Ecommerce site templates

Building a website from scratch can be a really tough experience. It takes time and a lot of hard work. I have always said web site designing is both a science and a art. Besides coding skills, you need to have a sense of colour and design. From my experience I can tell you that images play a very important part in making websites come alive. So if you are going to design a website, you better know how to take nice pictures and edit them too.

That is the reason why web designers charge so much to design personalised websites, especially e-commerce sites. Most people take the easy way out - they use a template designed by the experts and modify it suit their needs. You might have the most amazing back end coding ever (which most people never see) but if your website is ugly and not friendly, it might turn a lot of people off.

One of the best developments in the net was the development and spread of the open source practice (some consider it a philosophy). Software (and other stuff) are distributed for free into the net and people can freely modify them. osCommerce, as the name suggest is an open source ecommerce solution whereby anybody can download and set up an online store. It contains both a catalog frontend and a backend administration tool. The problem is that the design is a bit blend.

Take a look at osCommerce templates. This Irish company allows paid customers to to download as high quality templates and as much as they like (they currently have 70). Customers can sign up for a three month ($89), six month ($158) or one year ($299) membership. This is really a good deal considering that there are others who charge around $150 per design!

The business was set-up by Myles O'Reilly in March 2006. Myles is also the author of the popular book - "The Programmers' Guide to osCommerce".

I guess this site is actually targeted at web designers. Now they don't have to spend a fortune to access different high quality design templates.

Even if you don't have any experience in modifying osCommerce, you need not worry as the site has a tutorial page, which provides information and guidance in editing and customizing their products.

They even have a button generator, which is really fast. The best part is that you don't have to sign up to use it. It's totally free.

Go and check out the site.

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It finally snowed

Just a few day after I wrote this post, it did finally snow in Coventry yesterday night or should I say today morning. It was around 1am and I was doing some work on the computer when my wife came down from the bedroom. She informed me that it was snowing outside.

Was really excited because I was seeing REAL snow (experienced fake snow in Genting) after so many years. Last time I saw snow was in Himachal Pradesh, India, about 9 years ago but that's another story/ post.

I guess I was the only one crazy enough to go out in the freezing snow, to take pictures in the whole of Coventry. Most of the photographs came out bad. It was early morning and still dark remember. However, some came out OK.

Most of the snow had melted when we woke up in the morning.

The Peter Belisi story

Some of my friends who are also regular visitors to my blog, joked that my blog was turning into a fashion blog. The reason - two posts on Belisi fashions. Belisi is a relatively new name in the world of fashion but it is fast emerging as a fashion brand, and I think bloggers played a little part in that.

In case you are curious about this brand, read Belisi - How it Started in Peter Belisi's blog. He blogs about fashion, celebrities and other stuff.

It is amazing and really motivating to read how a bartender in Palm Beach, struggling to support a wife and newborn baby, started a business to become the global brand that it is today.

Peter started out by investing some extra money in a tie collection. And that was just the start. You can see that he has not forgotten his roots and on the Belisi website, they have an amazing collection of great looking ties. For your information , the website is having a promotion on ties now. About accessories, he has this to say :

I believe accessories are the start, not the finish of the design-inspired look—with the right accessories, even average garments are transformed into winning style

That's something I always believed in.

It was also quite heartening to read that they give a portion of every purchase to a charity of the customer's choice.

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Layout trouble

Learnt that my blog layout runs on Microsoft Internet Explorer. Somehow, my side bars are pushed way down below the main column. This is serious as according to my statistics, 60% of my visitors use that browser.

Found out that a lot of people have this problem, referred to as "Float Drop"

Now trying to fix this problem asap.

For fans of soaps

I am not talking about the stuff that foams when you rub them under a tap, but instead to those ongoing dramas that unfold on the small screen, I mean the TV. They can get so addictive.

I remember my wife rushing home from work during her lunch breaks just to catch a popular Filipino soap drama. My mum is a big fan of the Bold and the Beautiful, one of the longest soaps ever (I may be wrong). It was so confusing. I give you an example, the ex girlfriend of one character (or ex-wife) may become his step mother. to understand the stories, you have to be a loyal follower. Once you get hooked, that's it.

Now for some trivia, did you know how this particular form of entertainment came to be known simply as 'Soaps'? Well, it seems that the name originate from the various sponsors of these dramas who were soap manufacturers. As the target audience were almost exclusively female audience (as they are till today), they came to be known as soaps.

Soaps.com is a relatively young site (only 5-6 months old) but is becoming very popular. They carry the latest news, daily updates and list of shows, Readers can register and discuss their favourite shows in the message boards.

So far they list only the soaps from the three major TV channels in the US, namely, ABC, CBS and NBC. I am not sure about other people but I would definitely like to see more pictures.

So if you missed an episode or wanted to get some spoliers, log on to the site.

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Cheap flights to UK

We were really excited when it was announced that Malaysia'sAirAsia would be starting low cost flights to the UK and that we would be able to fly back to Malaysia for as low as £60 return. Of course, this would be a "no-frills flight" without inflight entertainment and you would have to book food and drink at an extra cost.

Tony the Director and Group Chief Executive Officer of AirAsia was expected to make an announcement soon and Britian's EasyJet and Virgin Group were rumoured to be potential partners.

Sadly this announcement never came and later both UK airlines denied reports that they were going to join forces with AirAsia.

Well it sounded too good to be true.

Crazy about the Nissan Skyline GTR

Do you have a Nissan Skyline GTR or dream of one day driving this awesome, iconic Japanese sports car? Well if you do, go and sign up at the Nissan Skyline Forums.

In case you didn't know, the Nissan Skyline GTR was called the "Godzilla" by reputed Australian car magazine "Wheels" when it was released down under in 1989.

This car ceased production in 2002 but is still sought after. One of the reason is because the Skyline GT-R's robust engine makes it very popular for modifications. If you are a Manga or anime fan, see if you can recognise the car in "Initial D", "Wangan Midnight" and "Over Rev!". If you know all of this and want to share your own knowledge about this car, head on down to the forum. It is still new but I can see that they have a lot of stuff including photo galleries coming up.

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