Macdonald Sporrans

We’ve just put some helpful new measuring guides online which you can find here: Measuring Guides.

We know that it’s difficult buying clothes without trying them on, especially if they’re being custom made for you! However, taking a couple of minutes to get accurate measurements before ordering means that your brand new kilt is much more likely to fit perfectly.

As always, we’d love some feedback on what you think of them. Drop us an email, leave a  comment  or give us a call to let us know how they could be improved.

Our online store has been running Zen-Cart open source shopping cart software since it was launched in November 2007.
Unfortunately, since that time, Zen-Cart hasn’t really moved forward. The new version was detailed in 2008, but the team didn’t want to commit to a definite release date. Since then, no new information has been given on when it will be released.
We have waited patiently for it to come out, but it still looks like a long way off. When it does eventually get released, it will probably be an ‘alpha‘ or ‘beta‘ release which means it will need to undergo serious testing before it’s ready to be used on a live website. That process could take about 6 months. However, once it’s ready to go live, we then need to integrate it to our site…which could take another few months.

So from date of release, we’ll be looking at about 9 months before we can use it on our live site (if everything goes to plan). My estimation of the date of release (based on 2 year old information) is that it’s at least 6 months away, possibly 12 months away.

Therefore, total time before we can expect to provide a significant update to our website: 15 – 21 months!

We have looked at alternatives to Zen-Cart a number of times, but have never found anything which we considered to be secure, stable and advanced enough for our store.

Magento was first released in 2007, and is now on version 1.4.1. When I looked at it in 2008, it was not mature enough – there were serious security loopholes and some basic functionality missing. It has come a long way since then.

In the same amount of time that Zen-Cart has stood still, Magento has been born and has outgrown it. We have approximately 20 modifications to the standard version of Zen-Cart, 18 of those are included in Magento by default – the other two were custom built by us.

On a technical level, Magento is built in an entirely different way which makes it significantly more stable and easier to build upon. I believe that the sooner we make the change to a more stable foundation, the better we can make the site in the future.

We’ll update you with more information soon, but I would hope to have the new system up and running in the next few months which means you’ll see some great new features being launched pretty soon.

You may remember that we introduced some changes to our tartan pricing system back in April. We didn’t stop there…we’ve been working hard on making the way you choose a tartan easier and more user friendly and I’m proud to say that we’ve launched a new tartan chooser.

When you’re viewing any product that is custom made for you in any of our tartans, clicking the ‘select a tartan’ link will now open up a tartan chooser panel on the same page. This easy to use panel will help guide you to choosing your perfect tartan.

To make things easier, we’ve built a help section right into it. If you need more information at any time, simply click the ‘Information’ icon at the top and a help section will slide down giving you more information on what you’re looking at.

We’re always keen to do things better so would love your feedback on how it can be improved or what you like about it.

As an online-only company, the security of our website is of paramount importance to us, and to our customers.

Website security is a very general term, and can include many different technical aspects. One of the most important aspects is known as Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL. In simple terms, this is a security protocol that encrypts the data you enter into your web browser on your computer so that it can travel to our servers without anyone else being able to read it.

This is important because people enter important and sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, onto our website, and we need to make sure that no one can intercept that information.

However, making a secure payment is only useful if you know who you are paying!

Previously, we used a standard SSL certificate which encrypts the data securely and prevents spying. Today, we have installed a new type of SSL certificate called an Extended Validation SSL Certificate. The extended validation part means that before we can use the certificate, the company issuing it must go through additional checks to ensure that we are who we say we are, and record that information with the certificate.

Now, you can be assured that we are who we say we are. When going to any secure page on our site (checkout, login, my account etc) you will see the address bar on your browser turn green and display our company name. Clicking on that will give you some extra information such as our contact details. Surprisingly, not many companies choose to use this type of certificate as it’s significantly more expensive than the standard one. However, we feel that the extra expense justifies the additional security that our customers now receive.

Our Multi-Domain EV SSL Certificate is provided by Comodo, one of the leaders in online security.

This morning we’ve introduced a new system in the way we price products with custom tartans which will make it clearer and easier for our customers to use.

Due to the large number of cloths we offer, the price of our kilts is comprised of 2 factors: the cost of making the kilt and the cloth used to make it. As with all our prices, we aim to be as transparent as possible when calculating retail prices.

