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[TomC Moderator TomCJoin date: October 2014Posts: 14077Downloads:58Uploads:137 Thanks: 948 Thanked: 3155 times in 2495 posts]

#141339

We frequently see members showcasing websites they have created, but rarely do we read about the success of the websites – socially, financially, or otherwise. Let’s hear some success stories from JA members who have utilized JA products as part of their website projects – especially those whom have integrated an ecommerce aspect into their sites.

[questbg Friend questbgJoin date: May 2008Posts: 1912Downloads:0Uploads:1 Thanks: 146 Thanked: 339 times in 197 posts]

#305334

Hi Tom

We used to print a monthly magazine over a period of four years. However, with spiraling print costs and pressure from advertisers for higher distribution, foreign languages, etc., we had to make a tough decision to take the magazine online only (quite a tough decision for me as I’ve worked in print my entire life).

I spent three months researching Joomla and Joomla templates and we finally made a decision to go with Telline II.

I gave myself a deadline of printing two more issues of the magazine whilst building the new site. I also wanted to launch with at least 120 new articles on the site. My wife contacted our current ‘print’ advertisers and explained we were going online and in 3 languages. Plus, because we had no print costs we could offer them advertising to a much larger market, at a far less cost. They all agreed to go with us.

The two months build was a nightmare, I was still trying to design ads and make up pages for the printed mag whilst trying to get to grips with Joomla, Telline II, building banners, changing layout, adding modules, and, adding 120 new articles pre-launch. The result is:

http://www.questbg.com

The site has now been live eight months and has been a great success, not only providing my wife and I with an income, but also for our advertisers.

Since we no longer have any printed version to work on the site is really easy to maintain with just adding daily articles, etc. This also freed up a lot of my time and I’ve just built two more web sites for clients using JA Templates and am currently building a large real estate site too.

We also developed a ‘premium content’ area with ‘pay to view’ sections and categories. Since launch we now have 355 paid-up Members at £4.99 each … another nice slice of income!

I think this could be classed as a ‘success story’ Tom. In fact so much so, we repeated the sites another twice in different countries:

http://www.questturkey.com
and
http://www.questgreekislands.com

I’d like to thank the many forum members that assisted me throughout the two month build and also JA Staff for coming to my rescue on more than one occasion.

Thanks also to anyone who took the time to read this tale of epic proportions!!!

Cheers
Chris

2 users say Thank You to questbg for this useful post

1. scotty
2. histeriks

[scotty Friend scottyJoin date: March 2008Posts: 2339Downloads:0Uploads:13 Thanks: 76 Thanked: 827 times in 595 posts]

#305381

Great story Chris.

[TomC Moderator TomCJoin date: October 2014Posts: 14077Downloads:58Uploads:137 Thanks: 948 Thanked: 3155 times in 2495 posts]

#305399

That’s an awesome and inspiring success story, Chris. It’s the kind of thing that makes one believe that it IS possible to take this website design thing beyond the “hobby” stage and create something special and financially lucrative.

KEEP ‘EM COMING !!!

[sfpkent Friend sfpkentJoin date: October 2008Posts: 829Downloads:0Uploads:100 Thanks: 310 Thanked: 75 times in 1 posts]

#305602

This is my biggest success story.

McCurry Restaurant – Malaysian Curry Restaurant – http://mccurryrecipe.com

They just won the case against McDonald’s on recent court case. McDonald sued McCurry for the wording “Mc”.

McCurry lose his case 8 years ago but, McCurry keep fighting his right and finally it won the case few weeks ago.

[instantinlaw Friend instantinlawJoin date: February 2007Posts: 1646Downloads:6Uploads:28 Thanks: 68 Thanked: 210 times in 62 posts]

#305603

questbg;129524Hi Tom

We used to print a monthly magazine over a period of four years. However, with spiraling print costs and pressure from advertisers for higher distribution, foreign languages, etc., we had to make a tough decision to take the magazine online only (quite a tough decision for me as I’ve worked in print my entire life).

I spent three months researching Joomla and Joomla templates and we finally made a decision to go with Telline II.

I gave myself a deadline of printing two more issues of the magazine whilst building the new site. I also wanted to launch with at least 120 new articles on the site. My wife contacted our current ‘print’ advertisers and explained we were going online and in 3 languages. Plus, because we had no print costs we could offer them advertising to a much larger market, at a far less cost. They all agreed to go with us.

The two months build was a nightmare, I was still trying to design ads and make up pages for the printed mag whilst trying to get to grips with Joomla, Telline II, building banners, changing layout, adding modules, and, adding 120 new articles pre-launch. The result is:

http://www.questbg.com

The site has now been live eight months and has been a great success, not only providing my wife and I with an income, but also for our advertisers.

Since we no longer have any printed version to work on the site is really easy to maintain with just adding daily articles, etc. This also freed up a lot of my time and I’ve just built two more web sites for clients using JA Templates and am currently building a large real estate site too.

We also developed a ‘premium content’ area with ‘pay to view’ sections and categories. Since launch we now have 355 paid-up Members at £4.99 each … another nice slice of income!

I think this could be classed as a ‘success story’ Tom. In fact so much so, we repeated the sites another twice in different countries:

http://www.questturkey.com
and
http://www.questgreekislands.com

I’d like to thank the many forum members that assisted me throughout the two month build and also JA Staff for coming to my rescue on more than one occasion.

Thanks also to anyone who took the time to read this tale of epic proportions!!!

Cheers
Chris

Awsome Chris!
And a google page rank of 4 to boot. 😎

[questbg Friend questbgJoin date: May 2008Posts: 1912Downloads:0Uploads:1 Thanks: 146 Thanked: 339 times in 197 posts]

#305605

<em>@sfpkent 129844 wrote:</em><blockquote>McCurry keep fighting his right and finally it won the case few weeks ago.</blockquote>

Nice story … good to hear of the ‘little guys’ beating the corporates now and again!

