Work Babble – mccormicky

LightSpeed Webstore Customization Tip: change default button value, CSS class

Hey there customizers,

here’s a small trick I figured out about changing button values ( the text of a button, e.g., “Submit” ). A trick I turned up when I was stressing about having to edit a core file in order to deliver the same copy as was indicated in the mockup.

If you’re working as much as me, you can’t possibly keep track of every line you edited in core of every site you hand off when prepping for webstore version upgrades ( for every site you maintain). Not that you should ever edit core – but, unfortunately there’s a lot of plain text in LightSpeed Webstore that’s sequestered in core files and sometimes you have to.

Most clients have no idea that most of this stuff is in core – they see “Shipping is the same as Billing address” and they want it to read “My Billing & Shipping Address are the Same for This Order”. While I can go into /where-webstore-is-installed/xlsws_includes, find the file that contains the line “Shipping is the same as Billing address” and edit it, I’m not supposed to. Not that it will break stuff (editing plain text rarely breaks anything) but imminent upgrades will possibly overwrite the edit and I might not remember to add it back.

Because of this issue I’m always looking for ways to edit stuff without touching core so when I saw this line in /templates/deluxe/promo_code.tpl.php which renders the submit button for the Promo Code input field:

[php]<?php $this->btnPromoVerify->Render(‘Text=’._sp("Apply Promo Code")) ?>[/php]

I tried it out on other render hooks and found out I could use it practically anywhere I wanted to. I could also use this other handy line I’d seen sprinkled about in template files which generates the CSS class for a HTML element such as for the Login/Register buttons in
/templates/deluxe/checkout_login_register.tpl.php:

[php]
<?php $this->butLogin->Render(‘CssClass=button rounded’) ?>
<?php $this->butRegister->Render(‘CssClass=button rounded’) ?>
[/php]

I combined the lines in one render hook and was real (stupidly pleased) with myself. Example:

[php]
<?php $this->whatEver->Render(‘CssClass=awesome’,
‘Text=’._sp("Awesome")) ?>
[/php]

Keep your eyes peeled for $this->something->Render() in your templates and try it out for yourself.

I’ve Had It

I’m going to ask my clients if they wouldn’t mind coming here to this blog and giving me some testimonials about their experiences of working with me.

I will ask them to briefly describe the collaborative process we went through,and whether they were satisfied with the finished product.

Why?

Because of this one bad apple client.
I’m getting what can only be described as looneytunes emails about how I am bitter and angry,how they were able to do business like they like(lots of work done for them and they pay for half)before they got messed up with me and my money demanding ways.

I have really had it with these folks.
I’ve had the pleasure of working on and completing 4 sites since theirs,2 of them were hardly paying one not at all,because they couldn’t afford it.I like to do work like this and balance it out with clients who can and should pay.But I cut struggling artists a break.Because I am an artist.
My very latest client is a student and I really enjoyed bringing his vision to life. I did the same thing for the bad apple which is why they quoted a price which was double what I expected.
And they have made me chase this ever since.

According to them I am the unprofessional one.I responded with what I found out that other more higher paid and better known designers have written in their blogs that they would do in my shoes:pull the site until the client pays. So I told them if I am unprofessional they should be happy because they wouldn’t at all like what a professional designer would do if they were me.

We are now in the middle of an email-a-thon because they don’t want me to have the last word! So childish.

Each time I’ve answered an email I have remained on subject,used polite language and refrained from making personal remarks(as much as I could,anyway).
And yet they keep calling me unprofessional merely because I keep asking they pay me.And when they failed to send me a check after a check bounced, I took out 2 links(I put them back later the same night because I’m a bit of a pussy).

Now I have gotten the owner’s life story because I told him he was trying to get something for nothing.
That’s professional? I never felt the need to give my life story to a client!

Designers:Really, really get it on paper,please,for me! Don’t make the mistake that I did.I totally wish I could have just let it go without needing the rest of the payment but I kind of do need that money.Otherwise…you know.

Don’t say it can’t be done

My last big client had no idea how stuff worked.Fine It isn’t his job to know.But he knew what he wanted.I went and looked at some page examples he sent me and that made me expand my abilities almost 200%.

I listened to what he described and I made it happen without at all pushing my own tastes or outright saying it couldn’t be done.

He is a jewelry designer and a really good one,too, so it makes sense he had a strong design sensibility.

This job was my biggest design challenge and one that forced me to “make it happen”

~~simranjewelry.com~~
lineska.com the cms is by doop

It’s Been Awhile…

I pretty much stopped the blogging tear I was on because I began this “job” redesigning a website from top to bottom for a person who posted an ad on Craigslist… I thought it was going to be just another page redesign romp, but oh no, they wanted to keep their CMS.
They had the temerity and the tenacity to want to be able to edit their own content..gasp gasp. Luckily I wasn’t totally ignorant of the concept of a CMS because I’d been rooting about for ages for such a thing for myself.Because me likey.
Anyway-don’t you love it when the client asks for stuff and has no idea what they are asking for? I do. I mean ,they haven’t got the slightest glimmer of a clue of how web development/webdesign works. But they’ve been lusting for a site like such and such and so and so and they send you links to these awesome sites and ask you to make one like that.I was all like “ok I can”(right) until he said but I want to be able to edit the content and change pictures,too.
I think I almost fell over. I knew enough about CMS’s to know that they all are like totally married to MYSQL and I’ve not yet had a first date with MYsql, myself.That’s ok I have the poor man’s version of a database the old text file flat file method.Not that I quite know how all that fopen fclose fread stuff works but I know a little.A little knowledge is not so dangerous in this case.Also I am aware of safety. I know that’s why everyone uses MYsql to store data because it takes an automatic login to get in,ehem. But there’ve been flatfiles since the dawn so there are also folks making safe flatfile CMS.They have logins that get encrypted.And hopefully the host the site is on will have safety measures of it’s own. Ok, so I found a thing called doop.It’s small and friendly and brand new, having been only released this year(it’s only February,too).
The upside to all this newness is that they are really into developing it,and it’s getting upgraded all the time.The downside is that it’s so new that hardly anyone uses it so the forum is skimpily populated and there isn’t much support.Personally I’d be lost without it because it’s exactly what my client wanted. He had a mysql connected CMS but it was making certain parts of his content unwritable(read only)

so certain things couldn’t be edited.I was writing to the guy’s webmaster and he was really accomodating.He even set up a brand new wordpress because I was going to use that as a new CMS.But it turned out to be way too much power after all.We don’t need all those bells and whistles! doop works off of just one file.It does everything after installation.It lets you make as many pages as you want.And you can automatically create links to these pages with a tag like <?menu null()?>. It was a bit of a bitch to figure out how all of this worked because all the while designing and plotting the layout I had to keep in mind that it had to be edited by mr client later on.So I couldn’t go too crazy.
I ended up with the new site
his old site
Which is nicer? His old site has a cool collapsible vertical menu
with subpages. Doop hasn’t gotten around to subpages yet.Although, there was a girl in their forum offering to send people her modified version of doop with subpages built-in but when I wrote to her and asked for it she never wrote back.And she hasn’t come back to the forum since.
oh well.