Woo, Woo and Thrice Woo

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(~9 minutes to read)

Things are a little frazzled this week here at the Hatchery.

My goal was to get some of my writings laid out on a cyber-stall so that an indifferent world might have something new to ignore. Being an independent kind of a chappie (or maybe because I’m a tightwad) the only way to achieve this was with no paid help whatsoever, so I set out to teach myself how.

Monday

After polishing last week’s articles for this website and Yonder Pedant’s (my technical writing website), I start gathering the ecommerce notes I’d made over the previous few weeks. I’d found a few independent playwrights’ websites, and a couple of them looked like they were DIY jobs. I’d also discovered that WordPress offers Woocommerce as a possible ecommerce solution.

Is Woocommerce overkill for what I want? Is Playwright A’s method sufficient for my needs? Just what do I want my online store to do? I really haven’t thought this through like I would have when I was a real IT person. So it was back to basics; identify opportunity, document the business need, do the business analysis, identify potential solutions, do Cost Benefit Analyses for each solution, create a comparison document, and make recommendations to the boss.

Or at least, that’s what I should have done. Instead, I do up a rough site map, and then try to work out how easy (and secure) it is to integrate Paypal into handwritten HTML.

Tuesday

Shipping; sales taxes; links to payment gateways; aspirin; related products, coffee; javascript, aspirin, coffee, PHP, aspirinHTMLcoffeeCSSaspirinPHPcoffeeCSSasprincoffeeaspirincoffee aspcoffaspcoff…
S-T-O-P-P!!!

I discover that Playwright A (who I shall henceforth refer to as “Ken” purely because it’s short and monosyllabic) had managed to make dozens of plays available on the wonderweb with a roll-your-own solution (an old programmer’s term—I’m an old programmer in many senses), but the HTML includes the URL of the PDF containing his script, so even with my very basic knowledge, I was able to go and pick up his plays for free if I wanted to (If you’re reading this “Ken” and you recognize yourself, please don’t worry—I liberated only the one script to prove the vulnerability and then promptly discarded it.)

I don’t want to suffer from “Ken’s” vulnerability myself, but I’m not confident that I can make it all secure without outside paid help. On the other hand, Woocommerce still seems quite intimidating. It’s all so overwhelming. So I do what any responsible person would do.

I toss a coin.

And at 21:39hrs, I download the Woocommerce plugin for my WordPress website.

Wednesday

If you’ve ever played with WordPress, you’ll know that there’s a bazillion “themes” out there that can make your site look funky, businesslike, dreamy, quirky, childlike, religious, functional, sporty, grungy… the list goes on. As far as I can tell, there’s about 2160 free ones available right on WordPress.org and countless free and premium options elsewhere.

Being the age I am, I know there’s no such thing as a free lunch and no such thing as a free theme. The razor-and-blades business model and variations on it are very much alive and kicking. Not that it’s a bad thing in this case. The authors are putting the free stuff up as a honeypot (way to mix your metaphors Kelvin!) to attract people like me to their premium services. They need and for the most part deserve remuneration for their work and I sincerely hope that they reap the rewards. (Cynics among you would be partially right in saying that this website/blog is little more than a honeypot for my writing-for-sale.)

But as I write this, I only have three plays to sell, and unless I perform miracles with my search engine optimization techniques, I’ll be lucky to recover the costs this year of the WordPress plugins that I have on my wish list.

Meanwhile, back at the saga…

I try using the same theme that I use for this website. Not happy. (BTW; I’m not mad-keen on this theme, but it’s adequate and will have to do until I’ve got the rest of my setup finished.) I look for themes that are “Woocommerce-friendly” and try a couple—still not happy. The company behind Woocommerce has a couple of free themes, so I try one and get it looking half-decent.

Then I discover that Mrs. H prefers the theme on this website. So much for the several hours I spent trying to get a good-looking theme for the store. (Makes mental note—check with boss before investing time in aesthetics.)

Thursday

Aaaagh! I’m not asking my customers for the performance venue name and address! How will I prevent multiple productions of my play occurring in the same area at the same time?

Who am I kidding? Two productions of one of my plays anytime in the same year would be a miracle in my first year! Still—as they say, hope for the best and plan for the worst, although it’s ironic that in my case, “the worst” is that I’ll need to deal with two productions of a play clashing—most starting playwrights likely have “nice” dreams about that happenstance—I know I do!

