Improvement continue on the website – with 2 major changes.

  • 1/ – The site is now a fully-fledged E-commerce site with the addition of a Woocommerce – shopping cart and checkout system with instant downloads after purchase, automation of receipts and all the paper work etc. I am using Stripe as a merchant gateway.
  • 2/ – Along with this addition was the necessity to upgrade the site to SSL (actually the encryption is TSL, the latest flavor of SSL with much stronger security), with the purchase of an SSL certificate. The site now has the https:// at the start of its name instead of the normal http:// and it has the padlock in the address bar. It’s now as safe as logging on to your Internet bank, with all communication between you and the website encrypted. Personal details and logins are now all secure. On top of that when a person enters their credit card details it is transmitted directly between that person and the bank, it doesn’t go through the website. It’s the same level of security as using your card at the supermarket checkout (eftpos).

It’s been an interesting journey making it all work and it wasn’t as straight forward as I first thought with a lot of loose ends to be fixed up but its now a properly working E-commerce site. I continue to be amazed how cool the WordPress platform (that this website is built on) is and it’s ecosystem of plugins and what you can do with it. It’s almost as much fun as building a boat 😉

These steps have laid the groundwork for a secure and efficient place to be able to offer things like plans and eBooks etc. for sale and download. It seemed a little bit of an overkill at first to set all this up but these days it’s required to be able to sell online. It also sets the stage now to integrate a forum into the site that will also be fully secure. The forum is coming next!

The month is nearly up! I hope your May is going well.

Tim

 

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