Month: November 2011

  • perspex bridge building contest

    Bridge building using perspex (probably cut using a laser cutter)
    You could make the rules very simple: use 1.5mm perspex, must span at least 50cm and best weight to strength ratio wins or something

  • Open Source Toys

    Plans made freely available for some toys, like say a toy crane. Then you can build it yourself or buy a premade one, and when child breaks toy, you can either make or buy the replacement parts for it to repair it.

  • bigcommerce support failure

    I recently wanted to customise my bigcommerce site with some custom fields. Unfortunately support was unable to help me with this request.
    Apparantly what I want to do is possible, but it is secret and bigcommerce will not divulge this information. I discussed it in a chat session with bigcommerce support. Transcript follows:

    12:58Jason Lewis: hi
    12:58Jason Lewis: hi ken
    12:59Jason Lewis: on my homepage: http://www.pukkaherbs.com.au/
    12:59Ken Suarez: hi
    12:59Ken Suarez: you can display them by using custom codes
    12:59Ken Suarez: so you need to develop a code that will handle that functionality
    12:59Ken Suarez: we do not have that in our interface
    12:59Ken Suarez: once you add the field then it will automatically added to the group of fields
    12:59Jason Lewis: see how the featured product, “wonderfully uplifting…”
    13:00Ken Suarez: address to be spcific
    13:00Jason Lewis: um
    13:00Jason Lewis: but …. can you give me an example of the code i would need to display one specific custom field?
    13:01Ken Suarez: <input type=”text”>
    13:01Ken Suarez: that stuff
    13:01Ken Suarez: sorry we are not trained for scripting
    13:01Jason Lewis: so you are saying it is possible to display one custom field, but you don;t know the code to do it?
    13:03Ken Suarez: i know how to code it but we do not support customization/scripting here
    13:03Ken Suarez: its in the support policy
    13:03Ken Suarez: you might want to check
    13:04Jason Lewis: so how do i find out that information if you won’t tell me?
    13:04Jason Lewis: can you show me a BC site that does has that customisation?
    13:04Jason Lewis: i this information secret or something?
    13:05Ken Suarez: well you need to have html/css knowledge to do that
    13:05Jason Lewis: ok, i have html and css knowledge, now what?
    13:06Ken Suarez: then you need to start developing the code then
    13:06Ken Suarez: thats all you need
    13:06Jason Lewis: is there a more senior support person I can talk to please?
    13:07Ken Suarez: most scripting issues are posted there
    13:07Jason Lewis: posted where?
    13:08Jason Lewis: can you point me to a forum post with the answer at least? I have searched the forums myself and found several people asking this question but there are no replies with information on how to do it
    13:08Ken Suarez: the reason why i let you post so you will get answer
    13:09Ken Suarez: the answer is not there yet
    13:09Jason Lewis: ok
    13:09Ken Suarez: thats why you need to post for other developers or coders can help and assist you with scripting
    13:10Jason Lewis: so this is a totally undocumented feature then?
    13:10Ken Suarez: yes sir, as what i’ve mentioned earlier we do not support scripting/customization
    13:12Jason Lewis: but it is possible, you just won’t tell me how?
    13:12Ken Suarez: is it that hard to understand that we do not support scripting?
    13:12Ken Suarez: yes it is possible and know how to code it
    13:13Ken Suarez: we just dont give support here as not everybody knows scripting
    13:13Jason Lewis: i just wanted to confirm that it was in fact possible
    13:13Ken Suarez: i already informed you that it is possible
    13:14Jason Lewis: i was just double checking
    13:14Ken Suarez: not sure which part i did say that it isnt
    13:14Ken Suarez: double checking if it is possible?
    13:14Ken Suarez: ah ok
    13:14Jason Lewis: I was double checking that I had understood you correctly that it was possible to do
    13:15Ken Suarez: i did confirm already on the very first chat that its possible the issue is we cannot further support customization
    13:16Jason Lewis: ok, message received and understood

     
    I am very disappointed in this attitude bigcommerce too in dealing with this request. I don’t quite understand why they are being so secretive about it.