From the News on the Webshop

Feeling lazy, but still maybe it's time to write something.
So, here goes. Copy/Pasted from http://mohsart.se/

There seems to have been problems ordering on the site from Nov 9, but it should be fixed now.
It seems like the problem occured when ordering the last item of something. When that happens, the webshop is configured to notify me to order more, but the folder with email templates for that functionality was empty for Swedish language. Surely a Prestashop bug, but should be ok now.

I have added a couple of links to the info block, I had that information in the links block before (actually, it's still there) but this way looks a little bit better imo.
As you can see, I have links to other webshops selling the same stuff that I sell.
This is because I care more about that You can order what You are looking for than to maximize my selling. Also, I am quite confident that I can stand the competition.
I would add Swedish sites as well, but I'm afraid that there are no sites that are good enough. SunAi in Stockholm may qualify, but just barely.

Oh, almost forgot: I added a new carrier for those ordering only books, by choosing that one, shipping costs will be much more accurate. Shipping really is a pain in the xxx, because I can only try to estimate it from either weight or price. I will try to hack the module to at least only show the carriers that are applicable, ie no Schenker for packages > 40 cm and not this last addition if the order doesn't contain only books.

Stockholms Spelkonvent

I helgen har jag försökt frälsa deltagare på Stockholms Spelkonvent, vilket visade sig lite svårare än väntat.
De hade placerat mig tillsammans med Mahjongspelare från Uppsala, vilket var bra - viss synergieffekt där.
MEN vi hade tilldelats ett rum längst upp och i ena änden av korridoren (iofs nära trappan) så jag misstänker att färre än önskat hittade dit.

Staffars Serier som satt på våningen under klagade också på oväntat lågt intresse och var missnöjda med att inte sitta i anslutning till kafeterian.

Jag sålde två böcker, och ett 9x9-bräde och ett budget-set (som redan var beställt av kunden i fråga och därmed knappast räknas) så det var väl tur att jag inte var där i egenskap av butik utan som demare av Go (som butik hade jag fått betala en avgift som gjort att jag gått back på kalaset).

Visst intresse visades för Xiangqi och Shogi (och även Go) och jag fick ge bort en handfull visitkort, så helt bortkastat var det nog inte.

The shop is dying, long live the shop!

I have decided to ditch the idea about making my own webshop, I quite enjoyed it but I just don't have the time.

So, from now on the shop will be at mohsart.se (sure, almost the same address, but the design is quite different).

The new shop doesn't have all articles added yet, in particular lots of books are still missing, so it's not time just yet to forget completely about the old one, but every day I add a title or 10 so eventually it will be complete.

I have two issues with the new shop:
The big issue
I haven't as of yet found a good way to enter author information.
There is no such field and the ones that are obvious to use (at least everybody at the forum seems to use them) aren't one-to-many linked with the titles, i.e. it's impossible to have more than one author of a book.
I have a idea of a workaround, to use the "tag" feature for authors, but the design of the tag box on the site needs some redesigning for it to be possible and possibly some more coding is needed so for the time being I have the author information in a information field of each book.
The small issue
The categories are sorted alphabetically and there is no way getting around that.
Well, except for adding a number in front on them, but that is so awfully ugly that I'd rather have them unsorted, at least for the time being.

All lost in the Indian Restaurant

I went to Indian Restarant Lagan for lunch today.
Since I was a bit late, the place was almost empty, only two other tables were occupied, we were five people in total inside, and one person sitting outside (some folks just won't accept that summer's over I guess).
All the other (four people) were eating already, actually they were almost done and I was waiting for my food.
So the waiter comes out and walks all the way to the other side of the room, all five of us wating/awaiting food was at the tables next to the cashier.
Well, the waiter looked left and he looked right and couldn't find the person who's food he was carrying, in fact he couldn't find anybody because he was at the far end of the room, as far as possible away from all the guests.
After a short while, the owner (I think) called him and pointed at me and I finally got my food.

New books

I have started to add some other than Go books now.

From my new distributer, Förlagssystem, I have ordered books about Shogi, Xiangqi, Poker, Bridge, and Mahjong.
I also ordered the two volumes of Trondheim's Donjon (a cartoon set in a Dungeons and Dragons kind of world) that Komika has published in Swedish.

And while i was at it I ordered two books on how to draw Manga.

Some of these titles are in Swedish and some in English, to find them in the webshop (for now) the easiest way is to search for eg Poker, Mahjong, or Manga; or chose "Various" in the drop-down list ("Diverse" in Swedish).

Christmas is coming

Since I have a store, Christmas is almost here; so I thought I'd come up with some special offers.

It is not a easy task...
Since there is very little profit with the standard prices, I cannot afford to give huge discounts.
One way is to give away hard-to-sell items to those spend more than a certain amount and another to offer discounts on big orders.
I did that, except for that the items I am giving away are not hard to sell but I have too many of them.
I also packaged the discount on "big orders" offer into a "buy the whole series" kind of deal. I like that a bit more...

Buuut, since it's Christmas (at least soon) it's nice to have a deal on some special items, so that people can buy things to give away for Christmas doh. So I also added a discount deal on the small Go-sets with legs.

Hopefully some people will have some money left after this, and the business will prosper in the long run. Well, I can dream, right?

email

Just when I decided not to blog too much, I stumbled upon this nice pictureI happened to notice a email address in our system that was 33 characters + @ + domain name and got kind of curious about how long they can be.
Aparently they can be longer than what anyone could ever want, which doesn't necesarily mean that addresses close to the limit will work everywhere.
If I understand things right the username part can be up to 64 characters and the domain can be 255 characters; the total length of a email address can not however be longer than 254 characters.

(Here is where I found the picture and the information on how long the address can be)