25/08/2026
When I first started Eden Audio in Spain in 2006 E-commerce was still in it's very early stages, it was not really all that popular, it was rather rudimentary in fact. I asked for a website to be made for my new business, an "expert" designed for me a very basic website, as they were in the early 2000's, he then bolted on Zen cart which was pretty much all there was in those days, and then handed me over the website and told me to get on with it.
I had no experience at all in how to edit or add to a website and I had no knowledge at all in how to run an ecommerce site, add modules, install products etc etc, it was a brutally steep learning curve.
I learnt the basics of Dreamweaver which helped me to be able to make basic and simple changes to my first ever website, it worked and the website improved (i think) but it was very dated compared to today's websites which I don't particularly like as they are to busy and fussy.
Getting back to ecommerce I stuck with Zen for a couple of years but I felt it was way to dated, it is still going today somehow and still feels it belongs in 2006! I didn't have much luck with it and sales were sparse. So a few years later in about 2009 I went to Prestashop 1.6 I think it was, again a very steep learning curve but at least it looked more modern! It was pure ecommerce, no independent off board website
I stuck with Prestashop for 10 years where i went from 1.6 to 1.8. Generally speaking it was a good platform, it would break quite easily, I learnt how it worked and became very familiar with the administration panel, modules etc, it grew and brought me customers and sales.
But, by 2025/6 I was getting tired of it, it felt outdated, but the biggest issue was the self hosting and the amount of bot attacks the site was getting, it was crashing the site with 500 errors due to the amount of bots visiting the site. By 2026 I had had enough and threw in the towel even though it was bring in sales.
So I decided to go over to Shopify as it seemed to be the go to ecommerce platform, I liked the idea that they took care of the hosting and any software updates, all this is handled by shopify. The cost were about the same, maybe a fraction more but good hosting is not cheap.
At first glance I thought I had made a mistake as I was not familiar with shopify's terminology, I was so used to Prestashop, but after 7 days with it I started to get the hang off it, they said it was simple, but it's not, there is a lot to take on board in setting store up, so a lot of reading and watching youtube videos help me set the store up.
I am a very KISS person, 'Keep It Simple Stupid', this is my motto in life and this is how I set up my Shopify store, basic fee theme, as few apps as possible that don't cost me more money and a simple structure that make products easy to find.
So after 10 days or so scratching my head, cursing, getting fed up I came up with this, it's not 100% finished but it is our new Eden Audio website for 2026, take a look at let me know what you think?
edenaudio.uk
