Cart which actually ended up being a far better choice.

In the end the client was very please with what I created for him. The site seems to fit his objectives and provides the content management features he needed, in an format that easy to maintain.

Technology: WordPress, Zen Cart

Broadcastsolutions.com is a broker of professional video production and post production equipment. The site is built on WordPress as it’s primary framework. I integrated the Zen-Cart E-Commerce system into the mix to create a seemless solution that enables them to generate a lead and follow up with it offline.

I built their original site in 1995, which served their purpose even though it was dated and missed the latest technologies that would benefit their business. When the owners Rick and Teresa contacted me about revamping the site a couple of months ago, I was astonished to see that they were still using the old site, frames and all.

Even though the old site was working for them, it desperately needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. the current site could not display images of the equipment they were selling, the admin was clunky, and they were not ranking for any of their primary keywords. I won’t even go into the whole thing with frames. Hey! it was 1995, frames were in back then.

This made it a perfect fit for my WordPress and Zen-Cart combination. They loved the idea and the samples I showed from nexugen.com and georgetemerson.com. The blog was pretty standard issue, it only required a custom homepage. I did create a custom header with a nice CSS navigation bar that maximizes their keyword text in header, and is very user friendly.

I made strong use of the All-In-One-SEO wordpress plugin to set the site up for what will hopefully be a quick rise for their primary keyword rankings. With a domain that is over 10 years old, I have to think that they can get ranked once some basic optimizing techniques are applied. In this case I’ve got them on a course of content creation that should stock their blog with quality content in just a few months.

The store required much more customization because they don’t directly take orders from the site. The requirement was for a “catalog” only interface that would mail equipment requests, which would be followed up and transacted over the phone between Rick or Teresa and the client.

I was able to accomplish most of this through the standard Zen Cart admin. The rest was done through gentle tweeks to the core code. Zen Cart can be very finicky, I’ve come to learn, so I’m not a fan of tinkering too much under hood except when there is no other choice. Ultimately I turned off the all of the payment and shipping module admin settings, leaving only the Check/Money order function live.

In the individual product listing I tried various combinations of the shipping options until I found one that removed the shipping feature by configuring the product “Virtual” which removed the shipping options and form inputs for shipping address information.

The result is that their specific needs are met, yet if they want to start taking online payments in the future, we can transition to that method quickly and efficiently.

It was on the development of Zen Cart for this store that I experienced the nightmare “Blank Zen Cart Checkout Page” error for the first time. I’ve explained how I dealt with it another post. If you are attempting custom Zen Cart work, I highly suggest reading it.

The entire project took about 6 weeks to complete. The site in now officially launched with over 200 products, featuring pictures, blog articles, and no frames.

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