After so many blog posts, it has finally hit me that I need a better screen capture tool to do screen captures for web pages. Did a quick search and I came up with ScreenGrab, it’s definitely the one of the must-haves for bloggers who deals alot with screenshots. Before I would do a print screen (PrtSc), and the crop the image in Photoshop…NO MORE!
Attached image is grabbed using the tool.
Finding ways to improve on the usability of tickon.com, I have made a small improvement. I thought it was quite annoying to always have to wait for a new window to open to view the alternate images, so did some googling and found the perfect fix on Magento forum (link to exact post). This fix simply allows you to click on the thumbnail alternate images and have it be shown in the large image box above. Without going through the discussion thread…here’s the quick fix:
Locate media.phtml in app/design/frontend/default/themename/template/catalog/product/view, and near line# 59, you should see:
<a href=”#” onclick=”popWin(’<?php echo $this->getGalleryUrl($_image) ?>’, ‘gallery’, ‘width=300,height=300,left=50,top=50,location=no,status=yes,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes’); return false;”><img src=”<?php echo $this->helper(’catalog/image’)->init($this->getProduct(), ‘thumbnail’, $_image->getFile())->resize(120); ?>” alt=”<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_image->getLabel()) ?>” title=”<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_image->getLabel()) ?>” /></a>
change the part in red to the following:
<a href=”<?php echo $this->helper(’catalog/image’)->init($this->getProduct(), ‘image’, $_image->getFile()); ?>” title=”<?php echo $_product->getName();?>” onclick=”$(’image’).src = this.href; return false;”>
You should be able to modify it a bit more if you want the image to update on mouseover.
Just came across this blog post on SimpleHelix’s blog referencing a UK-based web site: http://www.magentoshowcase.co.uk/, after browsing the web site, all I can say is “WOW”, amazing what some people can do to make Magento look so beautiful.
Now only if they can list the designer responsible for each of the site listed, then that would be even better 
As I launch more wordpress web sites, I am realizing that there are inherent issues with how Wordpress saves the posts…it always uses absolute path for URL links. This creates problem for me as in my scenario, all of my local development have a url path of http://localhost:8080/sitename, so when I moved the blog to production and assign it a valid domain name like http://blog.52my.info, all the existing post links and image links would still be referring to the local computer for images and posts! This is TRICKY, as you won’t noticed this problem, because more than likely YOU ARE browsing the site that you have uploaded using the same computer where the dev blog was hosted, and you would see all images load up properly b/c they are stored on your local computer. But when you go to another computer, you will see all the missing posts and images, etc.
The fix for this is to run several SQL scripts in which it would do a find and replace for all data in the mysql tables and rename them to the proper domain name url. I found this information from this great post here. But the long and short of it is run the following scrips:
1. update the wp_options table:
UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, 'http://www.old-domain.com', 'http://www.new-domain.com') WHERE option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl';
2. Update wp_posts
UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, 'http://www.old-domain.com','http://www.new-domain.com');
3. Update post contents in which there are links within post content to the blog itself:
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, 'http://www.old-domain.com', 'http://www.new-domain.com');
Now that tickon.com has been running for about a month, the real challenge is how to promote this web site. This appears to be the most common question that I get nowaday. Many potential clients have asked me the same question…and honestly, aside from the generic SEO techniques that every SEO firm uses, how else can you drive traffic to your site?
Here’s one strategy: I am exploring the possibility of having existing users on tickon.com do the promotion for me by making it easy for them to bookmark my site and add my web site information to any of the popular social bookmarking and networking sites out there.
here’s how I did it…sign up for a FREE AddThis account, and add the javascript that was provided into the following Magento page: app/design/frontend/default/your theme/template/catalog/product/view/addto.phtml
I simply added a new <ul></ul> below the existing links for “add to wishlist” and “add to compare”, below is the code:
<ul class=”add-to-box”>
<li><br>
<!– AddThis Button BEGIN –>
<script type=”text/javascript”>var addthis_pub=”youraddthisaccount”;</script>
<a href=”http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=20″ onmouseover=”return addthis_open(this, ”, ‘[URL]‘, ‘[TITLE]‘)” onmouseout=”addthis_close()” onclick=”return addthis_sendto()”><img src=”http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/lg-share-en.gif” width=”125″ height=”16″ alt=”Bookmark and Share” style=”border:0″/></a><script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://s7.addthis.com/js/200/addthis_widget.js”></script>
<!– AddThis Button END –>
</li>
</ul>
the code is added right below the closing
on line 37
I will be posting the effectiveness of adding this social bookmarking widget once I gather enough stats from tickon.com.
