The 'How We Do It' Blog

Disclosure: Optimate Group Pty Ltd has an interest in Urban Heirlooms and Garden Clippings.

Background:
The Jujube Tree Nursery was becoming an established business, and being an all-round plant-nut in general (!), I was motivated to expand into other rarer and unusual plants — not only edibles like jujubes, but ornamentals as well. I chose the names Urban Heirlooms for the edibles and Garden Clippings for the ornamentals.

Analysis:
It soon became apparent that there would be some overlap between the two sites. For example, a coffee tree can be both an edible and an ornamental. As could a pot of lemongrass with its gorgeous draping foliage! Similarly the Air-Pot^® containers we sell, which I swear by, are products common to both sites.

Similarly, there were bound to also be blog posts common to both sites, such as this one on scientific nomenclature and this one on the Air-Pot^® containers.

The thought of duplicating products and posts across two sites was horrific! Never mind needing to log into one site to adjust the stock quantities of an item actually sold on the other site.

The Approach:
The obvious and only choice for me was to take full advantage of the ability of OpenCart to run multiple stores in the one installation. (Much like how b2evolution can also run multiple domains and websites in the one installation.) This way you only need enter a product once, or write a blog post once, and set whichever store(s) you want each to display on. You also have complete control over how each site looks — while my two stores have an identical theme, it is very much possible to have each store display a completely different look.

And while both my stores have an identical theme partly for branding and partly because of the natural overlap each has with the other, I still needed each to be slightly individual. Each has a very similar, but still different home page for example, with a slideshow and banners in identical positions, but with content unique to each. Similarly, the footer and product pages of each store are very much alike, but altered slightly so as to display each store’s unique email address.

And all updates are done through a single login too, no matter how many different stores and domains you have!

In Conclusion:
OpenCart’s ability to run multiple stores in a single installation proved invaluable here. I still needed to spend as much time building each store as if I had built each as a separate installation, but being able to work on both stores in the one spot alone was worth the price of admission! And without question so much more time will be saved down the track as both sites grow.

Please get in touch if you’d like a similar set up for your own needs, or even if you’re just after a single OpenCart store — it is very easy to add future stores at any time, and we can supply the web hosting prowess that makes this easier again. We run our own web hosting company with full control over our own servers, unlike many others that are actually reliant on third-parties and the pitfalls that can entail.

For example, yes, it is very straightforward to set up multiple stores in the one installation (though a touch fiddly and time-consuming to make everything perfect). However, not all hosting companies make available the ability to create subdomains and addon domains that make this possible in the first place. If your hosting company does not allow the creation of subdomains and addons then you will not be able to run more than one store per OpenCart installation.

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We’ve used, and seen come and go over many years, many ecommerce platforms. We have even written — and still do where appropriate — custom mini-platforms of our own. And when something comes along that does everything we need, we pay attention!

The ecommerce software OpenCart in its current form came onto the scene in 2009, and by 2017 had evolved into a platform with many features of interest to us. We tested it on a few of our own sites, and were very impressed. We could see OpenCart had a potentially great future, and stuck by it through every upgrade. We saw vast improvements with every major upgrade, and it is now our go-to software when needing a sophisticated ecommerce platform.

We chose OpenCart for several reasons.

Like our two content management systems, b2evolution and Silverstripe, it is open source with a strong developer and support community behind it.

Our web hosting service enables OpenCart to be installed with a couple of clicks, and the default ‘out of the box’ design is pleasing and easy to navigate. This combination is ideal for people who just want a shop up and running quickly, but who lack the technical expertise to do it all from scratch. (We can, and do, install and set up OpenCart shops for people who’d much rather that option.)

The massive third-party market was another factor in our consideration. Pretty much any look can be created from the plethora of themes (or ’skins’) available, and while looks aren’t everything, some themes certainly lend themselves to better navigation that others. (I’ll cover examples in future posts.)

There is also a massive marketplace for third-party add-ons which extend the shop’s functionality, whether you need a specialised report or incredibly-detailed control over postage calculations.

An OpenCart site can also handle blogs, though this is not part of the core code and does have to be added after a default installation. This is a brilliant feature that helps with content creation and search engine optimisation, and can be used to link to products for extra promotion. I wrote about an OpenCart site with a blog here.

