Crafty Cart was a great free WPEC (WordPress e-Commerce plugin) theme that I customized for a couple sites. But the developers seem to have disappeared so I’ve moved on to other WordPress ecommerce starter themes like those from Storefront Themes.
What I like about Crafty Cart is the playful design. It also features:
- Simple product management options.
- Fun and simple way to browse categories.
- All the customizable power of the WordPress eCommerce system.
- Want to try it out? See download link below.
Crafty was useful as a starting theme – as I mentioned I used it twice. It had some issues with IE and had a number of CSS cleanups to go through but came out well in the end. Let me briefly show some of the e-Commerce customizations I made.
Meeks Design Handbags craft eCommerce
My customizations on this site include making the product list only show image and name without price or ‘buy now’. I designed the logo and the over all “I’m busy crafting” branding that matches the aesthetic of the fabrics used in the products. This project included business card and other print collateral. I trained my client to use the site and manage inventory, sales reports and other WordPress eCommerce features.
Sugar Petals cake decorations and food eCommerce
This project features a wholesale-only setup that only shows pricing to those that have applied and been approved for an account. The design started with their existing logo and created a new look that blended into their existing branding materials. I trained my client in how to accept new wholesale customers and manage a complex set of product and pricing tier options via the WordPress eCommerce coupons functionality.
Download Crafty Cart theme
Since it’s hard to find this theme online anymore, here’s a download link – this is the whole original theme but none of my customizations. This is still a great theme but one important feature that it is missing is a responsive design that makes it easier to purchase from a mobile device.
QA the UI: Time Machine’s backwards ghost
Here’s something that’s been bugging me for a long time.
Now, I know the folks at Apple work hard to make the small details shine. I’ve had a couple acquaintances who have been involved with great hardware design there over the years. I have heard stories about the wonderful keyboard design (the super fast keyboard that I’m typing on at the moment). I’ve heard about the great lengths engineers went to to sync the sleep pulsing light of the Mac monitor and the Mac tower years ago. And the “sleeping heartbeat” or “breathing” pulsing LED itself that is on many of the Apple products is a patent that took some skill to pull off (I think it is actually blinking really fast since LEDs don’t dim the way incandescent bulbs do). See “Breathing status LED indicator” patent that describes “The LED indicator is energized by pulse-width modulated electrical pulses” that my friend Jory Bell helped invent.
So why is this strange little UI element so backwards?
When Time Machine is operating the Finder window sidebar icon and the icon in the Mac menu bar spin in opposite directions. If that pulsing light makes the “sleepy ghost” in the machine feel alive then this detail makes the machine seem like the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
While I’m at it – here’s a fun old screenshot of debug mode in mobile Safari showing Apple’s own store and how it generated 2 errors. That’s all cleaned up now I see but when the Debug Console was first introduced it was fun to turn that tool on it’s maker.