Build a Niche Store was not very user friendly and their forums suck. It seemed more people have problems than making money with this script. Well I finally have it up and running and it didn't come out to what I wanted, as it is still in a testing learning phase for me. This script is really user friendly for those that want it up and running in like 10 minutes. But me I always want to be different and I try to change a lot of things with the layout and design.
Browsing multiple BANS store, most of the layouts are the same, BLAH! I always want to stick out and do something no one does. So I went a head and studied the BANS default CSS and found it to be fairly straight to the point. I then took the source of the default template and studied that as well, making sure I know where the information is going to be located.
After sometime I went and built my alpha store. It was not to my liking but it was just a test to see how powerful it really is and simple. Simple for the experience web guy, not at all. Simple for a noob, very. Here is the snapshot of my first Alpha Build a Niche Store.
Not to shabby right? I think it is alright, not really up to my standards, but hey it is in it's Alpha stages.
The downside to this script is the help in forums is very low, there is not much interaction just complainers, and I was one of them, since it was not where I wanted this store to be.
Several things I did which may help others.
- If installed in a sub directory, update your HTACCESS!
- Download an older version of the install.php, can be found in the forums. The one that came with the updated version did not do anything at all.
- Create Pages and Stores First - do not automatically add a category
- Study the CSS file
- Study a simple layout
There are only 2 editable field you can change, header.php and footer.php - its very simple. If you know how to read HTML, this is cake then. You do not even need to use the Advertise section of BANS because if you just enter your Adsense code within header.php or footer.php then you are good to go. Here is a small video recap of POS store I mean BANS.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdCAwwf5bYY[/youtube]