www.XRsOnly.com
Back in the early days of my web career, working for Off-Road.com and barely beginning to get a grasp of the web and its authoring languages such as HTML, CSS and PHP, I began to investigate e-commerce applications to integrate into the static HTML off-road website. At the time, I just couldn't find anything to do what I was looking to do, which was develop an alternative revenue stream to traditional advertising, which was difficult to rely upon. At the time, we were considered the second largest motorsports website in the world with millions of readers, and I figured that even if not hugely successful, if managed and marketed properly, it could at least provide for a few paychecks and pioneer a new concept in the off-road industry. While my proposal raised an eyebrow or two, it was time to get out for a few, and the site was ultimately sold shortly thereafter.
In 2005, I again began pursuing the concept but realized I needed to earn a living. After building a few sites using Zen Cart and OsCommerce and also toying with commercials options such as Monster commerce. Zen Cart seemed to be promising at the time with various modules that worked as a content management system. It certainly caught my eye.
Why content management? Well, having come from the newspaper and magazine world as a writer, editor and photographer, I knew content was king, but having the experience as a managing editor of a large website where I was glued to the traffic trends and how a simple words in an article would shift its performance dramatically amid the search engines (search engine optimization), I knew content merged with e-commerce was the king of caching [($$$$) quote and probable mispelling borrowed from a friend and fellow writer Michael James].
Well, after the Zen Cart and OsCommerce stints, I began leaning more toward some CMS as a base option, since there were several e-commerce add ons that were emerging that had potential. Then, I finally stumbled upon Mambo in early 2005 and finally managed to get a test run going with PHP-Shop. In August of that year, I began work on a site redevelopment of a legendary motorcycle shop known as Al Baker's XR's Only, using Mambo loaded with PHP-Shop. The site launched at the end of September 2005. Website traffic and overall sales took a sharp rise.
Shortly thereafter, though, Mambo devotees were smacked with the split to Joomla, and those running PHP-Shop were left to converting also to the script's new name, Virtuemart. Not be very adept at modifying databases and the like, I was growing gray hairs with each line of code while trying to keep the site live.
Since the site was launched, it seems it has gone through a site redesign at the end of each summer, which leads us to now. The site was recently converted to using the Rocket Theme Colormatic theme. And since I have not yet posted a single site in this form category, I figured it was about time I did so, particularly with this one, which served as the beginning of the development of a large and still-growing search engine optimized automotive / off-road / powersports e-commerce parts database.
KEY FEATURES
- Joomla
- Virtuemart / PHP-Shop
- Sobi2
- Rocket Theme Colormatic
- iJoomla Scroller
- RSGallery2 - Will be used to host event photos, which used to be a critical component to my business and will again reemerge on this site as simply a feature and also on other community-based sites of my own.
- CSV Improved - Used to make mass changes in conjunction with items in stock and on special order. Also used to import and export some of the 10,000 or so products currently in the product database, which includes several parts fiches and the like, which will soon be available on this site for the Honda XR650R, XR650L and CRF450X.
- Content Export - Used to import content from other live community sites as well as my non-public demo site where the mass content resides.
- Banners - Used to market in-house specials and features and will soon market another company-owned site with a greater scope to include other makes and models of Dirt Bikes and ATVs. The scope of this site is primarily limited to Honda dirt bikes and quads.
- YANC Newsletter - This was the only option that I could get working properly. It works well and will soon manage approximately 10,000 registered users that span numerous websites. It may eventually be managed through my primary community site, since a huge chunk of the retails customers are from my personal portals. It will also have a dealer network, which I have developed and will launch in conjunction with my own sites. It hosts approximately 500 dealers in the truck, buggy, powersports, 4X4 and similar markets.
Completely awesome site! Had to check the source to make sure it was virtuemart haha.. very awesome job