BrainFuel

I am happy to announce that I have just installed an SSL certificate in under an hour. I must say that the last time I tried it with Plesk 6 it was a nightmare. Plesk 7.5 brings quite a number of user focused upgrades. It’s super easy now. I’m excited.

I just spoke with someone who is wanting to set up an ecommerce store to sell just 12 products online. She’s smart in that unlike most prospects she is actually reviewing the different ecommerce engines available on the market first, and then looking for a development shop to build the site based on her choice.

I find it surprising how often people and companies want to get down and dirty and customize an ecommerce engine to make it work for them. Not simple customizations like look and feel, but major things that change the core system in a deep way.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the last year and I told the lady that I don’t recommend it for off the shelf ecommerce products. One reason: because two years down the line when you want to upgrade to the latest version of the software the upgrade process will be nearly impossible. Or if it is, it will be expensive because you have to do your changes again.

Reasoning:

#1: The upgrade process will overwrite any changes you made to the source code.

#2: If you want to upgrade the software, you’ll have to re-do all of your “modifications” which is expensive.

#3: No guarantees that the original developer will be available. Knowledge will be lost.

#4: Something is guaranteed to break somewhere or sometime… and it will be difficult to track down.

So with that said, let me make some hypothetical comparisons:

#1: Lady walks into a Hummer dealership and says “this H2 is really great except I’d like it to be 5 inches longer and can you put leather on the floors, too? …oh, and here’s my eye prescription. I’d like my windshield to be perfect for me.” Nobody ever does this.

#2: Businessman buys QuickBooks for his small business accounting and realizes it doesn’t do everything he wants. After using the software for a while he decides “I want to get this customized so it’s just right for me.” Nobody ever does this.

#3: Guy walks into Burger King and says “I’d like a Whopper without the lettuce and tomato and hold the mayo.” Oh wait, people already do this.

Too many people think it’s a piece of cake to customize ecommerce engines and don’t think about the long term implications.

So I told her that my recommendation is to find the ecommerce engine that fits 90% or more of her requirements and then change her online business model so it works with the ecommerce engine of question.

She thought I was nuts.

She said she was looking at ProductCart, X-Cart, Storefront, and a few others. Has anybody used Storefront before? It looks pretty good. It’s built using .NET and appears to be geared to the same audience as ProductCart. I know how bad X-Cart is, and I told her so.

Don’t forget to take photos of dirt this week for our first ever BrainFuel Photo Contest. Entries need to be in this Friday. I already have a couple of good pictures. Photos of dirt can be cool and I’m out to prove it and you should be, too!

Ever since the dawn of time, web designers have forever cherished the image file format entitled “Portable Network Graphics image”—or PNG, for short. They delighted at it’s 24-bit transparency capabilities—which blew the water out of anything GIF had to offer. But low and behold; for Microsoft hath resolv’d to ignore yonder file format and not include it in it’s ever popular web browser—Internet Explorer! Panic strikes into the hearts of well-meaning web designers, as their newly found image format will not display correctly in IE! What will they do now?

Fortunately, some PHP wizard came up with a fix. Now is that cool, or what?

Years ago my grandpa and I coined the phrase “Idiot Control Officer,” or ICO for short. Sort of a play on CEO, CFO, CTO, etc. We decided someone needed to be in charge of the idiots of the world.

There is a situation in Delray Beach where an ICO is desperately needed. Here’s a quote from a newspaper article that described hundreds of sharks swiming off the beach:

A few swimmers and surfers braved the waters despite pleas from lifeguards and signs warning about the danger.

“I saw some sharks, but I tried not to fall down on them,” said Larry Marquis, a kite-boarder from Delray Beach who was in the ocean for about two hours. He said he didn’t consider the sharks dangerous and wasn’t going to miss a good day of surfing.

BrainFuel reader Floerty (a designer from Montreal) sent in a link to Floerty.com A personal portfolio site. I like the interface.

Montrail sells a variety of sports equipment for everything from whitewater rafting, ice climbing, skiing, and a bunch of other outdoor activities. I like how the site throws you into a photo sensation. It really makes me think they get “sports.”

Smith Optics uses some funky type treatments, a brave typeface for the navigation, and lots of bright colors. Cool!