Speaking of search engine optimisation, OpenCart has this ability built-in, though it does require a small change to a file on the server to implement, which we can help you with. Once implemented, you can create search engine-friendly urls, meta tags, meta descriptions, and keywords for all categories, products and blog posts on your site.

OpenCart is also very easy to use, whether you jump in to explore for yourself, or prefer some get-up-to-speed directions and a little helping hand. Once you know your way around one thing it is a simple matter applying that everywhere else.

If you’re considering setting up an ecommerce site, please do get in touch! We can discuss how best to set up a store to sell your products. We can help you get started with full support, or for a negotiated fee are most happy to do all the site maintenance on your behalf. This could include all product entries, writing blog content to complement your products, or both.

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Disclosure: Optimate Group Pty Ltd has an interest in The International Alpaca Reference Library.

Background:
A long-time client (Ian) rang out of the blue and asked if I’d like to set up an online library for alpaca breeders, and I said ’sure!’. Ian knew what he wanted, but was very happy to leave all the implementation to me — we have worked with each other for years and he trusted me implicitly to git ’er done. (This eventually evolved into a partnership: Ian’s contribution was to source all the articles and mine was to put everything together.)

Analysis:
The site was to be the definitive reference site (library) for all alpaca-related information and scientific research, and would rely on funds from sponsorships, donations, and running advertisements for ongoing maintenance.

Ian provided links to a plethora of alpaca-related articles and research papers via Word docs. I needed a way to collate those links in a way that was ordered and logical, as in a library, and which didn’t breach copyright or was plagiarism. These articles also needed to be found easily with a search function. Writing the software from scratch was possible, but was not a viable option owing to time and costs involved. And because this was a site for alpaca breeders, and this was around the time the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal was in the news, we thought it worth adding an online community/forum for the intended readership, which was guaranteed to protect people’s privacy.

The Approach:
The obvious and only choice for me was the excellent Content Management System (CMS) software, b2evolution. It took no time to install and within a day I had the basic structure fleshed out. This included a custom home page, two library sections, a page which recognised all supporters, a page which recognised all advertisers, and a forum. I also added a page advising how people could sponsor, donate, or otherwise advertise on the site, and linked that to an OpenCart ecommerce installation for taking payments online. (The lack of inbuilt ecommerce functionality is the only downside to b2evolution in my mind, but even that is now a promised feature on its way I hear!)

The software comes with a ‘manual’ interface, which made the collation of articles a breeze. I could create any number of categories and sub-categories, each of which then displayed a list of relevant articles or papers by title and a text snippet. Clicking on a title displayed more information again, such as the author, date of publication, name of publication, and a larger text snippet. A link to the full article or paper was provided for people to follow if interested.

b2evolution made it very easy to organise and display sponsors’ and others’ advertisements. The same ads were displayed together on the aforementioned sponsors and advertisers pages, further displayed by category within those dedicated pages, and were further again displayed individually in dedicated positions on all other pages. It was also a simple matter to have ads appear in a randomised order, which ensured all advertisers had an equal chance of being in the number one (or only) spot for any given page view.

In Conclusion:
Having access to the wonderful b2evolution CMS saved countless hours of time in development. Using that time to build the site, rather than its foundation. was far more productive and rewarding. Indeed, it took much much longer adding the content than setting up the site itself — and that site was a rather involved and sophisticated project in the grand scheme of things.

The only aspect b2evolution couldn’t handle was the ecommerce requirement, but that may soon be a problem of the past, and our go-to ecommerce software OpenCart more than adequately fills that role in the meantime. Apart than that, b2evolution readily handled every other need we could throw at it, with plenty of room left over for even more large-scale upsizing if required. For example, the forum never really took off despite our best efforts — Facebook probably won out in the end — but if it had, one idea we had was to offer regular/popular/informative posters their own blogging platform on the Library site. And we could do this for any number of guest bloggers without b2evolution breaking stride, it really is that powerful. I’ll be writing more about this software — you may have gathered by now that I am quite enamoured of it!

Please get in touch if you’d like a similar set up for your own needs. We can make it as simple or as sophisticated as you need from the outset, and the beauty of a powerful CMS like b2evolution is that the site can grow as you grow, without any compromise in performance, as this case study has shown. All support offered should you wish to maintain the site yourself, or we can do this on your behalf, whether fully or in part, in whichever way works best for you.

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