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

March 12, 2002
Solarbotics Interview in Canada Computes

Solarbotics in Canada Computes! We were recently interviewed for an article in the widely-read (well, in Canada anyways) Computer Paper publication. Probably nothing you already know, but we like to toot our own horn. Read More...

August 26, 2004
Solarbotics workshop at the Robothon

Solarbotics will be back at the Seattle Robothon September 24 and 25, hosting a workshop building our Sumovore mini-sumo robot kit, and a beta kit - the Herbie Photovore! We had a lot of fun doing it last year, and many builders went on to compete the next day in the competition. And for the […]

November 23, 2012
Open Beam Extrusions and Videos

We've been having lots of fun with Openbeam, building all kinds of handy contraptions out of it. Today's issue of Hey Look It's New Stuff covers a big chunk of our stock. OpenBeam Extrusion - 1000mm Length $175.00 If you find it annoying to cut the 1m open beam extrusions down to size - you […]

April 27, 2012
At the Expo!

Bad news, everyone - we don't have any new OR shiny things to show off today. That's because we've been busy packing up to attend the Calgary Comic Expo, which runs this weekend, from the 27th to the 29th. We have a booth set up and will be showing off some of our cool stuff, […]

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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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