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

July 4, 2012
Cool Link Wednesday: Nixie Chess, Makerb...

It's July 4th! That means all of our pals to the south of the border are having a grand ol' time celebrating their independence from British colonialism and extra-terrestrial invasion. So in honour of their national holiday and the fact that it's a Wednesday, we have another round of neat links to sift through. Nixie […]

December 5, 2017
Holiday Shipping Deadlines

Within Canada: Canada Post Priority™ Dec 21 Canada Post Xpresspost™ Dec 20 Canada Post Regular Parcel™ Dec 11 To the United States: Canada Post Xpresspost Dec 16 Canada Post Expedited Parcel™ Dec 12 PuroGround Dec To Europe: Canada Post International Xpresspost Dec 8 Purolator: Canada, next-day delivery (where available) Dec 21 United States, next-day delivery (where available) Dec 21 United States via […]

February 11, 2011
New Hakko Iron & SMD LoL Shields

I wasn't very interested when the new Hakko FX-888 soldering iron showed up, but as I opened it and explored more, I got to thinking "Dang - this is a nice iron...". It's small, heavy, made-o'-metal, and of Hakko quality. And it's better than the old 936 it replaces, in practically every regard. And it […]

January 25, 2001
We want Your Input!!!

We are working on fixing the bugs in the website, along with a number of other improvements. Some of you may already know that we are rewriting the ordering portion, making processing your BEAM needs that much easier. It is approaching it's release very quickly, we are just doing the final testing now! So give […]

Solarbotics Ltd Logo
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!

Solarbotics, Ltd. is not responsible for misprints or errors on product prices or information. For more information, please see our Terms and Conditions.

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.