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Any healthcare or home business owners out there?

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babyyears

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Just want to meet others that have similar careers.

I am a Physician Assistant in surgery and I have a home business. Anyone similar?

Angi
 
New business start-up

I'm going to start a hot dog vending business in Jacksonville and I need all sorts of advice - particularly about licenses, permits and commissaries. Thanks.
 
I have a home business in Chicago. Laws, permits, etc are different for different states and cities, and even communities within cities. But I can try to help if you need it. Let me know what you need and I can try to help out.
 
I have a business I started this past spring to try and bring in some extra money. I first started with a booth in the local street market that occured on Thursday nights, but due to the low sales and high overhead I had to take it online (much lower overhead).

It has been a struggle, but I have seen a modicum of success.
 
Knotical - How was the process of going to an online store instead? Did you do most of the work yourself? I am actually in the process of making my business an online one as well. There have been lots of bumps in the road but I am almost there. Its been about 4 months since I started and I thnk I am less than a month away.

Its been fun though!
 
Knotical - How was the process of going to an online store instead? Did you do most of the work yourself? I am actually in the process of making my business an online one as well. There have been lots of bumps in the road but I am almost there. Its been about 4 months since I started and I thnk I am less than a month away.

Its been fun though!

I built it all myself using Joomla as my template. I have a considerable amount of plugins added to that, including a VirtueMart shopping cart plugin. There are plenty of them out there. Free even. Right now the only thing I have had to pay for is web hosting through fatcow.com. Though, I would not necessarily recomment using them due to some issues I have had with them.

Are you developing your own site, or is someone doing it for you?
 
I have been creating it myself, with a free eccommerce software (zencart). I had no experience doing it before this so it has taken me a long time, but I am so close now.

Its been difficult to find a lot of time to do it because I have a full time job and a 1 year old daughter.

The challenge has been good though. Its been a lot of fun and I am excited about the lauch that will hopefully happen soon.

How long did it take you from start to finish? I am approaching 4 months right now.
 
I have been creating it myself, with a free eccommerce software (zencart). I had no experience doing it before this so it has taken me a long time, but I am so close now.

Its been difficult to find a lot of time to do it because I have a full time job and a 1 year old daughter.

The challenge has been good though. Its been a lot of fun and I am excited about the lauch that will hopefully happen soon.

How long did it take you from start to finish? I am approaching 4 months right now.

It is hard to say, really. I am always tweaking it since I am not entirely happy with everything on the site. Even now I am considering switching over to a different shopping cart plugin, but I know that means hours of revamping thost pages on the site. It probably took a couple months to get the base site going. Then added all the plugins and modules the way I wanted.

My real problem is going through the extensions area of the Joomla site and finding all the cool stuff they have in there. I guess the good thing is a lot of it you have to pay for, which prevents me from using them, for now.

What are you using as the template for your site?
 
Zen-cart comes with a standard template and then I customized it from that template. The more different you want it to be from the templte, the more work you have to put it. But there are a lots of other templates that you can use to give you a better starting point.

I chose to start with the basic template to so that I could learn how to do it all.
 
Zen-cart comes with a standard template and then I customized it from that template. The more different you want it to be from the templte, the more work you have to put it. But there are a lots of other templates that you can use to give you a better starting point.

I chose to start with the basic template to so that I could learn how to do it all.

Do you have a demo or development version of your site we can see?
 
Sure, here is the site: http://www.toolsforchrist.com

Keep in mind its still not finished. But I would love any feedback you would like to give.

If you want to send your link as well, I will do the same.

Thanks

Not a problem. I did post a link above, but here it is again in a more overt way: www.knoticalnovelties.com

I took a look at your site and upon first impression I have to say it looks very clean and simple. Which is good. The only challenge I see initially is that your menu might be getting a little lost at the top. It is obvious you wanted to incorporate it into your logo/art at the top of the page, but you may want to consider making it a bit more noticeable.

Just my 2 cents.
 
Thanks for the review. I agree. I need to find a way to make it stand out more, while still incorporating it into the header design. Thanks, I really appreaciate it.

I looked at your site really quick. A couple things that I found:

On the shop page it is hard to see what the products are. Partly beacuse of the size, but also because the backgrouds are a little disctracting. The customer may have to click on all the images to see what they really are, and that may frustrate some people.

The backgroud of the website is a little distracting to me. You actually only see it in the header, but it blends with some of the text so its hard to read some of it. I would just use the blue as the background and then try to incorporate the mountain into the header a little differently.

Just my opinions though.
 
Thanks for the review. I agree. I need to find a way to make it stand out more, while still incorporating it into the header design. Thanks, I really appreaciate it.

I looked at your site really quick. A couple things that I found:

On the shop page it is hard to see what the products are. Partly beacuse of the size, but also because the backgrouds are a little disctracting. The customer may have to click on all the images to see what they really are, and that may frustrate some people.

The backgroud of the website is a little distracting to me. You actually only see it in the header, but it blends with some of the text so its hard to read some of it. I would just use the blue as the background and then try to incorporate the mountain into the header a little differently.

Just my opinions though.

The product images are something I have considered redoing. Especially after my wife got her new camera. I may just have to bite the bullet and redo it again.

As for the background, I am really attached to the plugin I found for it since I am able to use pretty much any image that is big enough and use it as a background for the site.

What did you think of the logo? It is the second version of it that I have done recently.
 
I like it. If I were to make a change, I would remove the pictures between the spokes (not sure if thats what their called). I like simple logos.
 
I like it. If I were to make a change, I would remove the pictures between the spokes (not sure if thats what their called). I like simple logos.

Hmm...it actually took a bit of time to put those in there. I will have to seriously think about that. Of course if I take new pictures of the products without backgrounds it may help with the busy-ness of it.
 
Corey, is Zen-cart a stand-alone website template, or is it compatible with other templates, such as Joomla or Wordpress?
 
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