What type of website do you have?

JaimeZ

Well-known member
We're using a Printers Presence Website. It's good for us.

What other options are out there?

Do some have a custom site?
 
Re: What type of website do you have?

We are also using a site from Printers Presence. It has worked well for us for the past several years.

However, we are growing and need more capabilities so we are currently in the process of switching to a website from Printers Website. it is fairly full featured, includes e-commerce file uploading and proofing.

They also make several other products including a PDF print driver for windows users called Simple Prep that will convert and preflight to PDF and then upload to your website in one operation. You can check them out at [http://printers-website.com]
 
Re: What type of website do you have?

We offer custom designed printers websites with ecommerce, edoc builder software, and an online store. Designed by printers for printers, it offers most everything you would require. For more info, contact us at [email protected]. Thanks
 
Re: What type of website do you have?

Hi,
Your question of "what else is out there" led me to respond. There are many options for printers who want a website, especially ones that could offer e-com and other customizations, and finding the one that is best for you takes a bit of internal and external discussion and research. GTAF recently released a new book called "*Web-to-Print Primer*" find it on their website here: [http://www.gain.net/eweb/DynamicPag...ptc_key=b718f8ab-6198-4549-b61c-310d27302e8e] It offers valuable info and resources.

Our company along with many others offerering web-to-print solutions are listed in "*Web-to-Print Primer*"and talked about. We work with printers all over the nation and provide a variety of website solutions to meet the demands of the print shop owners and their customers. Feel free to contact me if I can be of further help.

Al the best,
Cyn
 
Re: What type of website do you have?

Cynthia,

Thank you for the link and we're members of PIASC, an affiliate of GATF, so I'll be able to order it.

Jaime Z
 
Re: What type of website do you have?

We're using websitesforprinters.com
We've been very happy with their service, great file transfers and easy to edit and most importantly, easy to work with.
 
Re: What type of website do you have?

Hello,
We modified our existing website into a complete e-Commmerce store front using RocketPrint software. It integrates seamlessly and offers features that would cost us mega-dollars from other suppliers. Here is a link to their website:

[http://www.rocketprintsoftware.com]
 
Re: What type of website do you have?

We built our site www.ezprintsolutions.com in-house. After looking at the costs and limited ability to customize from other sites , decided the best wa yto know what you're getting is to make it and create it in a way that it can be expanded in code or 'plugged' in by other applications. (that way you dont spend the money to make something that becomes obsolete in a year , or that wont tie in with other functions you want.)

PHP/ MYSQL and AJAX - no templates, and built it line by line in text editor so that its known more than you'd ever want to know your applications and functions. lol

If you like the way we have our Instant Pricing calculators I could help you in the way we went about it.

No page reloads and dynamic updating Instant Pricing with a virtual LCD readout - I think its the first in that style.
Sorry, not trying to pat my site on the back - but I'm the web guy that made that ..and you know how we are. :) lol
 
Our website

Our website

My customer Printcraft Solutions was built with Dreamweaver and the embedded blog Vancouver Printer was built with Wordpress. My blog Prepress Pilgrim is
Wordpress.

The Printcraft web site is run from a server next to the Prinergy system. I think it's important to host your own web site so that you set up your website to accept files from customers.

Looking back, if I had to do it over, I would have built the Printcraft web site entirely from Wordpress. There are sooooo many plug-ins for Wordpress, you can add a jillion things to your web site (like ecommerce tools) as you need them.
 
did you know you dont need to host your own server to accept file uploads?
Creating file uploader scripts is easy ..but, they are the basic uploaders that look like the "browse" and "upload" buttons.. The ones that have nothing fancy to them, no uploading progress bar etc.
That's where the problem comes in. You can create a file upload script in 5 minutes ,BUT most want an activity meter, progress bar or something to show people that their screen didn't freeze and its still uploading. I've been in search of the best file uploader and still haven't found anything that I was completely happy with. Even if they worked, they were annoying or buggy and didnt have the aesthetics and etc .. I downloaded probably every file uploader there is and they pretty much all sucked except one.

A lot of them had the small window that wants to open..which is corny, so I ended up choosing one of the paid scripts and its great but, if you try to edit the aesthetics on it the whole thing will get buggy and do a weird default extension. I'm going to inevitably have to make one because I know the one I would like to have, you'd click the upload button after you chose your fileS (instead of one file at a time) and the script will display a progress spindle or one of them flower-lookin animations where the petals are indicator lights that flash around , and the progress percentage in the center counting 1 - 100%
But, right on the screen before they upload their file, it would have them fill in textbox to give their project a name , which would then autocreate a folder with their project name or order number. But so far as far as fancy looking for the customer, with progress indictators, and 'smart' enough to do all those things without going buggy when editing it ... it doesnt exist. It seems the two things that are still primitive in printing website technology is the file uploader and the shipping interacting scripts. Instead of those shipping scripts that go out to the shipping sites I think it would be a lot better if they let you download a database SQL file every update , and just put it all into your own database..because if you've ever tried to do a lot of data scripts with them shipping scripts, wow what a pain. lol They take too long usually and customer has to have some sort of button trigger or at least one in the script to call the other website ,and if you get into using Ajax for real-time auto-changes and updates as fast as a customer clicks their website buttons.. your screwed. lol I used one of those types of scripts for awhile and then got rid of it, since it was too slow most of the time. The site user would be clicking through various combinations of options of paper stock, ink colors and quantities to get a look at various pricing combinations..and there would come the shipping script on a 3 second lag ..tagging everything weird if the customer was really clicking along.

Inevitably I'm going to make a file uploader I think, if i do I'll post a link for you to check it out. Maybe even sell it to printers ..that way you dont need those whole print template website for the cost of a sportscar.. lol
 
There are a few to choose from

There are a few to choose from

To answer your question, my company went with a product called PrintBridge from FORIX (www.forixprintbridge.com) and it has been phenomenal. There are a lot of options out there like Printer Presence, EFI Digital Storefront and Websites for Printers, but none of them seem to have all the tools I was looking for, and all of them had a higher price too.

The good news (and bad news) is that there are a lot of options out there so you really have to do your homework. Check and see who has annual fees and who requires an hourly rate to get involved if you ever need to do anything extra. That would be my main advice to you.

-Jim
 

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