Andrew Murray - Astrologer

Its been a while again since my last blog entry.

Finally, the website is really looking fantastic. Its been a very steep learning curve and I now understand the importance of doing more research, especially when it comes to web designers!

Back in February, I chose a company called Zen Cart Consulting. They are based in the U.S. My site uses an open source database by zen-cart which is actually very good, but it lends itself more to selling jewellery than astrology reports. However, my search for zen-cart designers gave me limited search results, and Zen Cart Consulting sounded promising. I emailed them, and got a reply saying they could do work for me.

I then telephoned them, and spoke with the owner, who initially seemed to be a very nice guy. He stressed how much he worked only with clients that he liked, and that he was not into this business for the money - money wasn’t his primary concern. (Alarm bells should have rung for me at this point!)

He talked a good game, telling me that they would first audit my site, and produce a report, then they would work with me to help achieve what I was looking for. It all sounded very professional. He also got me to donwload skype, so that we could talk on the phone rather than do things via email.

At first the relationship was very good, I went through my requirements - that I wanted to see if I could modify the atrtibutes to be better designed and also to re-work the overall design of the site to make it look better and fresher. They told me that I needed to have a special piece of software designed for capturing the birth data as the attributes that I was currently using to capture the data couldn’t be modified.

The owner of Zen Cart Consulting spent time talking about non work related stuff, such as what he was doing over the weekend - looking at properties to buy etc.

I was quoted $750 for the first piece of work. The work was done, and it all looked OK, but then I discovered that the form didn’t work for my compatibility reports, or if someone ordered more than one report. For example, if they ordered a report for themselves and then another one for a friend. This didn’t happen before, as each report would have its own attributes, and would pick this up. So the consultancy wasn’t looking so good now! I raised this, but was advised that any modification was out of scope and that I’d have to initiate another piece of work. The price - $600! (wasn’t the role of a consultant to consider these sort of things?)

I felt that I should continue with them, as they’d already done some coding work on my site, and felt getting someone else in at this stage may be counter-productive. So I continued…

Along with the $750 I’d already paid, I had also purchased, on their advice, $450 worth of what is known as PSP - Priority Support Plan. This was supposed to cover things like support after any work had been completed, and/or training on Zen-cart functionality.

All was going fine until during one of my conversations before me starting what was to become the second phase of work for $600, I was advised that I was now behind on my PSP, that I only had an hour left, even though I wasn’t aware that I had used any!

Always not wanting to be behind in any payments, I then went onto their site and purchased a further $450 of PSP, and also made the payment of $300 being 50% deposit required for the second phase.

I then received a call from Zen Cart Consulting saying that he didn’t know what my payments were for. I explained to him, and I thought we had resolved it. Afterwards, I was confused, so the next day, I rang to clarify the invoicing, as it seemed to be all over the place.

Well rather than clarify things, it just seemed to get more confusing. They told me one day that I had used up my PSP on the first phase, even though I had paid for a separate piece of software, then apparently I still had hours of PSP support in the bank, and I dared to question the invoicing. I never really got to the bottom of it, but instructed the next phase anyway.

The cordial relationship disappeared immediately. My partner had already witnessed many of the skype calls, and had commented on how un-professioanl he thought the person I was dealing with was. He was often rude, aggressive, and talked over me. Worst of all, anytime I challenged anything, I was told I was wrong!

But still, I just wanted to get things sorted out and finished. Phase 2 went to a third phase, which cost me an additional $750. This was all before we had even got around to discussing the actual design bit that I also wanted. Oh, and I’d also been advised to purchase a template from them for $125, which I did, and they were then going to use to customise my site with after all the software design was finished.

I also had been given a really hard sell to transfer my hosting over to a company called Novacart hosting. I was told things like “your zen-cart site isn’t compatible with your current hosting provider.” Because they were developing software for me, they insisted on building a clone of my site, and put it onto Novacart hosting. I had to pay for the first month of this - $25. I decided not to go with the hosting switch - especially when I discovered that Novacart hosting is also owned by the same person as Zen Cart Consulting! But again, the fact I refused to switch resulted in further moody exchanges from the guy at Zen Cart Consulting.

The end result - I had a great looking form on the front page of my site - not exactly what I had in mind. It cost me a total of $3600, and the hits to my site went down! The time taken to do the work in total - best part of two months! The site still didn’t have any re-design, and I decided I wasn’t going to spend any more money with them.

The good news is that I found a great UK based website developer - a guy called Richard Jordan at http://www.handcoded.co.uk/

I looked at several UK based zen-cart developer sites. Most of the sites I looked at were either very complicated, or had missing and broken links on their pages. Not exactly a great advert for web site design!

