Whoa. 529 diggs. People commenting about this whole WordPress shopping mod (someone said I was rambly — aye, I am, I do this stream of consciousness thing, I can’t help it! But I didn’t think it was that disorganised) on the digg site. Someone else says it’s an ugly hack. My stats are through the friggin’ roof (by my standards)!
I thought when it was posted on Weblog Tools Collection, oh nice, he thought it was okay enough to post and my stats were quite good. I was busy all day today (I don’t think I’ve been hopping on and off buses quite this much in one day before), and when I got home and got online, I decided to have a look at my stats and was totally dumbfounded.
(And a little mortified. Or in my local parlance, so pai seh.)
I certainly did not expect this amount of attention or exposure… I thought this was a very niche thing, for the few people who didn’t like OSCommerce or Joomla or ZenCart and didn’t have the money to buy a super shopping cart package of scripts. For example, the person I did this WP mod for had started with OSCommerce, but her admin didn’t want her uploading the Contributions she’d need in order to get the site set up the way she wanted — so I worked out this solution for her (her site’s not ready yet, as she’s still working on the product descriptions and images, so I’m not going to mention it here).
I thought maybe a few people might find it useful, especially if they like WordPress, but I did not imagine THIS MANY PEOPLE liking and disliking my concept, or at least spending the time discussing its pluses and minuses.
At the moment my WP Shopping project is popular on del.icio.us for web design, blog, and shopping. This is the most knocking-me-over-with-a-feather 15 seconds of Internet fame that’s left me scratching my head, because I honestly thought it wasn’t really that big a deal. But it’s nice that people give a damn.
To those visiting my bloog for the first time, please do understand: I am not a web designer in the normal sense of the word. I don’t have any drawing / traditionally artistic skills, but I do know HTML and CSS and taught myself all this stuff and still refuse to use a WYSIWYG editor. And I sure as hell am not a programmer or computer techie person. I use computers because I like what the web offers. I really like WordPress. If I can modify WordPress to do things for people’s sites and thus cost them a little less money, I’ll do it. And I enjoy the challenge. So thanks for all the links and visits, I really appreciate that people take the time to comment!
I too find Wordpress to be eminently ‘hackable’ and for many simple sites it’s hard to beat as a content management system.
Some people may call it ‘ugly’ – I think it is a testament to the clarity of the code, and the amount of available documentation for wordpress that makes it very adaptable for many things, not just blogs.
Comment by mrben — 29 September 2006 @ 9:13 pm
Especially if it’s a one-person website — if it’s a company site where loads of people are meant to be involved in site updates, I’m sure I’d be looking at a different solution to recommend.
Comment by Andrea — 29 September 2006 @ 9:45 pm
You’re shaping the internet, Andrea. :)
Comment by Maria — 30 September 2006 @ 8:25 am
Hahahahha! That’s funny, Maria.
Comment by andrea — 2 October 2006 @ 9:35 am
Very good stuff,
Don’t worry about the naysayers – I don’t see it as “ugly”, but as WordPress evolving.
Keep doing what you’re doing – as you’ve obviosuly tapped into something here as people are interested.
Comment by Martin — 5 October 2006 @ 8:13 am
I looking to convert my wordpressblog into shopping. Pls tell me how?
Comment by jesper — 15 October 2006 @ 1:37 pm
Just working on a WP shopping site and wanted to say hi! Nice name. :)
I thought it was a clever way to figure out and simple in its solution. Yeah, you’re rambly but so am I. :D
Comment by Andrea_R — 11 August 2007 @ 7:03 pm
Well, thanks a lot! There’s a good e-commerce plugin written by a real programmer, I think, so you should check that out, too.
Comment by Andrea — 13 August 2007 @ 8:37 am