Author: jeremy

  • Why I moved my shop and blog from Shopify to WordPress

    Why I moved my shop and blog from Shopify to WordPress

    I moved my website from Shopify to WordPress hosted in AWS (Lightsail). There were many reasons why, but the two biggest reasons were the blogging capability and spam management.

    WordPress has been my go to for years for blogs and when I started my first one back in Japan, it was WordPress on a local Japanese hosting service. WordPress is easy, intuitive and just does what I need it to.

    With art sales in mind when I setup my artist site jeremyburton.au, I decided to go with what seemed like the best choice at the time, Shopify. It has blogging and is rated generally as the best ecommerce platform.

    It was easy to setup, you can register domains names in it and for the most part, it was a seamless process. The setup was easy and I thought I’d found a great solution, I even signed up for their affiliate program and learnt how to code the templates. Creating products in it was fairly straight forward, it handled digital downloads too (no need for Gumroad etc) and I eventually got to the stage of having multilingual product pages setup for my books.

    Blogging in Shopify

    The issues I eventually ran into were mainly small. But then the blogging started to really frustrate me. Blogs sell and besides that, I want to write. Although it’s quick to knock out an article in Shopify, any kind of custom layout and fine design control just isn’t possible. The blogging functions have no template control, so there’s no way to control how images and copy flow in the article.

    Being spoilt previously for so long with WordPress, Shopify’s blog system started to drive me crazy. Quality content for everyone is different, but I love a good blog human-written by someone explaining their passion, trip of a lifetime or an amazing thing they’re selling.

    Writing things out for me is not just about selling art or other products, but about documenting my journey and clearing my brain. I love writing and clearing that head space, it’s so freeing.

    So there it is, that’s the first major reason Shopify started to turn me off. Another minor one was how products are managed in the backend. Bulk actions are really not there yet and there were lots of other little niggly things.

    A native integration with Google Analytics would be great, and the ability to use Google’s Site Kit.

    Spam Management

    So, everything was going ok (besides the blog issues) with Shopify until one day I started getting targeted by a bot that would create three new customer accounts a day on my site. So like anyone would, I manually deleted them and started closing bot access off slowly, turning off registration forms and whatever I could find. I even tried disabling account creation but the bots would get past that too.

    The bots started purchasing digital products using fake credit cards. Their trick was they would then claim the product undelivered (of course it was delivered, it was a digital download) and then claim a chargeback to Shopify making a profit of $28 per chargeback.

    With low volume, it was annoying but manageable. But it went on and on and so it was time for some support. So I reached out to Shopify, after all, we’re paying $50+ AUD per month, surely they would have a solution.

    Their answer was, yes you can fix this by buying 3rd party anti-fraud plugins.

    Yeah, naur. I’m not paying more money for unsecured plugins to fix security issues with your core product. When you’re being hit by bots, it makes it very difficult to manage real purchases and focus on growth.

    So as the spam and annoying fraud purchases continued to trickle through one day, I’d had enough. Time to shift back to a platform I’d have control over and would scale for the next 10 years.

    Moving to WordPress / Amazon Web Services (AWS)

    Time to relearn AWS and get back to WordPress. I’ve previously administered services hosted in AWS so was somewhat familiar with it and decided to spend the time jumping back in.

    The major business issue to solve when you’re hosting your own shop / website is how to manage the ecommerce. There are plenty of alternatives to Shopify like Squarespace, WooCommerce and others that you can just switch on and start. But if you’re hosting your own, then you need to integrate a card / cart service.

    If you sell digital or physical products, you’ll likely end up needing to integrate things like shipping, post, weight calculators and payment management. There’s lots of options and some work well, some will limit you and you find all of that out by jumping in and doing the research.

    For me, WooCommerce for WordPress was the solution for managing purchases and it has connections to Stripe, PayPal etc.

    I used Printumo for my on-demand canvas prints. They have integrations for Shopify and Etsy available, with WooCommerce, Squarespace, Amazon etc coming soon. I think generally that’s what you’ll find with any kind of print or produce on-demand service, if they support anything they’ll likely have Shopify and maybe one or two others.

    So do your research on what services you need to connect to if you’re considering going this route of hosting on AWS.

    Challenges

    Challenges I came up against were:

    • Technical aspects of relearning AWS. It wasn’t so bad, I had it all working in a couple months (technical level medium)
    • Transferring my domains to AWS from GoDaddy and others. Honestly the process, the automated emails from AWS and Route53 (AWS domain manager) was pretty confusing. One of my domains was accidentally disabled because I missed one of the automated emails
    • Setting up WooCommerce was a bit of work. I tested PayPal and in the end went with Stripe for payments, it was just easier
    • Migrating all of the content out of Shopify to WordPress. In the end I just started fresh and recreated all of the products because the imports from Shopify into WooCommerce would get all garbled. It would be a nightmare tbh to migrate a large commerce site from Shopify to something else

    Conclusion

    When I was using Shopify, I was recommending it as an easy solution for people who were just starting or looking to change platforms. If you don’t have any experience in building websites, or ecommerce – it makes sense to use something like Squarespace. They’re just easy.

