Shopify’s Limitations and Weaknesses in Developing a Theme

Shopify Theme Coding

After developing my first theme using Shopify, I've found that it is not all it's cracked up to be. There are major flaws and missing features that limit what can be done by the web developer and designer. This was a little disappointing to me, because the Shopify e-commerce platform appeared at first glance to be a beacon of current web standards and modern development, amidst other lumbering options filled with outdated code for the front-end developer...

Huge Email Delays on Rackspace Cloud Sites – Don’t Use PHP Mail()

Starting last month, Rackspace Cloud Sites has not been delivering mail sent through PHP's mail() function in a timely matter, and sometimes not at all. The company I work at has been using RS Cloud Sites for a few years now, and while mail delivery has always been slower than average, emails tended to arrive within 20 minutes. Now we have emails showing up 3 days late, and there were some tests that I never received. Why is there no uproar about this? And why has Rackspace failed to notify its customers of this ongoing issue? Most websites rely critically on scripts that send email for their contact forms and web applications. For any brochure-type website, the main goal is to get the visitor to contact them. Call to actions point to a contact form. The contact form submits to a script that either sends mail via PHP's mail() (sendmail) or via SMTP.