Our old system showed the price of products excluding the cost of the cloth. So, an 8 yard kilt would show as £188, and the cloth would add £100-£300 on top of that price. We felt that this was somewhat misleading to our customers who initially thought they might be able to purchase a kilt for £188, and not many people want a kilt made with no cloth! (although we’re happy if you want to supply the cloth yourself).

Today, we’ve introduced a change which makes this a bit clearer.

We now show the price of an 8 yard kilt as the total of the cost to make the kilt and the cost of the cheapest cloth available for that kilt. We display this as ‘From £288′ (using the £188 cost of making the kilt and presuming the cheapest cloth adds £100). We feel this gives you a more accurate starting price when viewing our range of kilts on offer, and a good estimate of what it will cost to have a kilt made for you.

Don’t worry, we’ve not limited our range of cloths available in any way, and you can still have a kilt made in any cloth. Now, when you view our range of tartans, you will see how much it will cost to have your product in that tartan, rather than the price per metre of the cloth. So when viewing the tartans for a 5 yard kilt, you’ll see the range of cloths available with how much each cloth adds to the product (eg +£10, +£50). That way you’ll be able to compare the cost of the kilt in each of the tartans, from each of the mills, a lot more clearly.

Finally, when you save a kilt in your shopping cart and log out, when you log back in again, the tartan you’ve chosen will be remembered.

We hope you’ll find this updated pricing structure useful when purchasing a new kilt outfit, or custom made kilt.

You can see all of this in action on our kilts page.

We’ve recently moved to a snappy new server and so far we’re pleased with the results!

A server is a computer which is on all the time and our website sits on that computer for everyone to access. Everytime someone accesses our site, that server needs to give them the pages that they want as quickly  as possible. This becomes more difficult when you get more people on the site at the same time, more content on the site to display etc.

Previously we were on a grid-service, which means that the hosting company (the people that own the server) have lots of little computers attached together to act like one big computer. They then split that big computer up into lots of little bits, and each website gets a little bit. The advantage of this type of server is that when you need more oomph, you can get it, because you’re part of this big computer.

However, we were noticing that our site was getting a bit slower than we’d like, and occasionally we were being affected by other people on the grid-service.

So, to combat these issues, we moved to a virtual dedicated server. We’re still effectively on a big computer made up of lots of little computers, but now we have a little space on that system set aside for us at all times. It’s quite a lot more powerful than what we had before, as we don’t share it with anybody else. This also means that we’re not affected by what other people are doing, and hence, our site is more secure (less risk from viruses on the server etc).

So far, we’ve seen our average page load time (the time it takes to display a page on our site) drop from 3-4 seconds, to about 1.5-2 seconds. This is a great improvement and we hope you’ll be pleased with the difference.

Don’t worry…we’ve not stopped there…we also have a few other ideas up our sleeve and will be activating some other tools in the very near future which will speed up our site even further.

Graph showing average response time for approx 2 weeks – can you tell when we moved?

We’re signing off for the last time in 2009.

See you at 9am on the 4th January 2010!

As you may be aware, UK Value Added Tax (VAT) on sale of standard rated goods is due to increase from 15% to 17.5% at 00:00 on the 1st January 2010.

You can find the relevant HMRC report here.

We’ll do our best to make this change at midnight, but in reality we’ll probably be sipping whisky and singing Auld Lang Syne as the fireworks roar over the city centre.

For all our international customers who live outside the EU…the prices will remain exactly the same.

Due to high demand, we advertised our Standard Tartan Trews a few months ago, and we’re pleased to say that they are proving very popular despite not having a single image of our trews!

I’m pleased to say that we now have some quality images of our standard trews, and hope to have images of our fishtail back tartan trews and military style tartan trews in the near future.

After a Christmas rush on our popular tartan rugs, I’m pleased to say that our hugely popular Antique Buchanan tartan rug is now back in stock.

Tartan blankets are a great gift for someone this Christmas. They’re roughly 60″ by 70″ in size, which makes them big enough to cover your car seats, to throw over your couch or any of the other useful things you can think of to do with them.

We’ve also upgraded our processing time of our lambswool tartan rugs and can now dispatch them within 1 working day. So, if you’re looking for a rug to snuggle up in this cold winter season, a lambswool tartan rug may be the ideal solution.