The ZenCart themes are fully compatible with the ecommerce system available from http://www.zencart.com.
Simply upload ZenCart theme below to your ZenCart CMS system and you will have a fully ecommerce ready website with an astonishing layout!
Download links:
http://rapidshare.com/files/146755784/13271.zip
http://www.uploadjockey.com/download/5674887/13271.zip
ZenCart Template
Product Name: ZenCart Design Place
Type: Electronics
Script Size: 5.41 MB
DESCRIPTION
Show your creative skills with this computer and web design theme clean and glossy theme.
INCLUDED MATERIALS
Ready to use Theme
Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional
Photoshop PSD Source Files
Standard HTML Version
External CSS Style Sheet
Download link:
http://rapidshare.com/files/163831366/zc_dplace.zip
Magento_User_Guide.zip | 4.24 MB
Master the basics of running your Magento store using hands-on tutorials by Varien, the Magento company
The Magento User Guide provides the site administrator with detailed instructions addressing the platform's innumerable functions. From setting up your store to managing your products, pages and promotions to generating detailed reports, our User Guide empowers our ever-widening customer to utilize the platform for all of its vast capacity. Serving as a handy problem solving solution as well as a practical step by step guide, our User Guide is sure to become a cost-effective partner in your Magento store implementation.
Quote:
http://rapidshare.com/files/240999670/Magento_User_Guide.zip
http://depositfiles.com/files/y71ln0cxz
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=G6HT3B2V
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=G6HT3B2V
http://mirrorvip.com/files/0JNYMXJZ/Magento_User_Guide.zip
Magento 1.3 Installation Package
With Modern Theme Set Default
For Magento Dummies
Many people post about failure to install v1.3 on a testing environment. And I am one, too. I don’t know why. I have managed to create a fast installation package for Magento dummies who might need it.
I have got modern theme preinstalled in the package because I noticed some related files have been updated to fit the latest version. So by default the home page will be identical to modern!
Note: If you have your xampp running already for magento, go straight to step 4.
You need to install xampp 1.68 as I would recomend. And here is repeated on how to configure it for Magento.
1. Copy php_pdo_mysql.dll to “c:\xampp\php\ext\”, and replace the existing file.
http://www.filefactory.com/file/af87005/n/php_pdo_mysql_dll
http://rapidshare.com/files/170040816/php_pdo_mysql.dll
http://depositfiles.com/files/mhaqdy8ly
2. Open c:\xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf with notepad++, find
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
, then remove #, save. Find
AllowOverride controls what directives may be placed in .htaccess files.
and go to the 3rd line below it, change
AllowOverride None
to
AllowOverride All
save and close.
3. Open c:\xampp\apache\bin\php.ini and c:\\xampp\php\php.ini with notepad++, find
extension=php_mcrypt.dll
,
extension=php_pdo_mysql.dll
and
extension=php_curl.dll
one by one, remove “;” (if any) and save.
4. Download my magento.zip and unzip into your C:\xampp\htdocs\ folder, now you should have your magento installation files strucutured like C:\xampp\htdocs\magento\.
http://www.filefactory.com/file/af867a6/n/magento_zip
http://rapidshare.com/files/216558123/magento.zip
http://depositfiles.com/files/f1ebdcajh
5. Download my database dump below and create a database called dummies, import the dump file.
http://www.filefactory.com/file/af86745/n/database-dump_sql
http://rapidshare.com/files/216484046/database-dump.sql
http://depositfiles.com/files/29xwjqy0l
6. Open your C:\windows\system32\drivers\hosts with notepad++ and add the following line:
127.0.0.1 www.magentodummies.com magentodummies.com
7. Go to IE / Firefox etc, and visit http://www.magentodummies.com/magento/ for frontend and http://www.magentodummies.com/magento/admin for backend now. Backend administrator name is dummies and password also dummies.
8. Go beyond: If you want to use your own domain name (anything like
www.yourdomain.com
), follow steps below:
(1) Open the dump file with notepad++ and replace all
www.magentodummies.com
with
www.yourdomain.com
before importation.
(2) Replace the domain in Step 6 with your own too.
In this way you may also be able to upgrade your existing installation. But you are on your own risk, because I never test it.
What’s more, if you don’t want to use the default backend settings, you might need a fresh installation.
(1) Browse to app\etc\local.xml and delete it or rename it.
