Climbing Frames Etc.

Look for new developments…

I’ve been working on a major update to Climbing Frame Etc.  It’s taking a LOT longer than I imagined, mainly due to the fact that I’m trying to do the work on a live site.

It’s actually a pretty stupid thing to do.

At the moment the site is all hand coded, but with the huge increase in the number of products that I want to list this is really not practical anymore.  What I’m doing is implementing a new shopping cart which will also act as a content management system, enabling me to list products in a much easier manner.

The shopping cart looks like a great product, but despite my best efforts I have been unable to get it working.  I’m trying to implement it in the background on the live site and at the same time trying to ensure that none of the existing live and working site gets impacted in any way.  It just isn’t working, and like I said, it’s a pretty stupid thing to do.

I think the problem is the .htaccess file, which I’ve got doing all sorts of stuff at the moment.  It also needs to be altered for the shopping cart, and this seems to be the straw that broke the camels back.  There is no way to experiment with this in the live environment.  So, I’ve purchased another copy of the cart software and will be doing all my testing on a completely separate domain.

I’m hoping this will enable me to pinpoint exactly where the problem is and will definitely allow my to test things in a far safer manner.

More updates on Climbing Frames Etc. new look coming soon. BTW – it’s not just a new look.  There will be a range of swimming pools and outdoor toys being added to the site as well.

I’m in the process of updating the Climbing Frames Etc. link directory. So if you are interested in becoming a link partner then please fill in the form on the following page :

http://www.climbing-frames-etc.co.uk/linkto-climbing-frames-etc.html

PLEASE NOTE - I am only interested in exchanging links with sites that are related to mine. For example, outdoor toys, play equipment, gardening, childrens parties, etc.

Do not waste your time and mine by submitting sites that are NOT related.

I am considering offering a range of swimming pools to compliment the range of climbing frames, play structures, and swing sets that I currently stock. I’m not certain that this site is the right place to be be selling them. The alternative is to build a brand new site. The problem with doing that is that it can easily be 8 months before it goes into Google’s results, and there is TONS of hard work to get it decent ranking.

So, adding them here would be the easy option. I’ve yet to decide. If anyone has any thoughts then feel free to let me know.

At the moment on the Climbing Frames Etc main menu there is an option for ‘Accessories’.  The problem I have is that there are minimum order values and/or minimum delivery costs from the different companies that I deal with.  For example, one manufacturer of play structures requires a minimum order value of £100.  If all you want is a new swing seat then there is a big difference to get to the £100 mark.  Similarly, nobody wants to buy an £8 swing seat and be faced with £20 delivery costs.

I tried to make it clear on the climbing frames accessories page that they would only be for sale with the purchase of a climbing frame or other play structure, so as to ensure that there would be no issues over minimum order values or delivery costs.  However, I don’t think that is working.  It doesn’t matter where I put the text, how big, bold, and noticeable I make it, the problem is that people simply are not reading it !

The only way around the issue is to remove the climbing frames accessories option from the menu.  What I plan to do is to replace that menu option with one for a FAQ.  I hope that I can answer a lot of the questions that people often phone me up about, but I can’t help worrying that if people won’t read something important in big, bold, red text, then I might be wasting my time ! 

As you may have noticed, I have made the changes to the news section of Climbing Frames Etc. that I mentioned in a previous post. The main cosmetic changes have been completed, but there is still a lot of work to be done in adding content and maybe changing a few categories around. Hopefully, these will be completed over the next few days.

I’m planning to carry out the upgrade on the news section tomorrow. I’ve been planning to do it for a while now. The Climbing Frames Etc. news section may be all over the place for a short while tomorrow, so I apologise in advance to anyone who happens to be reading it at the time.

Nothing to get excited about. I was having a check through the site and I noticed that I had fogotten the link to the shopping basket from the ‘View Basket’ option on Climbing Frames Etc. navigation bar. I also had forgotten to put on the menu the link to Climbing Frames Etc. news pages (what your reading !). These have now been fixed.

Climbing Frames Etc. has now been handed over to Barclays Merchant Services to check over. All going well, I have been told that I will get a letter from them in around 7 working days with my merchant number. At that point I can then pass the merchant number to Protx. I then get a userid and password to access their system. A bit of testing on Protx’s test system and then I switch over to live. If everything goes smoothly (somehow it never seems to though !) then Climbing Frames Etc. is still on track for a ‘go live’ date of the 1st March.

I’ve spent the day tying up loose ends, double checking things, and making sure my prices were correct across the shopping cart and what was getting displayed. At the end of it all I sat back and thought … No. Something just wasn’t right. The problem is that the different play equipment manufacturers have different policies when it comes to charging for delivery, for example. It’s not a problem, as I just charge the customer exactly what they charge me. I don’t believe on profiting from delivery charges.

The problem as I saw it was that it made the site difficult for the customer to compare products. And at the end of the day, the site is all about the customer. How can people compare product prices when one manufacturer is charging nothing for delivery and another is charging £71. That makes a big difference in the final price that someone pays !

So, I’m revising all the prices to put them on a level playing field. More about this tomorrow.

I’m happy to receive feedback and comments on anything related to Climbing Frames Etc., particularly at this stage before it goes live. If you want to leave a comment then just click on the ‘comment’ link and let me know what you think.

I’ve implemented a plug-in to prevent comment spam. It should not affect ‘real’ people, but it should stop the spambots that plaster comment spam all over other peoples sites. Let me know if you have any problems leaving comments. You can email me at chris.drilled32039@zoemail.net (a temp address to keep the spammers at bay).

This is the main page for the swing sets products. Please remember the site is not live until 1st March 2005. Orders will not be accepted until then.

I’ve now uploaded the overview page for the climbing frames products. Same rules apply. The site is not live yet so please do not try to buy anything until the 1st March.

I’ve been working on Climbing Frames Etc. pretty much solidly and was hoping to get the site finished today, but there is just that little bit too much to do, and to be honest I’m exhausted and brain dead at this point. I really don’t want to do anymore, mess it up, and then have to spend the whole day re-doing it tomorrow. I’ve already lost time by deleting all the product descriptions that I’d spent 2 days typing in ! And I don’t want a repeat of that.

Climbing Frames Etc. needed a logo and it’s something that I’ve been dragging my feet on. Well it’s finally sorted out. I always find it very difficult trying to choose which is the best and most appropriate design. Particularly for a site such as this. It might be called Climbing Frames Etc., but a large part of the products fall into the ‘Etc.’ category, rather than ‘climbing frames’. So, what I needed was something that was going to represent the spectrum of play equipment products that I would be selling. Hopefully I’ve achieved it.

This is a slightly smaller version of the Climbing Frames Etc. logo that I will be using.

Play equipment products are gradually being added to the site. Climbing Frames Etc. is still a couple of days away from being passed over to be checked for credit card merchant suitability. Some time has been lost after a whole load of html containing all the product descriptions went awol.

Here is a taster of some one of the products. The page is clearly not complete but it show the sort of play equipment that will be getting sold on Climbing Frames Etc.

The first draft of Climbing Frames Etc. ’s contact page has been published. This page is subject to change over the next couple of days and not intended at this stage for end customers.