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

September 13, 2013
Phone Support Unavailable

Due to a shortage of staff and the Calgary Mini Maker Faire this weekend, we will unfortunately be unable to take your calls at this time. Sales & support can still be reached at sales@solarbotics.com & support@solarbotics.com, however responses may be a bit delayed.

December 14, 2021
Solarbotics / Active-Tech Holiday Hours ...

Looking forward to a bit of recharge time after the holiday rush! While being in that mindset, here's our holiday schedule for both Solarbotics and the Active-Tech Calgary Storefront: December 24th - 9:30-1:30pm December 25th - Closed (HO HO HO!) December 26th - Closed (Whooboy... leftovers and toys!) December 27th - Closed (Moar leftovers... and […]

August 3, 2018
Closed on Monday August 6th

That's it. We've had enough. The weather is just too darn nice outside. So nice, in fact, that we quit. That's right, when Monday rolls around no one is even going to bother coming into the office. You heard us - we'll be closed on Monday, August the 6th. Go ahead and email and leave […]

September 28, 2008
BEAM as part of thesis work

Rory Nugent (of Solar Xylophone fame) has posted his thesis presentation to the Interactive Telecommunications Program, which heavily features BEAM devices. By "building things with a sense of life", he's documenting what we've known for a good while - autonomous devices ("pets") offer unusual interesting relationships. Keep up the good work!

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Please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov for more information. This item was manufactured prior to August 31, 2018.

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