The Knit Shop came to me via a friend, so our initial conversations were casual. The client needed what seemed like a fairly simple site. Her design needs were very simple, and the main part of the project appeared to be setting her up with a better online store. Her existing solution was a store through her host’s limited in-house platform that was being phased out soon.
I got her set up with a quick clean design, installed WooCommerce and set about to import her store data. Unfortunately it was not possible to export meaningful files. Ultimately we developed a process of exporting files from QuickBooks, where she managed her in-store products, and importing them using WordPress All Import, a very flexible product that allowed me to build custom functions to parse information from the export files.
This was by far the most complicated store set-up I have engaged in, with a number of other issues related to image display, page layout, and other issues coming up along the way. We encountered another conundrum when some of her yarn products had so many variants that we hit a rare bug related to pages with too many fields. In the end we were able to import all of her products to sensible categories and subcategories, and I set her up with an update tool to help keep her stock synched with her physical store.
I believe that Shasta was a complete “God Send” I got her name through one of my customers who also works in the IT department at the University of Oregon. I was in need of an updated web-site, but most importantly I needed to be able to easily update my enormous inventory on a regular basis. Shasta attacked these problems with enthusiasm and found the right vehicle that worked for me. She was never discouraged by any difficulties that we encountered, just forged ahead and found solutions.Shasta is also a very good teacher and was able to impart the knowledge that I needed have in order to do the data dumps that are necessary to keep my inventory updated.I would recommend Shasta to anyone who needs a new web-site! She is the best!! – Jean Goodbar