<em>@instantinlaw 129845 wrote:</em><blockquote>And a google page rank of 4 to boot. :cool:</blockquote>

I think that was more luck than anything … I didn’t particularly do anything SEO wise apart from enable SEF URL’s! 😀

[wooohanetworks Friend wooohanetworksJoin date: September 2008Posts: 1239Downloads:0Uploads:2 Thanks: 148 Thanked: 138 times in 41 posts]

#305606

<em>@questbg 129848 wrote:</em><blockquote>I didn’t particularly do anything SEO wise apart from enable SEF URL’s! :D</blockquote>

Check out this article, this one was already posted once in another forum by another member and those who remember, may even try if to turn off SEF again, may even increase the page rank.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html

[instantinlaw Friend instantinlawJoin date: February 2007Posts: 1646Downloads:6Uploads:28 Thanks: 68 Thanked: 210 times in 62 posts]

#305607

questbg;129848I think that was more luck than anything … I didn’t particularly do anything SEO wise apart from enable SEF URL’s! 😀

Probably lots of incoming links. That will do it every time. 😉

[mfcphil Friend mfcphilJoin date: September 2007Posts: 2866Downloads:3Uploads:218 Thanks: 211 Thanked: 388 times in 133 posts]

#305642

<em>@questbg 129524 wrote:</em><blockquote>

I’d like to thank the many forum members that assisted me throughout the two month build and also JA Staff for coming to my rescue on more than one occasion.

Thanks also to anyone who took the time to read this tale of epic proportions!!!

Cheers
Chris</blockquote>

Hi Chris great read and very well done on the site….

You do need to add the IE8 code to the first line in the head of your index.php as your site is all thrown to the left in IE8

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=7″ /> or update to a newer Teline template to see if that has the IE8 fixes already done

1 user says Thank You to mfcphil for this useful post

1. questbg

[wooohanetworks Friend wooohanetworksJoin date: September 2008Posts: 1239Downloads:0Uploads:2 Thanks: 148 Thanked: 138 times in 41 posts]

#305643

<em>@mfcphil 129893 wrote:</em><blockquote>Hi Chris great read and very well done on the site….

You do need to add the IE8 code to the first line in the head of your index.php as your site is all thrown to the left in IE8

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=7″ /></blockquote>

Better do it with making a nice update to the newest version of the template. The current version supports IE8 without any problems.

[questbg Friend questbgJoin date: May 2008Posts: 1912Downloads:0Uploads:1 Thanks: 146 Thanked: 339 times in 197 posts]

#305717

<em>@mfcphil 129893 wrote:</em><blockquote>You do need to add the IE8 code to the first line in the head of your index.php as your site is all thrown to the left in IE8

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=7″ /></blockquote>

Thanks Phil, done!

Couldn’t just upgrade to latest version of Telline as I’ve done too much hacking to get where I am. I tried it but I lost a lot of modifications I’ve made.

Cheers
Chris

[mfcphil Friend mfcphilJoin date: September 2007Posts: 2866Downloads:3Uploads:218 Thanks: 211 Thanked: 388 times in 133 posts]

#305726

<em>@questbg 129979 wrote:</em><blockquote>Thanks Phil, done!

Couldn’t just upgrade to latest version of Telline as I’ve done too much hacking to get where I am. I tried it but I lost a lot of modifications I’ve made.

Cheers
Chris</blockquote>

Thats fixed it!

Like all the other browsers it looks great in IE8 now. 😉

1 user says Thank You to mfcphil for this useful post

1. questbg

[questbg Friend questbgJoin date: May 2008Posts: 1912Downloads:0Uploads:1 Thanks: 146 Thanked: 339 times in 197 posts]

#305728

Thanks Phil. I checked this site via browsershots.org but couldn’t check it live in IE8 as it’s not available for the Mac. Thanks for checking for me!

Cheers
Chris

[wooohanetworks Friend wooohanetworksJoin date: September 2008Posts: 1239Downloads:0Uploads:2 Thanks: 148 Thanked: 138 times in 41 posts]

#305756

You may try to add the code in red to your sites (index.php in template folder) and this extra css file for IE8, this should let the site work correctly without the annoying cheat code in it:

<blockquote><!–>
<style type=”text/css”>
.clearfix {height: 1%;}
img {border: none;}
</style>
<!–>

<!–>
<style type=”text/css”>
.clearfix {display: inline-block;}
</style>
<!–>

<!–>
<link href=”http://template15.joomlart.com/ja_teline_ii/templates/ja_teline_ii/css/ie8.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” />
<!–>

<script type=”text/javascript”>
hs.graphicsDir = ‘http://template15.joomlart.com/ja_teline_ii/templates/ja_teline_ii/highslide/graphics/’;
hs.showCredits = true; // you can set this to false if you want
hs.creditsText = ‘Powered by JA Highslide’;
hs.creditsHref = ‘http://joomlart.com/’;
hs.creditsTitle =’Go to the Highslide JA homepage’;
</script>

</head> </blockquote>

You should upload the css to your server like in the same as the regular css is and change the shown path above to your site and css. In case anyone wants to know what the “if gte IE7” and “if gt IE7” stands for, each are those conditional statements that show the browser that when “if the browser is gte=greater or equal to IE7” or “if gt=greater than IE7” the additional stylesheet has to be used to display the site. There are more statements like this, “lt” stands for “less than” and “lte” for example for “less than or equal to”. Same are used for lower versions of IE like IE6 and so on. Just google for “MSIE conditional statements” to get some good tutorials about how to use those.

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