Rapid Web News » Ecommerce Website Design

Utilising Memcache to radically speed up your applications performance

Adam — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:54:14 +0000

Memcache has been around for some time now, developed by Brad Fitzpatrick in 2003 for Live Journal; Memcache has matured gradually over the years for being a great method of improving the performance of many types of applications by storing arbitrary chunks of data in memory via a key / object store. It has a popular adoption rate with many well-known sites such as YouTube, Twitter and Linked-In all employing Memcache in some capacity to improve performance by alleviating load on any database servers.

At Rapid Web we have been employing Memcache techniques in some of most our most intensive internal and client systems. Typical implementations usually involve storing the results of a particular function call for either duration or for a long as possible. When the same function is called a subsequent time, the function determines if the data is already cached, if this is the case the result returned comes directly from the cache. The result is only then recomputed when the data falls out of memory, which occurs when a potential expiration value has been exceeded or there is limited memory available in which case Memcache removes the least requested cache item.

Developing responsive applications is certainly a critical consideration when building new applications. Recently we developed a new type of caching manager for a Stock System. This system holds large sets of data and deals with a variety of different computations for managing stock and processing orders. We found that by caching even the most trivial aspects of system, such as – item to process counters, and all non-critical elements, it all makes a difference. This not only drastically improves the application speed, but this as a direct result radically improves the browsing experience by removing the need to recompute intensive operations on page load.

We highly recommend trying Memcache, or standard file caching methods when speed is key.

What are the differences between MyISAM and InnoDB?

Kids T-shirts – New Halloween Collection

Adam — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 16:17:48 +0000

We recently announced one of our most recent client websites launches, Kids T-shirts. Despite only being released a few weeks ago the site is already seeing a steady increase in orders and visitor traffic. The site utilises our in house, custom developed e-commerce solution, modified to suit the needs of the client and its users.

With Halloween fast approaching the range of t shirts offered by kids t-shirts has expanded to accommodate all things spooky and scary in preparation for the Halloween festivities. Some of the most prominent and bestselling items in the new collection are the new glow in the dark t shirts. They feature many a spooky design perfect for trick or treating or any planned Halloween party.

Some of the new glow in the dark range are shown below, the first being the classic Banksy’s Grim Reaper design, followed by a series of flying cartoon bats.

Why not take a look at new range today by visiting the Kids T-shirts website.

(More) Banksy T-shirts!

Jordan Hall — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:36:20 +0000

We recently posted about the launch of BanksyTshirts.org. If this interested you, you may also be interested in the recent launch of another Banksy t-shirts website!

Rapid Web is happy to announce the recent launch a t-shirt website based solidly on our main and highly, flexible e-commerce system.

This website offers a full e-commerce experience for both the visitors browsing the advanced front-end shopping basket/cart system, and for the client who can utilise an in-depth, customisable administration system. This administration system allows the client to add and modify products that display on the public areas of the website and to manage the orders received through the site including orders taken via any number of payment gateway systems that can integrate with our e-commerce system.

The integrated payment systems included in this website are the SagePay payment gateway (previously known as ‘Protx’) and the ever popular PayPal, though our e-commerce system’s checkout can easily be integrated with any common or even obscure method of electronic payment.

As well as the background code that powers this website, Rapid Web also created the custom, bespoke website design for this Banksy t-shirts website. The design emphasises the details commonly associated with graphic artists such as Banksy himself. If you wish to view this custom design in its full glory, take a look at our portfolio page or the Banksy t-shirts .net website!

Grab a t-shirt for your child from the recently launched ‘Kids t-shirts’ website

Jordan Hall — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 09:13:56 +0000

Rapid Web is happy to announce our latest client’s website launch, a brand new Kids t-shirts website!

If you want a t-shirt for your child, or maybe your young one wants to pick our a t-shirt of their choice – this brand new kids t-shirts website may be the place to look.

This websites for young t-shirt buyers, is powered by our primary e-commerce system. This e-commerce website system can be highly enhanced and modified to fit the bespoke and ever changing requirements of our clients. For example, this system integrates a custom and unique product page specifically designed for the sale of the particular products which suit a kids t-shirt website. The basket/checkout system has also been customised and simplified using AJAX technologies to provide a more user-friendly flow to the ‘product to basket’ functionality, which helps increase immediate conversions and sales.

The design of this website has also been created uniquely by Rapid Web for the kids t-shirts website. It focuses on a bright, bold and colourful design that is designed to appeal to the targeted kids and parents audience. This unique styling and design have been applying to associated WordPress installation which allows the client to post regular kids t-shirt news and announce the launch of new kids t-shirts and related products and designs.

