“RickH” here. I’ve been working with the new owner of The Home Scientist (Ben Siciliano) to rebuild the web site and move it to a new hosting place.
If you have followed along with Barbara’s blog, you might have noticed that Barbara and Ben have come to an agreement for Ben to take over The Home Scientist business. I’ve been working with Ben to get the site rebuilt with new design and some content changes. Most of the changes have been in the ‘back-end’, using PHP functions for commonly-used items to allow those items to be more easily changed.
There will also be a new customer support forum (not quite ready yet) for customers.
The site is available to you, gentle readers (and lurkers), for a ‘beta read’. If you could take a look at the pages to make sure the content looks consistent, and try out the “Buy Now” buttons (make sure you cancel the order on the PayPal checkout page), that would be helpful. You can use the Contact page on the site for any issues or comments.
The new site is currently at http://www.thehomescientist.com . I’d appreciate if you spending a few moments to poke around the site.
Here’s the announcement that will appear on the site (once per day).
I would like to formally announce that The Home Scientist is under new ownership!
Since 2011, the Thompsons have produced a line of high quality, high value science kits in chemistry, biology, and forensic science. To honor their tradition of service, we will continue to offer these kits, which as you’re probably aware, had been created to provide a meaningful laboratory experience for students and enthusiasts – something increasingly difficult to come by these days.
Over the next several weeks, we will be re-stocking the complete line of kits and making it easier for you to obtain technical support for the experiments covered. We’ll also be starting a new customer support forum area.
We’ll be making some changes to the look of this site as we move to our new hosting platform, but our products will still have the same high quality. We thank you in advance for your patience, and welcome your questions, comments, and suggestions for improvement. Please use the Contact Us page for questions or comments.
I’m looking forward to being of service.
Sincerely,
Ben Siciliano, the new owner of TheHomeScientist LLC
Ben is restocking all the kits, and hopes to have them all ready by the end of the month.
Thanks for your help on being a ‘beta reader’. And thanks to Ben for agreeing to continue The Home Scientist as Robert and Barbara intend.
…Rick…
very quick beta read by a lurker. Site looks good!
I like the simple clear clean look of the site.
It would be more helpful to the customer if the out of stock kits were noted on the kits’ page. Having to fill out a contact form and waiting for a reply is a bit off putting. And that note that if a person does order an out of stock kit they will experience a “considerable delay” in refunding your payment.
Sent some copyedit notes!
Overall, though, very tight.
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To my mind it looks very good. Buying a real microscope and the forensic science kits are back on my list of things to do as soon as I get the time and money.
@DadCooks : re ‘stock status page’: Ben and I are thinking of doing a ‘stock status’ page after he gets all the kits back in stock (in a couple of weeks). The ‘contact us first’ message is just to alert people to make sure that the kit is available before it is ordered.
The ‘considerable delay in refunding’ is a continuation of the message Barbara asked me to put on the current site after Robert’s passing, to ensure that people would email first before ordering. (That message is now gone.) Even with that message, people would still order things without checking first. So we made the message a bit more prominent – the ‘yellow box’ with that message appears on every page. That will probably go away shortly as Ben gets the kits stocked up.
Thanks to all for their notes….there were a few things that I missed that needed to be corrected.
LOOKS Great!
OTOH, a nit from the T’s & C’s page:
“Because we have no control over or ability to track or follow-up on international shipments, all kits shipped to addresses outside the US are FOB Sparta, NC, USA. In effect, that means our …..”
Sparta probably needs update.
Cool, so cool !
@CowboySlim: thanks for that catch! I remember seeing that a while back, but forgot about it. So I fixed it there (and in another place).
I’ve moved the DNS for the site to my hosting place. Pending your DNS updates, the new site is now at http://www.thehomescientist.com .
Ben: Glad to hear it. I’ll probably be buying one for my daughter around the beginning of the school year. Her current school is overall good but is weak on STEM, especially science.
Barbara: Thanks for your role in letting this go through.
Rick:
Been there, done that, got the bug report.
I have put this notice up on the Goggle group
One word:
Yay!!!