Lugh Designs was contacted by ComiXpress to update their site calculator. Written in PHP, the calculator was a mass of uncommented spaghetti code. As such it was difficult to process price changes and add new products to the store. The cleaned up code is now fully commented, including markers for price modification, and is about half the size of the previous version.

It is easily updatable for any price configuration, including cost changes in paper, binding, and ink.

ComiXpress further required an upgrade to their aging OSCommerce based shopping cart application, and had a very large MySQL database that needed to be exported and converted to the new LAMP-based ZenCart installation.

The entire database was migrated from one format to another with no loss of data, and only overnight downtime to bring the new store online. Non-cosmetic user changes were minimal, only requiring a change of subdomain in any links to merchandise sold on the site.

As part of the conversion, ComiXpress needed greater detail for tracking both customer print order status and creator earnings on their site. The system would also need to allow creators secure access these details at any time. In response, a custom PHP-based tracking system was created with no modification to the ZenCart installation, and utilizing the built in user management of ZenCart.

The Creator system uses the ZenCart user login module and only requires that the creator register an account with the application before being able to access their history.

Design and graphics copyright 2006 except as noted
www.lughdesigns.com