If you’re interested in a bespoke e-commerce website and/or WordPress powered news/blog system, please feel free to contact us directly for a quote!

Something Geeky e-commerce website

Jordan Hall — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 09:12:46 +0000

Several of us in the Rapid Web office are into some quite geeky hobbies, myself especially. Rapid Web is proud to announce the recent launch of Something Geeky, a brand new e-commerce website which sells geek t-shirts and other general geeky products.

This e-commerce website is based on our custom in-house e-commerce system, which allows our clients to administrate their products and site options via a secure, custom and bespoke administration suite. This e-commerce system can be customised with new functionality as desired by the client in question. For example, the Something Geeky site shows custom hover effects on product selection, an AJAX powered ‘add to basket’ functionality, heavily customised product pages and a tight integration with a custom themed WordPress installation for covering information about geeky news and new geek t-shirt product releases.

The main site and the WordPress installation are covering by a fully custom ‘Something Geeky’ theme and website design which is fully unique to the needs of the client. This design and layout is custom designed to appeal primarily to the geek/gaming audience that the products listing on the website currently target.

Something Geeky is a custom e-commerce solution, WordPress installation and full website design and theme bespoke to the needs of the client. If you’re interested in a new website that covers any of these area, feel free to contact us right here!

Banksy T-shirts.org – a customised e-commerce solution

Jordan Hall — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:28:55 +0000

We’re very happy to announce to recent launch of Banky T-shirts.org, a website that sells t-shirts from the graphic artist Banksy, and donates £1 of each Banksy t-shirt to a charity of your choice!

This website uses our in-house e-commerce system to power the online e-commerce shopping experience and the WordPress blogging system to power the Banksy News section.

This Banksy t-shirt website is a great example of how our in-house e-commerce system can be heavily customised, added-on to and made bespoke for the needs of the particular system. In this case, the charity choice during the basket and checkout stages is a custom piece of functionality that has been integrated into our system. This is shown on the front-end of the system as part of the customer experience, as well as in the administration to keep record of required charity donations based on each Banksy t-shirt which is sold.

If you want, please go ahead and browse one or more of these awesome Banksy t-shirts!

HSBC epayments issues relating to SSL certificate mismatches

Jordan Hall — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 09:58:51 +0000

This is a technical post provided as advice to server administrators having issues with the HSBC payment gateway system.

HSBC have recently updated the SSL certificates on their payment gateway system. However it seems they did not provide the intermediate certificates for the certificate authority they used. This leaves the job of updating the CA bundles up to HSBC’s clients. The following advice refers to resolving the issue on a Linux server.

Step 1 – Check the problem is definitely related to an SSL Certificate mismatch

To do this, it is best to simply request the main secure-epayment API via curl. Running the following command will suffice.

curl https://www.secure-epayments.apixml.hsbc.com

If this issue is present, you will likely see a message such as the one below. If you do not see this message or one similar, the issue is likely to be unrelated and we recommend you contact HSBC’s epayments support line to resolve the issue.

 curl: (60) SSL certificate problem, verify that the CA cert is OK. Details:
 error:14090086:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed
 More details here: http://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html

 curl performs SSL certificate verification by default, using a "bundle"
  of Certificate Authority (CA) public keys (CA certs). The default
  bundle is named curl-ca-bundle.crt; you can specify an alternate file
  using the --cacert option.
 If this HTTPS server uses a certificate signed by a CA represented in
  the bundle, the certificate verification probably failed due to a
  problem with the certificate (it might be expired, or the name might
  not match the domain name in the URL).
 If you'd like to turn off curl's verification of the certificate, use
  the -k (or --insecure) option.

Step 2 – Update the CA bundle on your server

Obviously it is possible to remove the verification of the SSL certificate, but this is heavily not recommended due to potential negative security implications. To update the CA bundle file from the curl website, use the following commands. Note that may have to adjust to certs path mentioned to conform to the distribution and configuration of your operating system. Also, it is recommend to back up any existing ca-bundle file and any related configuration.

 cd /etc/pki/tls/certs/
 wget http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem
 mv cacert.pem ca-bundle.crt

The file available from the CURL site shown above is generated weekly from the latest Mozilla certs, so should be reasonably up to date with all existing certificate authorities.

