WebCatch Digital

Monthly archives for July, 2010

The Advantages of A Web Design Agency on Call

Jul19
2010 Leave a Comment Written by admin

A recent article by web strategist Paul Boag suggests that long term relationships with web design firms can be a great thing for your business. Instead of having a site designed and built for you and then going your seperate ways, it may be more sensible and in the long run, more cost effective to keep in touch with your developers so that they can help your site evolve over time instead of letting it slowly become out of touch with the zeitgeist of the day.

What are the advantages?

  • Break the progress of your website up into bitesize development cycles allowing it to stay fresh and relevant at all times.
  • Avoid large redesign costs which may be difficult to get financial approval for.
  • Take the pressure off your in-house web staff by letting them get on with the day to day changes, while you and your design firm can take a more objective view on things.
  • Build a positive relationship with your design house. The small design cycles also give you the opportunity to move to a different company if you are not happy with the results.
  • Work on immediate fixes as well as long term strategy.

If you’d like to discuss working with WebCatch, contact us on 0115 9738074. We’ll be happy to make your acquaintance!

Posted in Web Design - Tagged

Magento Q&A: How to ship orders via the API?

Jul14
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Jakub

Difficulty: Easy

Q:

I want to mark orders as shipped after we import the shipping feed from our warehouse. Is there an API for this? Or do I have to use the actual classes?

A:

Yes, of course! You can use the shipment API, to which you can connect using both SOAP and XML-RPC. The call that will be of most interest to you is shipment.create.

Here’s the sample code from magento’s site [php]:

$proxy = new SoapClient('http://magentohost/api/soap/?wsdl');
$sessionId = $proxy->login('apiUser', 'apiKey');
$notShipedOrderId  = '100000003';

// Create new shipment
$newShipmentId = $proxy->call($sessionId, 'sales_order_shipment.create', array($notShipedOrderId, array(), 'Shipment Created', true, true));

And here are the comments:

sales_order_shipment.create

Create new shipment for order

Return: string – shipment increment id

Arguments:

string orderIncrementId – order increment id

array itemsQty – items qty to ship as associative array (order_item_id ⇒ qty)

string comment – shipment comment (optional)

boolean email – send e-mail flag (optional)

boolean includeComment – include comment in e-mail flag (optional)

Posted in Development, Ecommerce, Magento, Q&A - Tagged , , , ,

IE9 – Can Microsoft Take Back the Top Spot?

Jul05
2010 Leave a Comment Written by admin

Internet Explorer still remains the nets dominant browser to the despair of developers everywhere.

With amazing CSS3 features like gradients and rounded corners easily acheived on other browsers such as Firefox and Google Chrome, IE still causes much frustration by simply not supporting them. Thus begins the workaround nightmare just to get your site to look the same across all browsers.

At the end of 2009, Microsoft gave some previews of the new features of the yet to be released IE9 including increased CSS support as well as hardware accelerated text and graphics which they have heralded as being more advanced than all of the other browsers currently on the market.

Bold statements then from a company that has now seriously lagged behind for years. Let’s just hope that they live up to their word and more importantly, announce the release of IE9 sooner rather than later!

Posted in Technology - Tagged