Some of you may remember, not too long ago, when I put up this post describing my frustrations in trying to get my online t-shirt sales site – Shirtbug.net – up and running properly. With the help of some web-savvy friends, and a little bit of good old fashioned “screwing around with the code”, I was eventually able to iron out most of the bugs mentioned in that post. But in the process of doing so, I came to realize that my actual design was a little too much to manage. I had reams of extraneous code lying around that I didn’t need, and altering anything of the layout for the site would be a major hassle.
So I re-did it all.
I found another website whose design was simple and attractive, and adapted it for Shirtbug.net, and I have to say, I’m extremely happy with the results.
First of all, it is an amazing feeling to build something up from a few scraps of code into something that is both functional and nice to look at. All of the graphics for the site were designed by myself, using a piece of free software called GIMP, which is kinda like Photoshop, but much MUCH less expensive (did I mention that it’s free?) The downside is that some of the operations take a few more steps in GIMP, but I personally find it a lot less confusing than Photoshop. I have to admit that all of the graphics work I’ve done for the site over the past month has made me a much better GIMPer.
Putting up content was a bit of a challenge. I actually have only created about 7 or 8 shirt designs myself, but I didn’t want to throw up this huge, beautiful site just for 7 measly (but stylish, if I do say so myself!) designs. So how did I get more shirt designs? I stole them.
Okay, I didn’t actually steal them. I copied their promotional thumbnail graphics and adapted them for my site. Then I put a link to each of the shops who sell those designs, so that my customers can purchase those designs, and so that those shops will get more business. The links are what we in the online retail world call “affiliate links”, which means that I myself will actually make a small commission on the sale of any product on my site, even if it’s not my own design. Think of it as if I am opening a new clothing store, purchasing products from a manufacturer down the street, and getting a small profit from people buying them in my store. The sale price is the same, but the profits are divided up differently, since I get a small “finder’s fee” for introducing customers to other people’s shirt designs.
The biggest task was scouring the internet (well, not the whole internet – just Cafepress.com) for t-shirt designs that I actually wanted to feature in my store. I’ll tell you this right now, my friends – there are a lot of crappy t-shirt designs on the internet. I would say that the ratio of crapola designs to decent designs in somewhere in the range of 300 to 1. I poured through literally thousands of t-shirt pictures in order to find enough to fill out some of the space on Shirtbug.net, but I think I narrowed it down to some of the best.
One of my favourite jobs in getting the site running was designing the “promo” graphics which appear on each page. I’m especially happy with the graphic on the Green page, as well as the Maternity graphic. I had to do some fancy maneuvering in GIMP to get Larissa into a maternity shirt, but it turned out better than I expected! The Retro/Geek page has a nice homage to the Super Mario Bros graphics of the [?] boxes. That was fun to put together. I’ve even got a picture of myself doing some modeling for the Wordplay page. Oh, and I should thank Dave and Sara for letting me use their daughter Juno to show off my Baby page – I couldn’t have asked for a better model for my logo onsies!
The finishing touches on the site were just made earlier today (with the completion of the Maternity graphic), and everything should be working properly. If you click on the “Contact” link at the top right of the store, you can see the fancy effect that reveals the contact form (that took me a while to get working properly!) Please head on over to Shirtbug.net, take a look around, and tell me what you think. If you like it, please tell a friend, or even better, consider purchasing one of the stylish and attractive t-shirts that we offer.
Having said that, I’m going to Africa for two weeks starting on Monday night, so if you write to me and I don’t get back to you, it’s because I won’t be on the internet again until the very end of July. But that’s okay – one of the many benefits of having a shop online is that it never closes, and still operates even while I’m away! So take 5 minutes and check it out!