    But if you’re looking to have more control over how your content is managed and the technical aspects, WordPress + AWS is a solid solution.

    My site is not fully there yet, and life has taken over for a bit. Moving the sites wasn’t too bad really in the end, and I’m sooo much happier! No more spam and I can get back to writing and focusing on my art instead of fighting the platforms.

    Leave a comment if you have thoughts or experience in Shopify or WordPress.

  • Pinnacles, Nambung National Park

    Pinnacles, Nambung National Park

    Nambung is about 200km north of Perth and an interesting place to stop and wander through. I recommend walking and not driving through, you see so much more and it’s a lot more peaceful.

    Take an umbrella if you visit in the wet season though, there can be sudden weather changes and the only shelter from the rain is the discovery centre right back at the entrance.

    There’s a lot of same same photos of this area. But some of the more interesting ones I’ve seen have been light painting and astrophotography shots. I’ll get there one night for the star shoot.

  • Sand Dunes near Cervantes

    Sand Dunes near Cervantes

    If you go up the Brand Hwy, then you would have seen these pure white sand dunes off to the right. They run almost right up to the highway and are hard to miss.

    The shire has been kind enough to create an official parking area in front of them as many people stop each day and wander over the traffic into the dunes.

    There’s dunes as far as you can see so it’s a crazy spot to take photos. Take some sunnies because not only is it bright, but the sand can whip up with the wind and blow into your eyes pretty easily.

    There’s some nice flowers and a few native fruits around the dunes if you hunt around.

  • Wildflowers in Mingenew, Coalseam Conservation Park

    Wildflowers in Mingenew, Coalseam Conservation Park

    In this rainy September, I visited Mingenew and the Coalseam Conservation Park to see the wildflowers again. This is the second time I’ve been and it’s a mission to get there from Perth.

    About 4.5 hrs north of Perth, the conservation park is a concentrated area of wildflowers that carpet the hills. We’ve been staying in Eneabba, but this time found a campsite in the park – Miners. We’ll be using that next time as it’s right in the park.

    The flowers are worth a visit, once in your lifetime if you can make it – do the trek. It really is spectacularly stunning to see rolling hills of everlastings. Get planning!

    This time I took the zoom and macro lenses and spent a bit of time trying to capture the amazing views and some footage of the flowers in the breeze. It would be a great night time shoot under the moonlight. This September has been wet and there are some shallow water crossings that are a bit of fun. Ruts can develop in the middle of the unpaved crossing so it pays to walk it first.

    If you get a chance, head to Miners in the park and walk east upstream. It seems to be a little less popular with visitors and we found some flowers that weren’t in other locations. It also has a shallow stream flowing along the very visible iron and sand deposits in the embankments. Geologists do group tours there, that tells you something.

    It’s worth a full day to just wander slowly and take it in. There’s a lot of people that rush to the lookout, snap away and then head home. But if you take your time, there’s so much to see. Peregrine falcons do hunt the cliffs and I’ve been hoping to see one, no luck yet. I did spot one of my faves though, the crested pigeon.

    If you take the Mingenew exit, you pass by a crazy escarpment that looks like something out of South Dakota.

  • Yongka in Eneabba

    Yongka in Eneabba

    We went up to Eneabba and stayed in the Western Flora Caravan park for the night. The is the third or fourth time we’ve stayed there and it does the job.

    It’s a cheap, no fuss park where prices are reasonable, the hot water isn’t on all night and the donga rooms are just big enough to fit two adults. It’s minimal and a great place to stop if you need a place to crash while on the road.

    Eneabba is 280km or so north of Perth and for many phone service providers, it’s a signal blackspot unless you’re on Telstra, so download your map and directions before you enter the area.

    It’s Yamatji country and the scrub is described as kwongan, sandy soil, species-rich temperate shrubland. It’s the beginning of the wildflower area up north and you can wander around the caravan park and see some nice ones.

    The yongkas (kangaroos) love this area and the caravan park is handy for them with all of the tracks / roads cut through and around it. They’re wandering the park every morning it seems, along with the rabbits, native birds and lots of other animals. I’ve seen echidnas there sometimes.

    This morning was a wet September / Djilba morning and the kangas were feeding on new leaves off the park shrubs. Faces were wet and joeys were peeping out of the pouches. They are pretty friendly and will let you get within a couple meters.

    If you have a chance, head up there and stop over at Western Flora.