(2) Open app\design\install\default\default\template\install\config.phtml with notepad++, find line 54
value="dummies"
and line 60
value="root"
and line 64
value=""
then change each value with your database name, user and password. Find line 85 and change the domain path to your domain.
(3) go to brower and complete the fresh installation.
(4) Open your database in phpmyadmin then browse to table admin_user and you may delete the record which contains dummies, browse admin_role table and delete dummies record too.
Don’t forget to back it up after everything is set. Correct me if any mistakes, and post any questions. Cheers! Source:
P.S.
You might simply try this package instead of the longer version if you simply want a fresh installation. The only difference might be default theme not yet set to modern, and you might set it up manually.
http://rapidshare.com/files/216797341/magento.zip
Default database name: magento; [no dump needed]
User: root;
Password: [leave blank]
URL: http:\\www.magento.com\magento\
William Rice, “”Magento: Beginner’s Guide
Packt Publishing | 2009 | ISBN: 1847195946 | 246 pages | PDF | 8,3 MB
Create a dynamic, fully featured, online store with the most powerful open source e-commerce software
Step-by-step guide to building your own online store
Focuses on the key features of Magento that you must know to get your store up and running
Customize the store’s appearance to make it uniquely yours
Clearly illustrated with screenshots and a working example
In Detail
Magento is the world’s most evolved e-commerce solution. It runs on the Apache/MySQL/PHP platform. From one installation, you can control multiple storefronts, all sharing customer and product information. Magento’s templates and themes enable you to customize the look and feel of your store, even optimizing it for mobile phones. Extensions enable you to connect Magento to a large number of payment gateways and shipping services. Modular code enables you to upgrade your Magento installation while retaining your customizations. Support is provided free by an active open source community and by subscription to Varien, the company behind Magento.
Magento is one of the most exciting, flexible, and customizable e-commerce systems. It offers you an extensive suite of powerful tools for creating and managing an online store. As your online store grows, you can be sure that this robust e-commerce system can handle your needs. However, getting started with Magento can be difficult without the right guidance.
This book provides that guidance in the form of a step-by-step approach to building a simple, effective online store. The book covers the key features of Magento that will help you get your store up and running. It guides you through installation, configuration, populating your store with products, accepting payments, maintaining relationships with your customers, and fulfilling orders.
When you create an online store with Magento, you usually follow a defined series of steps. This book is arranged to support that process. Each chapter shows you how to get the most from one step.
You will learn to customize the default Magento storefront so that it becomes your store and also about Magento’s directory structure and where some of the elements of a store are customized. This experience will help you if you decide to go beyond this book and install new themes or create your own themes.
As you work your way through each chapter, your store will grow in scope and sophistication. By the time you finish this book, you should have a basic but complete, working online store.
Download Link:
http://uploading.com/files/VU3GFKI6/1847195946_magento_beginner_s_guide.rar.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/250256962/1847195946_magento_beginner_s_guide.rar
http://hotfile.com/dl/7805729/c01ae3c/1847195946_magento_beginner_s_guide.rar.html
There are so many blogs platforms like Blogger and Wordpress, and I'm sure you've tried it, knowing what is best for your blogs. Of course, everyone knows that Wordpress is ideal for blogs career seriously, if you want to earn more money, you're putting a lot of blogs, as you can manage.
But how do you find the right blog software that can help you, your blogs, all the time, the market for you and the marketing of the use of functions available?
Introducting Firepower, a blogging software that will solve all your problems. Yes, I mean all your problems in the management of your blog. You can use a few blogs and even hundreds of blogs, and while they are under one roof, you can easily check.
If you have a blog, you want the search engine spiders to crawl the blog and index your content. At the same time, we have more backlinks which can be placed on the Page Rank. If you have so many blogs that will never have to concentrate fully on each of the blogs that Firepower to make it easier for you by the H1 and H2 tag data for each position.
At the same time, you can use RSS Firepower automatically submit. If you want to promote your blogs, there is a connection to Yahoo Answers as a tool to get more backlinks to your blogs. You answer questions and a link will leave it there.
You can get a high-Theme Generator, plugins, your blogs, video installation, integration to your office and your social bookmarking tools. In short, Firepower is the blog software you need to make money from your blog as simple.