Richard Jordan and Hand Coded design stood out because his site was simple, and he came across very well. I rang him, and he was extremely helpful, and actually gave advice and hints and tips - you know, like you might expect from a consultancy service! Compare this with Zen Cart Consulting who came out with things like, “We are mere mechanics and implement what a specification tells us to implement, nothing more nothing less…”

Richard came up with many useful ideas, and within less than 1 week, he had completely re-designed the site - using - you guessed it - attributes! No complicated software forms, just plain and simple design. And all at a very reasonable cost of £500. So unfortunately, all the work that I paid for with Zen Cart Consulting has had to be discarded - £1800 worth of mistake!

So if you have a zen-cart website out there and you want it customised, I would highly recommend that you go to Richard Jordan at Hand Coded http://www.handcoded.co.uk/ and please avoid at all costs Zen Cart Consulting.

Have a look at my new site now at www.solarchart.com

I cannot believe that 10 month’s have gone past where I haven’t recorded a blog!

Its been a very busy 10 months. Time that I have used to really reflect on my life. Its been a difficult process in some respects, but a worthwhile one none the less. We’re already into 2008 and another new year dawns. With it comes the opportunity to make more changes.

Not everything in my life is yet where I want it to be, but I’m lucky enough to now be in a relationship with someone who I love very deeply, and have found the happiness that I have sought for so long.

Unsurprisingly to many of my friends who know me, I’ve moved house again, but this time I’ve moved in with my partner.

2008 I’m sure will be a defining year in so many different ways for so many people.

Its very easy for people to get sucked into the gloom of falling stock markets and talk of recession and the like, but whatever changes come to this planet now will be for the better in the long run. The changes will be seen at the time as sudden and violent at times, but against the course of history, they will be seen as a necessary part of human evolution.

Sometimes change happens and we don’t really notice. Can you imagine looking back just 20 years and thinking about sending an email from a phone handset? Not really - and that highlights the power of changes already occurring in our world. The technological revolution has happened so quickly, that we haven’t even noticed! Not all change and revolution is doom and gloom, and not all technological advances are for the good of us all - it really is up to us as to how we utilise all that is around us.

I hope and pray that I and my fellow human beings will make the right choices with the challenges that lie ahead of us. Part of me will never lose faith - in that all that has, and is to come, is part of a perfect universe - all written out there in the stars!

Take time today to see something positive in the world and visualise that - it will make you feel so much happier - from within!

I returned to my full time work last week after my 6 month career break where I worked on the development of the website, and also did a bit of travelling.

Some things never change, and my employer’s IT infrastructure seems as creaky and bureaucratic  as ever. Lots of things going on at work at the moment, with lots of change.

I’m expecting to move house again in the next few weeks, but as yet, I have no idea where I’ll be living! Could be anywhere!

I’ve just been reading my Brother’s blog. You can view it here.

He’s been writing to the BBC to complain about the fact that at 7pm they broadcast a trailer for a programme about porn. Now, he has an 8 year old daughter and he was quite naturally concerned that his daughter should be subjected to this sort of language before the watershed. The response from the BBC is incredible. Surprisingly, they justify their broadcast by claiming that 70% of households in the UK don’t have children!

I will be advising my brother to take the matter up with the broadcasting watchdog - Ofcom.

The website is now looking really good. Everyone likes it, and I’m going to get my life sorted over the next few weeks with the house move and everything and then design a marketing program to encourage more people to visit and transact on the site. Look out for special promotions that will be coming up soon!

At last, on the 5th February 2007, the site went live with the ability to request on-line basic Natal Charts and interpretation reports as well as forecast reports.

Today, I’ve also managed to put live the compatibility reports and have included a sample report based upon George Bush and Tony Blair birth details! Makes interesting reading!

It has not been without its traumas though. What should have been about an hours piece of work has actually taken most of the day. This is due in most part to the somewhat quirky nature of Zen-Cart!

Oh, the joy I’ve had today working on attributes! These are the fields where customers will enter all the birth data. However, with the compatibility reports, there is a need to capture birth data for two people.

I tried saving time by copying attribute values from one product to another, only to find that Zen-cart sometimes behaved, and sometimes did not! Of course when it came to the Country code field - it really mis-behaved. The whole admin area crashed on me several times. Every time I thought I’d cracked it, it would crash again.

In the end, I resigned myself to the fact I wouldn’t get it sorted today. I emailed my brother all the error logs (He’s probably seriously regretting being my Brother these days!), hoping that he may have some time to look into it.

