jcCommerce

Whats Going On

23rd July, 2008 - Posted by Chance -

You know, I really like posting on my blog. It’s a real shame that I’m busy with stuff that actually makes me money and don’t have time to do it very often.

Lately I’ve been working on a number of projects that run the gamut of web development, doing accounting crap, and discovering new lands. Read on to hear more about it.

eCommerce Development

I’m building a quasi-ecommerce site using the excellent Magento Commerce package. This is a modified “quote-to-order” site that functions like a shopping cart but with no prices. People add items to their quote (cart), complete the submission process (checkout with no payment info), and submit. On the back end I wrote some custom code to export orders to the client’s quoting, CRM, and accounting systems (Peachtree / Act Premium / Quotewerks).

I really like Magento- its powerful but its not the easiest to wrap your head around if you are not used to object oriented programming. if you’re coming from osCommerce and want to do some heavy customization (and are the average “wtf is a function?” osC user) it will blow your mind, be warned.

Access Controlled Resource Site

I’m working on a access controlled site that shares company information with outside distributors. Its based on Drupal and is nearly pure function- blog, download catalog for video, brochure PDFs, promotional CD images, etc.

We wrote a custom account expiration module where users have to click a reactivation link sent to their corporate email after x number of days/weeks. The theory here is that if an employee of a distributor leaves their company they won’t have access to their company email anymore and can’t reactivate their account, effectively cutting them off after their activation period has expired. I don’t think its the best idea in the world, but its what the customer wanted so what can you do?

We’ll probably release the module publicly as a Portal Labs joint once we test it thoroughly and clean it up a bit. Promotion is promotion, right?

Portal Labs Site

We redid the Portal Labs site to focus more on contract development and highlight our technical prowess. Still a work in progress, it shows some stuff we have done and explains what we can do. If anyone is looking for custom web application development we have one partner working full time on contract work now and he’s good- probably the best I’ve ever seen. I’m kinda jealous of him, that brilliant asshole.

We’re very reasonable on our rates, especially for what you get- PHP/Ruby/Python developers with Symfony and Rails experience who code well and work fast. After all, its more cost effective to pay someone good $60/hour for 4 hours instead of paying some rube $30/hour for 10 and still get crap. Yeah, I’m still working on the sales pitch.

Of course, those with requests like “I want you to make me a site like Amazon for $200″ need not apply.

The 4 Letter Domain

We’ve had a 4 letter domain name for a while now that a good friend of mine gave us. We’re writing a ruby-on-rails app for it so its not just sitting there idle. After all, all the 4 letter domains are gone and it’s silly to just have it sitting in the domain registrar not doing anything. Its a drop dead simple short-URL service like all the others out there.

It was kinda a competition for us- how fast can we write an application to utilize the domain. We spent about 3 hours on development and have a fully functional app, which is cool in its own special way.

Eventually we’ll integrate the service with Digital Product Delivery so affiliates and whatnot can generate cloaked short URLs from right inside the app.

As soon as the design work is complete we’ll announce it here or on the new (and currently barren) Portal Labs blog.

Other Stuff

I spend $200 on QuickBooks so we could do quoting and whatnot. Portal Labs is making some ok money now, which is a good thing. Now that I have accounting software I can do cool things like profit and loss statements, see where expenses are coming from, see where income is coming from, etc. Nifty fact- 6% of our expenses come from bank and merchant account fees! I know, exciting right?

Lets see, what else… While walking around my yard this weekend I found that the property pins that mark the boundary of my lot- about 75 feet farther back than I where I thought they would be. As my lot is around 200 feet wide, it turns out I have an extra 15,000 sq/ft of land. Its behind a berm and is full of brush and trees. The berm will be handy for concealing the area as it’s about 5 feet tall (2m or so)- I’m thinking of clearing the brush and putting ugly things like a compost bin and workshop wood scrap pile back there. Once a year I’ll rent a chipper and make free mulch for landscaping or something. Of course, all this will take place after the 95F+ temperatures in Georgia die down.

Um, oh I switched from Comcast Cable to Dish Network for my TV service. Dish has an HD-only package thats right up my alley, and at around $40 a month (with DVR service) its a lot less than what I was paying Comcast for all the channels+HD+DVR service (around $80 a month). I only watch HD channels as the non-HD stuff hurts my eyes now- its amazing how your eyes get used to clarity and fuzzy non-HD channels give you headaches after a while.

Oh yeah- I’ve been using aging CRT computer monitors in my home office, but one finally gave up the ghost this week. I bought a shiny new 20″ widescreen LCD to replace it and I just love it. I’m going to buy a second one next month so that both my monitors match- I have a dual DVI video card so I’m going to have ultra digital clarity in stereo soon. Its amazing how you get used to a blurry old monitor and don’t realize how crappy it was until you put it beside a sharp new one.

Funny thing though- With my old square 19″ CRTs I was used to opening Dreamweaver full screen on one monitor and Firefox, etc. full screen on the other when I’m working. Edit in DW, Crtl+S, Alt+Tab, Crtl+R, preview in FF, that sort of thing. Now that I have a widescreen monitor everythig is wide as hell full screen, so not making everything full screen and actually utilizing the extra desktop space is going to take some getting used to. I hope I can fit two of these badboys on my computer desk. After all, widescreen monitors are, well, wide. Wider than my 19″ CRTs anyway.

Add to that the 19″ LCD I use on the ubuntu dev server thats also on my desk and the desktop is going to be cramped. I know, ultra-geeky with the 3 monitors, two keyboards and mice. Perhaps a KVM switch is in order.

Anyway, thats whats been going on. Stay classy internets.

Posted on: July 23, 2008

Filed under: General Nonsense, Making Money Online