Magento is a new professional open-source eCommerce solution offering unprecedented flexibility and control. Magento was designed with the notion that each eCommerce implementation has to be unique since no two businesses are alike. Magento's modular architecture puts the control back in the hands of the online merchant and places no constraints on business processes and flow.
Here are some topics about Magento:
The main advantages of Magento shopping cart.
Setting up Magento from scratch | Swollen Pickles
Magento Shopping Cart — Selling Stuff
Magento shopping cart | Magento CMS | Managing Webshop | Free …
How to Edit the Magento Footer & Footer Links
Magento Installation Problem – MySQL Access Denied
How to add a product into Magento shopping cart from an external …
Magento – How to display products on your home page
Magento: my experiences thus far. | Dan Klassen
Magento catalog customization: admin area | eCommerce software …
How far do you want to deviate from oscommerce template? If it's quite a big change (like you want to entirely do away with their template), it's going to require significantly more work. It can be done though. It really depends how familiar you are with PHP. If you are not that familiar with PHP, I would suggest having someone else make the changes, since they could get pretty involved.
The above scenario is a common situation and question asked by lots of people who tried to use oscommerce to build up their online businesses.
Here is the solution to solve the issue:
Oscommerce Templates + Modify Ebook (project Alpha).this set of template plus the ebook allows you to build your online store faster, better, and customizable !!!
this set gives you a starting point but eventually want to be able to create a whole new template like on the oscommerce showcases. Even you only have novice PHP knowledge but am willing to learn more all the time. Eventually you will be able to change and configure your online store at you will.
So what you are waiting for? Just go to grab Oscommerce Templates + Modify Ebook (project Alpha).
There are many good open source PHP e-commerce systems, such as OScommerce, and developed on the basis of OScommerce by ZenCart and so on.
The first test is OScommerce, regardless of experience or reputation in the industry is a leader of a group, I tried, indeed, very detailed, but the OS template is not independent, it is not too adaptation.
Then try the ZenCart, it is very similar to OScommerce, background interface.
I personally feel that pleasing to the eye than the OScommerce, and that it is independent of the template. Similarly, a breakdown of its features are also very very detailed, because I do not need to consider to calculate the distance freight transport, so I closed it on this option, and then there was BUG - normal freight charges will not be able to show. There is no question of re-playing.
Magento is a very powerful electric business system, but read the introduction, I did not even try try, because it can be from a background of managing multiple sites and stores, which I do not have access to, and there are many other very strong features.
Finally, I chose the PrestaShop , you can Look at the background of its presentation here http://www.prestashop.com/demo/demo/
Need to enter user name: demo@prestashop.com and password: prestashop_demo
First of all, its interface is very easy to use. Functions, I do not think that lost OScommerce and ZenCart, from transportation costs, calculated in different currencies, the choice of trading countries and regions, to cart the design, are in place.
And it more than the default templates that are to be two good-looking too much.
Its very good SEO, you can also describe articles and products into the more specific your description and keywords. And it has been carrying the ROBOT documents, SITEMAP analysis of documents, as well as Google.
Google Analysis Module, you can fill in relevant background from the code, this is not complicated.
If you have made the decision that Zen Cart is the best choice for you, then don’t hesitate - move your store to Zen Cart easily with Cart2Cart. This is unique online shopping cart migration service that allows you to migrate all content of your store quickly and accurately.
Cart2Cart service allows you to migrate products, customers, orders, manufacturers, product categories, images and other data to Zen Cart. Currently the service supports the following shopping carts: osCommerce, X-Cart, Zen Cart, CRE Loaded, Magento, Pinnacle Cart, etc. Other shopping carts will be constantly added to this list.
Make a smart decision for your business - use Cart2Cart to migrate your data and save your time, which you can spend automating other aspects of your store. This professional shopping cart migration service makes your migration to Zen Cart pretty smooth.
The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard is a worldwide information security standard assembled by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). The standard was created to help organizations that process card payments prevent credit card fraud through increased controls around data and its exposure to compromise. The standard applies to all organizations which hold, process, or pass cardholder information from any card branded with the logo of one of the card brands.
The following 6 steps help to Keep Your Shopping Cart (Magento vs. Oscommerce vs. Zencart) Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard PCI Compliant:
1. Make sure your customer checkout and Admin is SSL Encrypted
2. Keep your shopping cart updated to the newest version to protect from SQL Injection hacks, and other security breaches.
