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 12, 2007
Circuit: L293D Mini-Sumo

This circuit is used to create a simple "edgebot" sumo robot. Being an edgebot refers that it will repeat the same backup/turn/go forward action when it's single edge sensor detects the edge of the ring. This version of the circuit is quite simple, and always turns the same way.

September 10, 2000
New Site!

Welcome to the new Solarbotics Website! We've been busy whipping Kenny the Web-boy with various types of wet noodles (use Fettuccini - heavier!) to get this new and improved site up to snuff. This year, we've moved the site to 100% ASP (yes, I hear the "boos" from the Linux camp over in Minnesota), which […]

April 26, 2002
Guaranteed Results Workshop at WCRG

Solarbotics is again hosting a Guaranteed Results workshop at the Western Canadian Robot Games, on Friday May 10th, noon to 4pm. It works like this: Pick up any kits from Solarbotics before (or of the day) the workshop, bring it in, and we'll have tools and expertise there to make sure your kit goes together […]

August 4, 2015
Friday New Product: Grove, Kossel

Grove - Mega Shield $12.90 Grove - Mega Shield is a extension board for Arduino Mega and Google ADK. Seeed Grove - Serial Camera Kit - 22.40 - 67.20 $38.80 Grove - Serial Camera Kit includes one control board and two interchangeable lenses, one standard lens and one wide-angle lens. GrovePi+ $39.10 GrovePi+ is a […]

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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.