About InspiredActionOnline.com

This domain name was registered sometime in 2015 (?) also guessing for now, because I found an old logo from the former WP site that had experienced also several iterations of brokenness from an old shop ify theme vendor who was good at pitching to move from WP to shop ify ... (back then I didn't realize how much shop ify affiliates were getting paid at that time) ... 

... I bought the shop ify theme from this vendor ... 

.... who didn't even clean up the code before selling it.  

It had their own FB pixels in the header files, their own business logo, etc.  

Of course I was pissed off!  

I did the data clean up and tried out their "automation" ... 

... after uploading product designs, I "experimented on paid ads, at FB".  

I used their shop ify  "plugin" on the IAO spanking brand new FB page ... then I NOTICED, they were flashing their OWN shopping cart, before the IAO shopping cart displayed.  

Grrrr.  

Anyway, that made me rethink Shop ify, or Shopping Carts for that matter, that are Software as a Service (SaaS)

The developer would still spend time uploading product images, and then writing product descriptions, creating product variations, SKUs, Item IDs, and Shipping Calculations PER Shipping Zone.  

Had to be bestfriends with USPS to look at what ZIP codes, belonged to what Zones..... 

Anyway, it was also soul crushing, mind numbing coding.  

And then the fees, the monthly fees.  

Lesson I learned?  

What if you cancel your SaaS, what happens to your content?  Or your account?  

Well, you can't access it too.  

The amount of time one spends on creating content on a SaaS, belongs to whoever OWNS the domain.  

So why not just get your own domain?  

And upload your products in there all you want? 

The only way you can't access your own shop is if you forget your password.  

Or, like in my previous oldwebhost experience, they just wiped out my entire Online Stores!  (Had to go check archive . org to see what I had, or to jog my memory how I designed those things ... ) 

Anyway, so back at this specific domain .... 

... which is now like a Demo site, or Affiliate site even ..

I thought I would make it separate from my "blog about nothing blog", because that was on WordPress.  

I thought about a new domain name.  

I thought about something corny, too corny that it's memorable, at least to me.  

Inspired.  

Take Action.  

Online.  

LOL!  Yeah, if you take action OFFLINE, it will just be like when you decide to vacuum your house, or do house chores.  

So I did the domain name variation so when I saw that InspiredActionOnline was available, I reserved it.  

It was for the next experiment on Shopping Carts.  

I had inspiration also from my old blog subscribers who suggested I convert some of my Instagram Quotes into T-shirts and hoodies. 

So, I went with a textile vendor who became IAO's t-shirts and hoodies suppliers.

I did the simple designs, upload it to the IAO shop, then also uploaded my designs to my vendors' site, so that when someone orders, they can do the "Fulfillment" side of things. 

I also ordered my own samples to check the quality of the materials of the shirts. 

They were good, so they were all online.  At that old shop ify store. 

I remember the time spent doing all that. 

Like I said I experimented on paid ads, and of course noticed the idiocy of it all. 

Imagine a domain with a subfolder, then you pay the domain, to advertise to the subfolder. (And you don't own the domain).

I thought, I can just stop that too, because if I just wanted exposure for the "inspirational quotes" ... just post them online! 

I also hit a point with the limitations of the shop ify theme that I purchased that I just went with the practical.  

You test drive a business idea, build a separate site for it, so you can test drive it. 

So I just did a separate WP Install and used Woocommerce. 

Recreated the Shop to work with Woocommerce. 

Then, there were more bots and spammers who try to create accounts on the WP Woocommerce site. 

More spammers than customers, and that version of the site also ended up like "blocking I.P.s and spammmer accounts", it just became an aggravating waste of time, energy. money and resources. 

But the Woocommerce site I built was good ....

.... of course until the next WP Core update, 

.... or plugin update

.... or theme update, 

.... or webhost update. 

It was a constant rebuilding. 

I thought then, WP had three categories of interrelatedness, meaning, one breaks, all will break. 

WP Core

WP Theme

WP Plugins

It was at this time that I developed my own WP Theme, called Simplified. 

I didn't market that in the WP Marketplace, because I only made it for the domains that I was a System Administrator of. 

Plus, on our Tech site, we sold Web Packages, and the theme I built, "Simplified" was part of those packages - because it was truly customizable - but it was still used in the WP framework. 

Anyway, I did "Paid Ads Experiments". 

I created a sales video, with a song so corny, it gave me goosebumps.  I was laughing all the way when I created it in one morning. 

It was just a collage of my tshirts and hoodies design. 

It had about 4,000 views in one day. (which was big for me)

Experiment worked. 

If you were experimenting for views, yes it worked. 

I then decided, okay, experiment over. 

Convert the site to a Demo, so I can show clients and give an idea on what is involved in actually creating an ecommerce site. 

One has to have a dedicated staff to handle the site, security, customer support, ads, etc. 

Not an easy task, and if you quantify it with how much time it actually takes to maintain the website, I just decided to remove the shopping cart installations - because if a client has no staff that will take over whatever stuff a developer has created and designed, 

... between WP updates and other WP plugin conflicts, the website design will not last. Mainly because the infrastruction behind it is too fragile, with so many moving parts, too many different developers creating different modules using different logic. 

... it will break, and one has to maintain and look at it, so WHEN it breaks, the website can get fixed. 

It's like finding a specialized needle ...

... colored :#f39c12

.... that weighs 0.07 grams,

... in a haystack. 

... on a mountain, 

... surrounded by an ocean ...

... filled with sharks

... and piranhas ...

... I mean, you get the picture.   You won't even know where to start.  

So for those starting their own E-Commerce Sites, I share these types of lessons I learned along the way. 

So now, in  2026, what will I do next, in terms of E-Commerce Sites? 

Think about it.... 

.... are you going to sell t-shirts or other merchandise like mugs, or whatever product? 

My advise these days is, just sell it on Am azon or E bay. 

Yes, they take a percentage of your sales, but the time and effort it will save you from learning how to build your own shopping cart, it's worth it. 

Remember the vectors in which your website can break...

1) Webhosting chaos

2) If you're using a CMS like WordPress, there is the WP Core, 

3) WP Themes

4) WP Plugins. 

Or if you are just selling a few products or service packages, just use a "Direct Payment" buttons, with payment processors like PayPal or Stripe.  Much easier. 

I built CMSbyCW because I learned all of these lessons the hard way. 

And like this quote says, on learning from mistakes: 

I expressed it best, when I was writing these posts:

Who is CMSbyCW for? And why?

 About CMSbyCW - on the brand site.

CMSbyCW Features - on the Tech Site.

There are people out there, like me, who's had enough of unreliable sites built on fragile infrastructure.  

So I built one that I could use, not just for this domain, but also for the other 25+ domains that I am an Administrator of.  

This is the domain that I used for Shopping Carts - ECommerce Sites journey.

Now my own CMS is up, I thought, well, this domain should be up too! 

Welcome back! 

:-)