Assertis Ltd. - OnlineBizBuilder
OnlineBizBuilder is the flagship product of Assertis Ltd. The idea of OnlineBizBuilder is that it allows
people to create and manage their own website without requiring any technical knowledge.
The system allows the user to select a design template and can then change colours and fonts, add pages, images,
and products using the simple interface.
The current version of OnlineBizBuilder, version 3, was written from scratch due to the previous version being
confusing to use and limited in the websites it could create. The new version, designed and written almost completely
by myself, needed to be powerful, yet easy to use and also very expandable. The system allows users to create websites
of any size they want - the current largest site being 340+ pages selling 10,000+ products.
The site, primarily in HTML, PHP and Mysql, makes extensive use of cascading style sheets (CSS) (for both the
OnlineBizBuilder site and the customers sites), Javascript (for editing page content and other user controls)
and the GD graphics library ( for manipulating images and creating thumbnails of customer images).
Some of the features included in OnlineBizBuilder are:
Account Manager
The account manager displays the details of the users package that they have with OnlineBizBuilder. As well as providing access
to allow people to purchase their website it also allows users to edit the administrations side of their website including:
- Purchase additional elements for their site (e.g. ecommerce, product variants)
- Add & edit address information
- Purchase or transfer domain names
- Add or remove email accounts
- Setup shopping cart integration with their chosen payment solution
- See how much disk space has been used and add additional if required
Theme Editor
The theme editor allows the user to edit areas of the site that carry through all pages of the site.
The options that the user can modify from here are:
- Add & edit site title, strapline and footers
- Recolour any aspect of the site (title bar, page background, menu background, selected & unselected menu options, etc.)
- Add images to selected hotspots or into title, strapline and footers
- Add, remove or modify (position, repeat, etc.) a background image
- Change the design template (without losing any existing settings)
- Set font defaults (size, font & colours) for all text elements of the site
- Add or remove menu icons
- Set menu display options
Site Organiser
The site organiser allows users to organise the layout of the pages on the site. The system allows users to have up to two levels of
submenu along with the top level menu. Features of the site organiser allow:
- Add, remove or rename pages
- Moving of pages (up, down, make top level, make subpage of)
- Hide or re-display page on menu
Page Editor
The page editor is where the users add the content of each page to their site. Using the editor the users can add and edit text,
add images, tables, maps, document and links to the individual pages of their site using an interface similar to Microsoft Word.
The content of the pages are made up of a number of 'content blocks'. These content blocks can consist of text, tables, images
or be an ecommerce product available for purchase.
On the edit pages screen users can:
- Add, edit and format text including:
- Font face, size & colour (individual words or letters)
- Alignment
- Bold, underline & italic (individual words or letters)
- Tables
- Add, position and resize images using the Image Gallery (see below)
- Add document download links using the Document Archive (see Image Gallery below)
- Add, move or remove a content block
- Add zoomable streetmaps based on postcode.
Ecommerce
The ecommerce section allows users to setup their site to sell products online. Adding an ecommerce package to a website
allows users to add products to any page on their site and automatically adds a shopping basket (see below).
The ecommerce area allows
- Add, remove and edit products
- Add & edit address information
- Purchase or transfer domain names
- Add or remove email accounts
- Setup shopping cart integration with their chosen payment solution
- See how much disk space has been used and add additional if required
Account Manager
The account manager displays the details of the users package that they have with OnlineBizBuilder. As well as providing access
to allow people to purchase their website it also allows users to edit the administrations side of their website including:
- Purchase additional elements for their site (e.g. ecommerce, product variants)
- Add & edit address information
- Purchase or transfer domain names
- Add or remove email accounts
- Setup shopping cart integration with their chosen payment solution
- See how much disk space has been used and add additional if required
Account Manager
The account manager displays the details of the users package that they have with OnlineBizBuilder. As well as providing access
to allow people to purchase their website it also allows users to edit the administrations side of their website including:
- Purchase additional elements for their site (e.g. ecommerce, product variants)
- Add & edit address information
- Purchase or transfer domain names
- Add or remove email accounts
- Setup shopping cart integration with their chosen payment solution
- See how much disk space has been used and add additional if required
