Skip to main content

OS Commerce Update

After mulling it over for a while I have decided to tackle the Big Update.

Yes that's the complete shop overhaul!

OS Commerce has come up with an 3.0 alpha version with a more controllable template CSS and all that and I don't need the outstanding items flagged for later releases.

This time I am going to integrate the shop with the rest of the site whilst retaining the existing URLs and take the opportunity to update the overall appearance: colour scheme, Menus - the works. I'm even going to replace the database to remove any wrinkles that may have crept in.

As far as I can see I just need to rent a second database and set up a development area in my existing web space to be able to develop and test as I go along. Then I should be able to change over quickly and easily.

Never the less I expect this will take quite some time and if I hit anything interesting I'll do more posts.

Other wise it has been a quiet summer again while the students are on their holidays. There are occasional download problems as new browsers come out and I have reinforced our Firefox recommendation because no matter what other issues occur with Firefox from time to time the download functionality seems to be very stable and user friendly. The You Send It facility which we rent as a backup distribution solution has never failed. The new sample player is one of the occasional casualties on my set up but it never generates complaints so I am sticking with it.

Popular posts from this blog

Worldwide audience

In the last month Download2MP3 was reached from 169 countries with the remaining gaps being a few countries in North Africa. These days most visits are going direct to one of the big name composer pages although the ragtime category is holding it's own. The last twelve months or so have been a dry patch interms of producing more recordings but I'm pleased to report that the technical issues which been related to various software upgrades. I have been using Cubase for at least 25 years not on an Atari but an Acorn with an external roaland Sound Canvas synthesiser which was purchased in London's Tin Pan Alley. Some of the steps that have got us to 10.5 have been very disconcerting but the truth is that there is nothing to campare with it for the work that I do. I have also acquired some exciting new instruments in the last few months to augment the stalwarts which saw this site get underway. So the Covid19 Lockdown is giving me the time to produce more recordings wh...
Persistance does it It is now 15 years since this website was launched. In that time we have had ups and downs - some associated with Google algorithm changes but this year we seem to have seen steady growth in visits and some dramatic download volumes. It looks as if we might reach 1000 giga bytes of download this month for the first time ever.  Our global reach is wider - although Indonesia and India still account for over 25% of visits we had visits from 126 countries in the last week exceptions include Uragauy and some sub sahara countries. The bulk come through organic Google searches with the next largest share coming from our daily tweets. 

Mozart is powering our growth

For years our Mozart arrangements failed to achieve the recognition they deserved but in the last few months this has changed. Our Mozart page has move up the Google and Yandex search results and now benefits substantially from the high level of interest in this composer. Just wondering what I need to do to help Bach keep up. There are some odd features to the usage of our site - some of it almost looks like streaming as gigabytes are down loaded or there are thousands of page hits from what is reported as a Russian search index robot. No, perhaps Google just badly underestimate how popular we are in Russia because they are not so popular there. According to Google India and Indonesia are still the mainstays of our audience with Nigeria and South Africa nudging in just below the USA. So it seems we are supporting developing countries just not in the way orgiginally envisaged.