Then this evening, I had another crack at it. I didn’t want to push my luck and have another drop down with all the countries in it, so I managed to sneak in a free text field where the customer can just type in their country. That seemed to work, so I stopped while I was ahead. It has now allowed me to make the compatibility report section live, and I’m hoping that lots of people wil be interested in that.

For example, the kind of people who meet someone new, and want to check out if the’yre going to get on. After all, the price of the report may be cheaper than spending lots of money going out together! However, I hope that people will use it to understand each other more effectively so that they can mae their relationships work.

I dare say there will be a few more minor tweaks to be made to the site. I still have a problem in that the compatibility report is loading extremely slowly. I’m hoping that my brother may have a technical solution to this.

Anyway, I’m going to stop now and rest before I get any more Internal Error 500 messages - don’t they drive you mad!

Today I managed to upgrade this blog to the latest version using the forum and help files. It seems so far to have been successful, but boy was it scary!

My brother and I did some more work on the site last night.

He finally managed to find the piece of code that was creating a gap in the header area, so this has now been removed. I’ve added some actual products now, and I will be adding more in about 2-3 weeks time. However the site is effectively up and running to some extent, as it is now possible to order a chart on the site and go all the way through to payment, at which point I’ll happily email any purchased reports!

The site has the two products - one is an electronic version of the report which is emailed to the customer, the other one is a printed copy of the report sent in the post, but this will cost £7.00 more for this to cover the printing and postage costs.

I’ve today been experimenting on a test category to see if I can create one product for each report with an attribute setting if customers wish a printed copy. It seems to work, but I need to check it out with my Brother before making it live on the site.

The plan is to have lots of report options, so it will be easier if this functionality can be developed.

I’m on holiday for a couple of weeks, so I won’t be starting any aggressive marketing of the site until I return.

Yesterday, I spoke with the U.S. software company who provide the link for the automatic birth chart service. This was due to go live on New Years Eve, but I had to postpone due to a technical problem - the credit card merchant service provider in the U.S. kept rejecting any attempt to pay with a U.K. credit card!

Unfortunately it seems that this cannot be resolved, so the U.S. software company are now in the process of switching from Authorise.net to PayPal. This will take a couple of weeks apparently, so until then, I’ll be unable to offer the automated service.

Today I went for my monthly crystal healing. For those of you who may be a bit sceptical - well I was before I started going.

If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it. I had some amazing experiences today, and you just come back after an hour of lying there with crystals all around you feeling quite rejuvenated.

Even more remarkable is the fact that when you come back, my crystal healer, Joy Edwards goes through all the crystals she was inspired to place on you. She then goes through the meaning and purpose of each crystal, and incredibly, it all ties in with what is happening in your life right now.

For all you sceptics, remember - these crystals were probably around long before we were. Life - definitely but not as we assume it!

If you fancy having a crystal healing session, then why not check out Joy Edwards site.

And as if her crystal healing was not amazing enough, she also does angel paintings of your spirit guides. These are beautiful, and well worth getting done. Check out her other site HERE.

Today the software arrived from the U.S.

Its now all been installed, and I’m playing around with it. It has the functionality to allow me to email the reports and chart wheels directly to the customer from within the program. I’ve just been testing this, and used my brother as a guinea pig! He now has a chart wheel and report winging its way to him. My brother is very sceptical of astrology, so it will be interesting to see what he thinks of his report!

I’ve updated the website with a couple of sample chart wheel designs that come with the software. It’s one of my ambitions for the website to be able to produce these artistic chart wheels for customers - as I think it will be nice for them to have for the future. For those customers who have colour printers, they’ll be able to print them out and frame them if they want to!

Look out for more designs as the site is developed - there are will be loads to choose from.

Tonight my brother has been working on changes to the colour scheme for the main site at www.solarchart.com.

Instead of being bright orange all over, we’ve toned it down a bit. After a bit of experimenting we decided to have a lighter background with the orange still in the logo banner area as well as in the side boxes. We are trying to get a more consistent theme going without losing the corporate identity.

There is still a bit of tidying up to do though as we appear to have gaps that need to be closed!

It’s all part of the learning though, given that neither of us is an expert on Zen-Cart!

I made a few more minor tweaks to the site today by adding  a new drop-down for people who don’t know their birth time and upgraded the images to help get an idea of the look and feel of the site.

I’m hoping that when the software arrives to be able to upload new images of the various chart wheels.

Finally I got around to updating the terms and conditions. So thats another job done, although a few minor bits of work still left to do on some of the other pages. However, some of these need to be done in the database files rather than on the site.

As I write, my brother is tweaking the site all the time! It looks as if he’s done a great makeover for one evenings work!

That will probably be all that we can do now until next week.

Have a great weekend!