So, more research. How to add custom fields to the Checkout page? I discover a DIY method and a US$49.00 plugin. Did I mention I only have three plays to sell? So I try the DIY method. Way beyond my PHP and HTML skills, the former of which are at the knowledge scale equivalent of the freezing point of helium. I decide to go without for now.

Test Order #1 Goes Through

Things are beginning to work as they should now. By 14:00hrs I manage to make my first test order. Not only that, but “the system” emails me the link from where I can download the script. Emboldened, I create a testing and bug fix log, which quickly becomes a test plan, a bug log, a to-do list, and a parking lot for questions.

Off With the Propeller Hat: On With the Lawyer’s Wig

This first flush of success allows me to think beyond the mechanics of ecommerce. My mind turns to copyright ownership. Should I claim the copyright under my own name, under my nom de plume, or under my incorporated business name?

My business (Dewdney Media Inc. (DMI)) claims all the “business use of house” expenses—if I don’t register copyright under DMI, then the time I spend researching and writing these copyrightable masterpieces will need to be accounted for separately, and my personal tax return (which right now is depressingly simple) would become more complex. But what would happen to the copyright when I wind up the corporation (or sell it)? Those and a hundred other considerations swirl around the place where my brain used to be, looking to be caught, processed and filed away.

Do I need to consult a copyright lawyer? Will I ever make enough money from my writing to cover the fee?

Friday

Time to list some things I need to do before I can go live.

Two hours and four pages of actions later, I take the last aspirin in the bottle…

Actually, they’re acetaminophen, but “aspirin” equates with “headache” in most parts of the world. Acetaminophen is the North American name for what most of the rest of the world refers to as paracetamol, so a good percentage of my potential audience would be confused by my use of either acetaminophen or paracetamol. Aspirin, on the other hand, is either a generic term or a brand name for ASA world-wide, so “aspirin” it is.

I’ve just reached for and taken more aspirin to help ease the pain of composing that last sentence.

Two hours and four pages later, I take the last aspirin in the bottle, and survey the to-do list. Do I prioritize it? Do I do the bad stuff first and leave the fun stuff for later (a bit like getting your broccoli—or in my case, artichokes—out of the way so you can enjoy the rest of your meal), or do I do the fun stuff first, knowing I’ll stay focused for longer?

I decide to go for an action that’s somewhere in the middle. I’ve discovered that I can customize the “order notes” box on the Checkout page, so I plan to add a note asking the customer for the theatre name and address.

Twenty minutes later, I’m wondering if I need to reinstall everything. I copied and pasted the code exactly as instructed by what looks like a reputable WordPress third party seller, and I’m getting PHP syntax errors. (If only people’s cellphones had English syntax checkers!)

My mothballed programming bug-chasing skills come out from beneath the moth and I track the problem down to one line of pasted code, but I can’t work out what the problem is. So I remove the pasted code, search the entire Woocommerce plugin for the current/default order notes content, and change it to what I want. I also make a note in my list of “things to preserve across upgrades.”

After that experience, I decide to deal with a few non-technical issues, like tidying up the play scripts, writing a synopsis for one of them, and adding an image to be used as a favicon.

Saturday

The action list is still depressingly long, and I have to get two articles ready for publication on Monday—one for each of my writing websites. I’ve got topics in mind, and I’ve even started some research on one or two of them. But I really want to get the storefront finished and live because it’s towards the end of the one-act-play-choosing season already. Then Mrs H. has this wonderful idea; “Why don’t you write about your ecommerce setup experiences? Maybe you could get it into the style of The Gas Man Cometh.”

A wonderful idea indeed, but part of the humour of The Gas Man Cometh is that the story is cyclical—not unlike the well-known Hole in My Bucket. I fervently hope that I won’t be starting from scratch on Monday! Another difference between my tale and Flanders and Swann’s is that their song contains the line, “On Saturdays and Sundays, they do no work at all;” yet I’m writing this on a Saturday.

Actually, “they do no work at all” sounds like the attitude of a good role model. See you next week.

Your Turn

Have you had experience setting up your own ecommerc site despite having few of the necessary skills required? Please share!

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