Since Starbucks is kind of like my second office, and I do a lot of work and client meetings there. Again Casual Commerce stands for casual meetings with clients over a cup of coffee. Quite often clients are surprised when I tell them that I can use Starbucks’ wireless access to get online for free, and they want to know how to do this. It’s actually quite simple, all you need is a starbucks card, which is free, but you just have to load money into it and buy coffee with it, and you use the PIN number in the back of the card to sign up for an account with AT&T to get a login/pswd.
For some reason, Starbucks’ web site makes this information hard to find, so here it is:
https://secure.sbc.com/sblp_index.adp
Get a card, have a cup of coffee, and get online.
Just read some interesting Internet usage stat on Wikipedia…
The most-used language on the Internet is English. Although the total number of native English speakers in the world is about 322 million, English is spoken as a second language by up to 1.2 billion people around the world. They make their contributions to the Internet in their own language as well as in English.
Chinese is the most common native language on Earth, and the second most-used language on the Internet. According to CNNIC, the number of Chinese Internet users increased by 42% in 2008 to a total of 298 million. This high rate of growth is expected to have a significant impact on the Internet in the near future.
With the above stats, Casual Commerce is laying the groundwork to build a network/community of Chinese content web site that caters to the Chinese demographic. The first project launched in this series of sites to be deployed is 52my.info, which serves as a foundation for Chinese local communities to interact, find jobs, rent houses; the web site is due for a relaunch in early April with new features to accomodate growth and facilitate the ease of posting advertisements on the Internet.
If your business is looking to expand outside of the English-speaking demographic, please contact us for a free consultation on building a business presence catering to the high-growth Chinese user demographic on the Internet.
If you have a Wordpress blog that you haven’t attended to in a long time and you have forgotten the password to get into the admin interface…here’s the trick to reset the password:
Use phpMyAdmin and run the following script:
UPDATE `wp_users` SET `user_pass` = MD5( ‘new_password_here‘ ) WHERE `wp_users`.`user_login` = “admin_username“;
Places in bold you will want to modify with your login name (most likely it’s admin) and select a new password. Once you run the script you should be able to login no problem.
This fix was found here: http://kb.siteground.com/article/How_to_reset_my_WordPress_admin_password.html
Just upgraded a Magento installation from 1.6.1 to 1.2.1 and ran into some minor issues with file not found error like the following:
Warning: include(Mage/Adminhtml/Model/System/Config/Backend/Catalog/Inventory/Managestock.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/noblesg/public_html/shop/app/code/core/Mage/Core/functions.php on line 73
Trace:
After some research on Magento forum…found a solution. It appears to be a common issue with version 1.2.1, the fix for this is fairly simple, just copy the files from:
if you look carefully the url path will correspond to your file structure in Magento, just copy the files that you are missing by traversing the folder and right-click the file and choose “Save As” and save the file(s) back into your magento folder and you should be ready to go.
For me, I had to recreate the “Catalog” folder and all files within underneath /config/backend/ and also the “Search” folder and all files within underneath Adminhtml/Model/System/Config/Source/Catalog/ to fix the “Catalog” and “Inventory” links in the admin page.
I am just in the process of creating a new form for tickon.com, in which I would allow users to submit their products for evaluation and resell on the web site. Again, with Magento, this is not something easy, or intuitive to do. I came across a great read on http://inchoo.net/, giving a tutorial on how to embed the contact form in a CMS-created page. Basically what you have to do is create a CMS page by going to: CMS -> Manage Pages -> Add New Page and simply embed the following script inside the “Content” text box, and you are ready to rock.
<!– CONTACT FORM –>
{{block type=’core/template’ name=’contactForm’ template=’contacts/form.phtml’}}
<!– END OF CONTACT FORM –>