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 6, 2001
Faster Download Times!

We are improving the site once again! You'll notice that our Products, Galleries, and Old News page(s) will load faster. All the same information is there, it just has a more streamlined approach, reducing the download time (especially for Sherline Machines!). So check it out! Read More...

May 17, 2001
Review of the Scoutwalker II

Nuts and Volts author Robert Nansel has reviewed our SW2 kit and has written up an excellent review. You can get a sample magazine from the Nuts and Volts website or search their distributers page for where you can get the magazine. Check out the add on page 53 for our add, as well as […]

May 18, 2014
The Marble Machine at Solarbotics

Aaaand this is a quick note to remind everyone that the Solar Marble Machine is now fully available for purchase from our website. Enjoy!

August 17, 2001
Spyder Detail Pictures

One of the most popular BEAM Walkers ever built was Mark Tilden's VBug 1.1 - Spyder. We've recently had the opportunity to shoot a series of high-resolution detail pictures of this robot, which we're now making available to you!

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.

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