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

February 21, 2014
Friday New Product and a Little Bit of F...

Solarbotics is helping out local fashion designers prepare their e-wearables for the Calgary MakeFashion. This time, Tony Grimes dropped in to experiment with his fiber-optic cloth from SensingTex as an illuminating surface, but the included 5mm LED was not dazzling enough. Time to hack in our 3W RGB Star Controller! The plan was to shift […]

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 […]

June 27, 2014
Closed July 1st for Canada Day

On Tuesday July 1st 2014 we are closed for Canada Day. We will return to our regular phone calls answering and shipping next day on Wednesday. Happy 147th birthday, Canada.

August 9, 2006
Another New Gearmotor - The GM19!

Here's a funky motor for you - the GM19! Slightly larger than the other metal gearhead series (GM11-14), and with a larger motor, this 35:1 beasty looks like a good contender for building mini-sumos or other small, speed-hungry robots! But be warned: It is a bit strange. The gearhead is mounted askew to the motor, […]

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.

cart