Step 3 – Test the CA bundle update has resolved the issue

This is merely a case of rerunning the curl command from step 1 mentioned previously. If the update has been successful you should now see the following response from HSBC (or similar) indicating a secure connection has been established.

 
 
  
   
    6
    
     16
     Merchant
     CcxXmlInput.A
     CcxXmlInput
     1
     793
     CcxXmlInstance.cpp
     13:30:24Jul 14 2009
     8
     6
     The HTTP method received is not valid.  Only POST is accepted.

Step 4 – Restart any dependant services

This step may or may not be required depending on your software and/or configuration. You may need to restart any services which are dependent on the updated CA bundle.

For example, the following commands are commonly used to restart the Apache 2 webserver.

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

/etc/init.d/apache restart

/etc/init.d/httpd restart

I hope this article aids any server administrators currently experiencing issues due to the recent HSBC epayments SSL certificate update.

Feel free to discuss this issue further in the comments section below.

No related posts.

Bespoke Ecommerce vs. off the shelf

Andrew — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:43:11 +0000

With most people abandoning the high street in favour of online shopping most companies are looking for an ecommerce website. With this decision also comes the question which is the better option; a bespoke ecommerce web design or a cheaper alternative with an off-the-shelf ecommerce package? Supporters of a bespoke system will often point the advantages of having a tailor made system while the off the shelf ecommerce providers will argue that the usability and speed of their products makes them superior. Your decisions as to which one to use will normally come down to the functionality, ease of use and most importantly the cost.

Although an off the shelf ecommerce solution may be advertised as “easy to install and manage” this is aimed at people who have a relatively good working knowledge of the web. Working with Rapid Web means that we handle all of the technical jargon while still producing a website that is functional and cost effective. We will then give you training on how to maintain your site and support you in getting your business working for you on the web. Off the shelf ecommerce systems may come with instructions manuals, but communicating with ourselves and developing your understanding for the systems in place is where we excel.

You can start off small with a bespoke website and then further develop it as your customer base increases. Off the shelf systems often limit the functionality, constrained to what the developer of that system saw as a good ecommerce design. This often differs from your personal ideas or existing product catalogue for your site.

Rapidweb offers a professional consultation tailored to your company’s needs, specifying what’s really needed to get a business running online. Then we can work towards putting the special touches that makes your business unique. At the end of the day no business is the same, so why would you choose to use the same as your competitors?

A bespoke system can easily integrate with any existing I.T. system or web services as the system is built from the ground up and specific to your needs. This kind of system can often make your site look unique and set you apart from competitors who have opted for an off the shelf system as they usually look similar. We would offer professional advice as to which systems work best and provide the most efficient integration.

Sporting Kicks website launched

Jordan Hall — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:30:00 +0000

Rapid Web is proud to announce to recent launch of the brand new Sporting Kicks e-commerce site. Sporting Kicks sell alternative football t-shirts and souvenirs.

Although Sporting Kicks have been in business for many years, they came to Rapid Web for a fully new e-commerce website and redesign. We took their existing e-commerce solution and converted it to a completely new and bespoke e-commerce system. To get to this solution, we offered consultation with Sporting Kicks regarding their existing web business and the best ways to move it forward.

Their database was migrated to a new format and integrated into our new solution. As part of this overhaul, many new features were added to the e-commerce experience. Below is a list of just some of the special features of the new Sporting Kicks website.

Integration into Amazon Marketplace
Automatic production of a dynamic Google Shopping Feed
Developing custom areas to include customisable featured products
Multiple payment options for the customer, including Debit/Credit card payments (via Moneybookers), Google Checkout and PayPal
Category specific filtering options to allow the user to easily browse the entire product catalogue

If you’re interested in seeing what we can do for your e-commerce business, please do get in contact!

Today sees the highest sales for online retailers and e-commerce websites

Jordan Hall — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 16:04:36 +0000

According to a recent BBC article, today is set to become the biggest sales day for online retailers and e-commerce website. It is being called ‘Mega Monday’, and possibly resembles the Black Friday shopping phenomenon of the general retail world.

Monday is expected to be the busiest online shopping day of the year, as consumers get ready for Christmas.

Tens of thousands of pounds are expected to be spent online every minute throughout the day, on what has been termed ‘Mega Monday’. Video games, gadgets and DVDs are amongst the most popular purchases.

BBC article

If you’re interested in how to boost your sales over the holiday period, feel free to contact us in regards to optimising your existing website for search engines.

Alternatively, if you want to discuss e-commerce web design in general, please take a look at some of the articles we have on the topic!