24-Feb-2014

Sample Science

Sample Science provides services for the water sampling and testing industry. They needed to be found by Google and WordPress is perfect as it has great SEO.

2019 Make Over

Around 2019 a redo was handed over to a SEO company which was located near Sample Science's offices. It was disappointing as I put quite a bit of work into building a new website which never saw fruition. The excellent new logo by Darrell of JSJ Design was also rejected. But it was good to see some of my ideas make it in the services panel on the home page, so all was not lost.

Theme Setup

WordPress can lure people in to setting up their own site because of its reputation of being easy to use. For IT personnel this is true but for beginners there can be a learning curve.

Sample Science

The site was built using the Infocus theme from MysiteMyway. The theme was easy to work with, but you are stuck with the overall look of the theme.

All of the theme options are through a menu at the bottom of the main menu on the left on the WordPress dashboard screen. There are many options; and it's almost like a framework like Ultimatum but not as flexible. There are built in sliders but where these can be used is restricted. There are a few built in layouts for blogs which look very good. The colours are changed through changing the skin. You can use the ones supplied or create and save your own colour creations.

The theme says it has built in adaption to mobile and tablet devices, a feature which is becoming essential thanks to the growing use of smart phones; but it doesn't seem to function. This is why I like Bootstrap, it is excellent for other devices.

Fonts and Logo

The site uses the very nice colaboratelight font. This comes with the template and the CSS does not need any changing. I installed the font on the computer to re-do the logo so the text matches the rest of the site.

Woo-commerce Integration

For all of its ease of use and advanced features there is no integration for Woo-commerce. The Mysitemyway website recommends using another e-commerce solution called Jigoshop. I wasn't too keen on having to learn another e-commerce package so I thought I would try out Woo-commerce anyway.

Installing Woo-commerce went well, the only problem was I had was setting the "shop base page". This is meant to be set to the main or front page of your shop. For some reason it didn't work properly so as a work around I set it to a page that's not used and therefore disable it. It's used by Woo-commerce to provide the user with a way to get back to the shop from the checkout page. I provided an alternative with the main navigation menu.

Shortcodes Ultimate

This template was my first introduction to Shortcodes Ultimate. I'm not sure if it came with the template or if the client installed it. Anyway it's great for adding all sorts of layout and other elements to your page or post. Each element can be previewed so you can get the look right. I will be installling it on future site builds!

Local Bank Terminology

Woo-commerce comes with terminology that is different to what is used in Australia. Woo-commerce comes with a "Sort Code" for the bank, whereas in Australia it's called a BSB number.

To change to a BSB code edit the file /wp-content/plugins/woocommerce/classes/gateways/bacs/class-we-gateway-bacs.php

On about line 99:

         'sort_code' => array(
                            'title' => __( 'BSB', 'woocommerce' ),
                            'type' => 'text',
                            'description' => '',
                            'default' => ''
                        ),

And on about line 165:

     $fields = apply_filters('woocommerce_bacs_fields', array(
            'account_name'     => __( 'Account Name', 'woocommerce' ),
            'account_number'=> __( 'Account Number', 'woocommerce' ),
            'sort_code'        => __( 'BSB', 'woocommerce' ),
            'bank_name'        => __( 'Bank Name', 'woocommerce' ),
            'iban'            => __( 'IBAN', 'woocommerce' ),
            'bic'            => __( 'BIC', 'woocommerce' )
        ));

And finally on line 205:

     $fields = apply_filters('woocommerce_bacs_fields', array(
            'account_name'     => __( 'Account Name', 'woocommerce' ),
            'account_number'=> __( 'Account Number', 'woocommerce' ),
            'sort_code'        => __( 'BSB', 'woocommerce' ),
            'bank_name'        => __( 'Bank Name', 'woocommerce' ),
            'iban'            => __( 'IBAN', 'woocommerce' ),
            'bic'            => __( 'BIC', 'woocommerce' )
        ));

You should now have replaced all occurrences of Sort Code with BSB. From Dashboard/Woocommerce/Settings/Payment Gateways/ the text should have changed to BSB.

Shipping

Local pick up was made available to all customer locations but the fixed rate was limited to certain areas. This is done by simply entering the postal codes that are eligible. The delivery fee needs to be GST free as this is added later. So for $35 we divide by 11 and get $31.181818 etc!

For places further away the delivery fee has to be worked out (ie, quoted), and Woo-commerce as it comes doesn't provide an automatic method for this but there probably is a plug-in for a small fee.

Summary

Overall it was a good template to work with. Because it doesn't support Woo-commerce very well I would not use it for online Woo-commerce shops. There are plenty of templates that support Woo-commerce fully.

The graphics are quite good and the blog layouts are very pleasing.

linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram