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 11, 2007
BEP Application: Bare Bones PhotoVore

We like to have some play time at Solarbotics, and the "Bare Bones Photovore" is the results of one of these play sessions. It's a very simple (amongst the simplest, we'll hazard to say) light-seeking solar-powered robot, and find it easy to build using the Bicore Experimenter's PCB.

January 17, 2017
New Product: Synapse & ESP

Synapse 220 Modules RF220SU SNAP Engine, 2 Mbps 2.4 GHz CAD40.43/USD29.95 WiFi is good, but the SNAP Engine Model RF220SU is an IEEE 802.15.4, low-power, very robust solution for embedded wireless control and monitoring networks. With auto-mesh networking (try that WiFi...). 2Mbps on the 2.4GHz spectrum and RP-SMA or U.FL selectable antenna. Synapse RF220UF1 CAD40.43/USD29.95 […]

November 15, 2006
Holiday Specials!

Yes, we're approaching the time of the year when it's the darkest and all you want to do is sip tea and huddle around the ... soldering iron! The first of our specials is the "KHSB1 - Learn Robotics Book Special". It includes a copy of our popular "Junkbots, Bugbots, and Bots on Wheels", plus […]

November 1, 2001
Having Online Order Difficulty?

If you've been having any problem whatsoever with our online orderform, would you be so kind to fire us a quick message about it? We're trying to isolate a problem we're hearing about, but cannot reproduce, especially with the final "submit" button. A copy/paste of the error message to us would be greatly appreciated...

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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!

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.

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