I have been working on making many changes to the site for the past week or so. You will find all of my patterns here; they have been re-categorized and tagged to make them easier to find. I also have a slightly different web address: both designs-by-emily.com and designsbyemily.com will work now.

One of the biggest changes is that my blog now shows up on the front page. This way I can make announcements and show off new patterns and customers won’t have to go digging for that information. Other new features to the shopping cart are the ability to put items on sale and a more streamlined checkout process. The download page keeps a record of all your downloads and how many times you have left available to download.

I’m very pleased with the changes to the site and I hope you will be too!

I’ve gotten all the data entry done and the shopping cart is all set up. I just need to do a few final tests and then comes the scary part.

I’m going to migrate all the WordPress files out of the sub-directory they currently are in and into the root directory. The website and shopping cart will be run entirely by WordPress.

I just hope that in the process of uninstalling/reinstalling/moving files I don’t completely crash the site. I have a feeling that this will be the temporary outcome. I’ll be crossing all my fingers and toes when I actually do it because I really, really do not want to set this whole thing up again. And I do not know how it all will work even if I have backed up every file and database.

Ugh. I’m getting squeamish just thinking about it.

I’ve been hung up for the last day or so in fixing up the “free” page where I have all the patterns available for free downloads, but I’ve gotten that completely straightened out. I’m using a great plugin called download monitor. It took me a day or so to figure out that I needed it, but once I found it, I was able to set up all the downloads in no time at all. Setting up the table on that page was a bit of a nightmare though, even though I was just copying the code from the other page.

I think I have the bones of the site set up and now I just have to spend some time on data entry. That shouldn’t take overly long. It’s just tedious. I’ve reclassified and recategorized many of the patterns to make them easier to find. The monthly system made sense before when I was releasing new patterns all the time and sticking to monthly themes. But now I’ve gotten most of the seasonal themes covered, and the new patterns I’m designing do not fit into that system. This new way will be much better.

I hope that in just another few days (or a week at most) I’ll have the whole site switched over. I’m so excited!

It’s not a mistake. I’m going to attempt a massive makeover of the entire Designs by Emily website. The first step will be getting the blog portion set up.

You will (I hope) begin to see a shopping cart set up in the blog. My goal is to integrate the entire shopping cart and blog into one site. Unfortunately, because of the way the site is set up, and because I am an amateur at web design (I barely know what I’m doing LOL), this whole thing will have to be done live. So if you keep checking back, you’ll get to see the changes to the site as they happen.

I do love the new look though! I hope you do too!

We’ve had round after round of illness over here at my house.  Between bronchitis and pneumonia, the kids and I kept getting knocked down.  My two year old got pneumonia so bad around Thanksgiving he was in the hospital for almost a week.  But we are all finally on the upswing and healthy, just in time for Christmas.

I’ve also been working hard for the last month (when I’ve been feeling well enough) to redo a lot of “behind the scenes” stuff on the main part of the Designs by Emily website.  I’ve not been very happy with the download software that I purchased in the spring.  It always worked ‘ok’ but never ‘great’.  I wanted something to work GREAT!  I had decided to switch over to a shopping cart format.  And I wanted visitors to the site really not to notice too much difference if at all possible.

Finally after about two weeks of frustration of trying to do it on my own, I found a great shopping cart software (dlGuard) that I purchased for a very reasonable price, and I’ve spent the last couple of weeks customizing it and setting it up.  I think it looks great.  The only two differences are that I had to move the menu over to the right side and the layout of the patterns.  But other than that, the site looks basically the same.  Purchases are still through PayPal and downloading the patterns are much, much easier.  I’m very happy.

That’s what I’ve been up to instead of knitting.  But now I can get back to it all.  I have a great free pattern that I want to put out for Christmas.  And I have to think of something for the December KAL.  I am going to delay that by a few days because starting a KAL on Christmas Eve really doesn’t make much sense.  And I know that I do still owe all my cheerleaders their participation patterns from the big Challenge.  I’m just so far behind on things!!  I will get caught up! 

And I just thought of something…January is fast approaching.  Didn’t I say something about starting another Challenge in January?  Oh boy!  I better start thinking about that too! LOL  Stay tuned for details on the January Challenge.  That will be here before I know it (and before I’m ready)!