New projects

RGA is done and here's what the client had to say about my work:

Everything looks great. It has been a pleasure to work with you on this new site. It is everything I hoped it would be and you are a delight to work with. Your ability to translate my ideas into reality was the key. This site should serve us well. If you ever need a testimonial, let me know.

Well, I think maybe that's testimonial enough! Bill has been just great to work with as well.

Next projects on my desk are Cañon City Fire Protection District and Santa Fe Realty. Check back for the progress reports.

RGA Shopping Cart

Well, I didn't think at first it could be done (as usual!), but (as usual!) I've got the RGA table-based shopping cart tweaked to mimic the XHTML/CSS layout of the rest of the site. As predicted, it was very tedious, with 490 files to wade through to find the correct ones to modify.

The cart turned out nicely and the price was right (FREE) as part of the Hosting Matters! package.

Now, only one pesky script to fix and it's a wrap....

Shopping cart table based layout

After much consideration and research, I decided to go with the Zen Cart for RGA. It is of course, a table based layout, which stinks since the rest of the site has been designed using XHTML and CSS, but is fairly easy to customize, and will allow the customer to add, delete and update his cart items.

Unbelievable how far CSS layout has come and yet there is no shopping cart that I could find that doesn't use tables in a complicated layout of templates. One of these days, I should write a CSS cart program.

Kudos!

This is an email in its entirety that I got from Bill at Royal Gorge Anglers. It doesn't get more gratifying than this!
_____________________________________________________

Cindy,
Thought you might enjoy this comment. I agree.
B

From: Phil Waters
To: bill@royalgorgeanglers.com
Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2005 6:25 PM
Subject: Re: Royal Gorge Anglers' Newsletter

Congratulations on your new website -- and kudos to CD Webmaker. What you're doing here, particularly with the map and blog, puts RGA at the absolute forefront of what a fly shop shoud be doing to both serve its clientele while enhancing the brand and marketing. And that's what we all hoped the web would do.

Keep it up! (pun intended)

Phil Waters
Evergreen, CO
and, retired Design Director for America Online

Flash updates via PHP script

The RGA interactive Arkansas River map is up and running. This is a Flash file

with textthat's updateable by the client from the admin section of his site, using a custom PHP script.

Now on to the shopping cart....stay tuned!

Oh, the view!

Slidell, LA hurricane victims

My friends in Iowa, transplanted Cajuns, have taken in a family of four from Slidell, LA who
lost EVERYTHING in Katrina. A week later, she was laid off from her job and they
are now struggling to manage the extra burden. If anyone can and would like
to help, send me an email and I'll get you in touch with them. Thanks in
advance for your generosity.

Blogger.com Rules!

I put up only a couple dumb posts last week for testing purposes, and it netted me a call from a potential client yesterday! While the Blogger templates will be tedious to customize, it can be done, and Blogger affords me wider exposure than would a custom blog script run only from my own site, RSS feeds or not.

While programming for other programmers gets you the respect of your peers, programming for the client pays the bills!

NO Windows Servers!

I got RGA off their Windows server (ugh!) and moved over to Hosting Matters. I like these guys, it's my second account with them, and they've been great. They're happy to let RGA run the custom PHP script I wrote to send out their newsletter to 2210 recipients.

The script emails an HTML newsletter to block of email addresses at a time, then pauses for a few seconds and starts again with the next block. Of course, all subscribers are opt-in ONLY with an obvious unsubscribe link in the newsletter itself. RGA is NOT a spammer and deserves to be treated better than one. Hosting Matters is one of only a few hosts to give us the chance to 'play nice' and get the news out to his loyal fly fishing followers. Oh, yeah, and the price was right at only $112/year!

Client is happy, and really, what else is there?!?

Hello (blog) World

You knew that was coming didn't you? Don't forget to visit my web site! Especially the 'Portfolio' page showcasing my projects. Work in progress includes Royal Gorge Anglers, and the Cañon City Fire Protection District ( no web address yet).