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By default osCommerce does not come with a way to view searches that visitors make on your e-commerce site. I have found the add-on Statics Search Keywords to be a great add on to help see what potential buyers are looking for when they come to my site. The code saves all search queries performed on the site and allows the site owner to display a report in the admin area of what terms were used. The report can be viewed both alphabetically and by number of searches. The other great plus of this contribution is that if I see a word being misspelled I can use replacement word/phrases and osCommerce will suggest to the visitor other search terms. That way I do not loose a sale if someone accidentally misspells a word. Great for items that are commonly misspelled. A screen shot is shown below.
osCommerce merchants: do you use any similar features? This feature is great to use and I highly recommend it if you are not using anything at all.
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It will look like this: osCommerce: Statics on Searches Performed on Site
Actually I’m talking about giving your blogs comments a face. A gravatar face that is. Gravatar stands for Globally Recognized Avatar. Gravatars are good to use because they allow my readers to see the people who are commenting. Of course the person commenting has to sign up for the free gravatar service and upload their image but as this service grows more and more people will use it. It builds a community around your blog and sets it apart from the many nameless faceless blogs out there on the Internet today. Wordpress users can download the gravatar plgin here. Non-wordpress users can see the other implimentations available here. Experienced coders can also use the API to integrate gravatars into their application. I can see gravatars maybe being used on a shopping cart in the review area. Nice to see that someone who uses and reviews a product has a face or something that represents them. Comment below if you use gravatars and show your gravatar off. I’m also including an image below of one of my sites that also uses this plugin.
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It will look like this: Give Your Blog a Face
Keep your theme safe! Many plugins instruct you to insert something like this into your themes sidebar:
< ? plugin_function_call();?>
The problem with this is that if the plugin is ever deactivated and the web server tries to make that call to the function plugin_function_call it will break and the sidebar will not load correctly or at all. PHP has a great way to get around this. Instead of using the code above use this code:
< ? if (function_exists('plugin_function_call')) plugin_function_call(); ?>
PHPs function_exists checks for a function to be valid. If the function is not valid false is returned and the call after the if statement will not get executed. Now if you decide to remove that plugin for whatever reason you will not need to search through your sidebar code and remove the function call.
This fix will also for for other files in the wordpress theme area. I have added code in index.php, home.php, comments.php and other files and have always used the function_exists code to make sure my
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It will look like this: Don’t Break Theme When Uninstalling a Plugin
Anyone who has visited more than a couple of blogs has probably encountered what is known as an “RSS Feed”. Sometimes webmasters will share their RSS feed using an icon like the above icon. Clicking it will give you some strange text or if the webmaster is using feedburner to track the stats on their blog you will be directed to the feed via feedburner.
RSS has had several meanings in the past one of which is “Rich Site Summary” the other is “Really Simple Syndication”. Most use the second meaning as RSS is a simple means of syndicating content for use across the Internet. In it’s simplest RSS is simply a set of “tags” that contain data such as the URL for the post or page, the title of the post, and the text of the post.
There are several uses of RSS the main one being that a reader of a blog can subscribe to the RSS feed using services such as Google reader. Google reader also makes it handy to share items with other readers by their share icon at the bottom of each post. The share is then available for readers to share posts they find interesting. Just for fun I have went to feedburner and “burned” my favorites feed from google reader. Now folks who have similar interests can subscribe to my shared items and read my shares in google reader of choose e-mail delivery. Programmers familiar with PHP can also use code such as lastRSS to import RSS feeds right into their websites that do not use wordpress.
Wordpress also has several plugins available to import feeds into your themes sidebar. This gives webmasters/bloggers the ability to display items of interest to their readers. One plugin worth trying is the feedlist wordpress plugin. I am using that on several blogs.
RSS has changed the way media works. In the past websites would try to keep all of their information on the site because they were charging for banners on a per impression basis. If they offered RSS and a way to read content that does not involve someone coming to their site the impressions would go down. Luckily companies see the value in offering RSS of their articles instead of trying to fight the rising use of RSS readers. Many of the larger media outlets do not publish the whole story, thus requiring readers to visit their site to get the entire story. Wordpress users can specify how much to post in the admin area under Settings -> Reading -> Full Text or Summary. I choose Full Text.
