More about website development

Dave Hrynkiw
October 15, 2019

A decent website is a core of a web-centric store like ours. Back in the early days, I hand-coded HTML (yeah, go back to waybackmachine to admire that work), and what you got is what you got. Since then, we rebuilt Solarbotics.com through 3 more iterations of totally refactored hand-coded platforms, and then 2 aborted attempts as re-releases on Magento and then WordPress/Woocommerce. Those last two attempts cost us the ball-park of a really really nice Tesla with nothing much to show for it, with a devastating website hack in-between to kick us in the nether-regions. Many expensive and painful lessons were learned in this process.

Since then, we've released unsatisfactory consultants, brought the development management in-house, and piece-mealed specific development aspects to consultants with MUCH better results. It's come at the cost of letting our internal R&D coast for the better part of a year while we focus our top-talent on getting the website reworked, but its something that needed to be done.

We are about to re-release Solarbotics.com on a WordPress/Woocommerce platform, with some new features added, and some others removed. We'll be staging out further enhancements as we get comfortable with the platform, and hope you'll continue being good customers of Solarbotics.com.

MORE POSTS

February 26, 2014
Wednesday Links: TV Tube Hack, Monofilam...

Today we let our staff robo-weasels pick the links. They really wanted to participate and said they will behave and promised not to drink all the antifreeze liquid from the cars again. So we let them, and here's the result. TV Screen Flag TV screen warps and waves like a flag when blown on with […]

May 9, 2014
Solarbotics at MakerShed

Yeah, you got it: at the Bay Area Maker Faire, on May 17 and 18, 2014. With some exciting new stuff. It requires sun, balls and mice. And no, it is not a solar-powered feline. It is much better. (Note: mice mention was only for confusion purposes, I confess). In any case, whatever it is, […]

September 18, 2003
Solarbotics at RoboMaxx, Robothon

We're making the trip out to Robomaxx in Grants Pass, Oregon October 11-12. Gonna be there? Hunt down the dude in the cowboy hat wearing the "Solarbotics" Shirt. That'll be me. Maybe I'll have samples of our gearmotors burning a hole in my pocket. If it isn't me, tell him to give back my hat […]

April 17, 2009
Solarbotics goes "Hip"

Solarbotics has been on "the internets" for quite some time now. We've seen many websites come and go, but we've recently jumped feet-first into the cold, frigid water of this "social web 2.0 happy fun time" thing we keep hearing about. I mean, it's Web 2.0. That's, like, twice as much as Web 1.0. And […]

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Solarbotics has been operating for more than 25 years, bringing electronics know-how and supplies to both the electronics professional and hobbyist. We'll be happy to help you too!

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Warning: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
Please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov for more information. This item was manufactured prior to August 31, 2018.

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