I have also written a RSS feed generator for osCommerce. The feed will display the products in order that they were added, with the most recent products first. I’ll post an article later with how to use this in case any osCommerce users would like to try the code out.
Please feel free to share if you have any unique uses for your RSS feed or if you found this article helpful.
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It will look like this: What Is RSS?
Recently the hard drive on my laptop died. My laptop locked up so I held the power button in and it turned off as expected. What happened next was very unexpected. I did not get the usual “safe mode” prompt, instead my laptop said the data was corrupt and a full system restore needed to be done. I wasn’t able to save any data on my laptop. As a result I lost alot of data but was able to recover some. The biggest loss was of my bookmarks. I know there are ways to backup bookmarks in Firefox but I had never used them before. I had been using del.icio.us for a while but not as active as I should have been. Now I am an active user on there. I bookmark sites every day and tag them. Why? Not as much to share what I find but as a means of backup. Everything I tag on there is available online from any computer. Even my laptop should it crash again. In Firefox I do not have a bookmark menu anymore I have a “del.icio.us” menu like below:
Now when I click on the menu option and select “My Bookmarks” a new sidebar opens with my bookmarks from del.icio.us. I can also choose to “not share” a site when I am tagging it, making it private for me only. This is useful when tagging or bookmarking development sites or sites I just want to be for my eyes only. In Firefox I also have two new buttons a del.icio.us button and a button marked tag:
Using the above two buttons I can quickly “tag” or bookmark a site and also display my tagged items. The Firefox plugin also replaces the normal bookmark dialog when the same action as clicking the tag button when I press Control-d to bookmark a site.
I like the idea of my bookmarks being stored online and also being able to share them with members of my network. I am yet to explicitly share anything with a specific person as I do not want to be too pushy. I also like the idea of being able to access my bookmarks anywhere I can get online and also having the online backup of my bookmarks just in case my PC takes another dive. Use this link to see what I have tagged at del.icio.us. If you like what I have bookmarked feel free to join my network and we can all share what we find online.
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It will look like this: Using Social Bookmarking Sites For More Than Social Purposes
I am using the Socialize Me wordpress plugin. What this plugin does is it displays a banner like the image above to visitors when they come to my site from sites such as twitter, facebook, digg, mybloglog, linkedin, ryze, and many more that I don’t use. It gives visitors a chance to interact with me on the platform that they just came from, say on StumbleUpon. It is a great way to use social networking to connect with the visitors of your site. Click the image above to me taken to the authors page for the plugin.
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It will look like this: Using the Socialize Me Wordpress Plugin
I recently found this plugin for wordpress that adds ten areas for a blogger to add items to their feed. Bloggers can add in copyright information, text, even images. I am using it to promote other blogs and also for some advertising to see how that works over time. Previous posts do not get information added to their footer, only posts done after the plugin has been activated and configured. This is the first post with the feed activated so it will have an advertisement at the bottom of the feed.
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It will look like this: Add a Footer to Your Blogs RSS Feed
Here is a sample PHP snippet that will let a twitter user update their status using PHP code. I have it simply saying hello today is and the date. I’m thinking about running it from a cron script in an automated fashion in conjunction with another site that I run. To see the code I used click the more button unless you’re luckily enough to be sent to this post directly.
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It will look like this: Simple Status Update in Twitter Using PHP
Bloggers or webmasters who make cash on their site by displaying ebay affiliate ads or live auctions will need to change their code by the end of April. eBay is moving their affiliate program in house. A cool site I have also found is shoppingads.com. ShoppingAds displays ebay auctions on a website using a snippet of javascript code. ShoppingAds will continue to work with the new eBay partner program so no changes will need to be made. To see a shoppingads.com ad go to this outdoor blog and see the Hot item listed under the sponsors section. For more information on shopping ads click on the ads by ShoppingAds link on the outdoors blog. Shopping Ads is easy to setup webmasters can give the search terms to use and pick from a variety of different ad sizes.
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It will look like this: eBay Transitioning Away From CJ for Affiliate Program
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