3. Provide different access levels and logins to the different people that use the administration section of your website. Don't provide people access to customer credit card information that don't need it (i.e. employees that update product info or website articles). This sometimes involves the installation of the admin access levels module for Oscommerce if you don't already have it installed..
4. Try to avoid store your customer's credit card data, it reduces your risk. You only really need to have the customer credit card data entered on the payment screen, and sent immediately to your payment processor. Your payment is then authorized/captured, and you don't need to store that data any longer.
5. Never store CVV credit card information (3 to 4 digit code on the back of the credit card).
6. If you must store customer credit card data for recurring billing or other applications, many payment processors now offer a service where they store the credit card data, and your shopping cart accesses and bills customers using an API (method of communication). This means that you are no longer responsible for storing that data and don't have that liability.
Based on the guide and practice in security settings, by comparing Shopping Cart features (Magento vs. Oscommerce vs. Zencart) on Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard PCI Compliant: I recommend Zen-Cart as the best shopping cart. It is secure and easily modified. OSCommerce is a good shopping cart but in my opinion is not as secure as Zen-Cart and is harder to customize. The Zen-Cart engine is OSCommerce with added features and a more friendly admin panel. And it is said that there is a security vulnerability in Magento Commerce in 1.2.1.1 (and previous versions) that I believe should be fixed before anyone else uses it.
If you decide to go with an Oscommerce based shopping cart, we recommend that you start with one of the loaded versions - Zencart, CRE Loaded, or OSCmax - in order to save you lots of money on installing additional modules to the plain Oscommerce version. You can then use your development money to put in your own custom modifications, design, etc. rather than installing all of the basics.
Furthermore, as an Oscommerce based shopping cart, Zen-cart is not ideal if you want a plug and play solution, which is what most e-commerce businesses need. Over time Zen Cart has improved this issue, but has not completely created a plug and play solution just like Wordpress has. I expect the new version of Zen Cart 2.0 will have this ability, as most open source projects begin to migrate to automatic updates rather than manually installing the plugins ourselves.
Overall I would recommend it as a solution to start off with for any small to medium business owners.
We like Magento but recommend that you wait to use it until they optimize more its speed, and provide better documentation for developers. If you decide to go with Magento, make sure to chose a fast enough web host. it does not run fast enough on most shared hosting plans.
Open source web design development, Open Source development solutions are widely acceptable these days because source code is available free and open for editing, developers are free to amend code and upload web pages dynamically in real time.
Open source ecommerce software like magento, Zen cart, opencart, X cart, drupal and many more are used to develop an efficient and reliable Ecommerce shopping cart. Open source provides zero risk, cost effective Ecommerce functionality which leads to powerful ecommerce web development. Whichever Open Source software guarantee of its reliability and flexibility is assured. A fully functional Ecommerce shopping cart and websites can be developed using Open Source software.
There are a good number of firms who have tasted success with eCommerce. Especially the Open source ecommerce applications are being largely used to fillip businesses. The whole game is how to fit the ecommerce app to your benefit.
When comparing joomla with virtuemart and magento, in general:
- Most of all magento features is also available in virtuemart
- Virtuemart have alot of plugins that will make vm more powerful
- there's a lot of joomla templates with can beat magento design too.
For the first sight actually everyone loves magento features (that actually not available natively on vm), in particular, There are few more features that Magento has and virtuemart doesn't. For example those cool promotions like buy "5 items, pay for 4" etc,
however, magento is very good script but is new , virtuemart has a very big community and you can find solution to any problem or modification + they are hundreds joomla templates.
Furthermore, every one complains that Magento is real good but is slower due to its architecture and needs also more Resources.
Thus, at this stage, I will go with Virtuemart, a great extension of Joomla with lot plugins and support.
Like other open source shopping carts such as opencart, zen-cart, oscommerce, magneto, and prestashop, etc., Drupal, coming with Ubercart and/or e-commerce extensions, can also be configured as an online open source shopping cart system.
Besides to use open-source e-commerce plugins, such as ubercart or e-commerce plugin, to create your own online shop, which features a rich set of out-of-the-box online shopping cart functionality that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, license fees, or limitations involved, there are also other online money earning related modules can be integrated with Drupal to help you make money online, here are five of them:
Affiliate
This module allows site owners to issue affiliate links to their partners. When anonymous users follow these links, the clicks are counted by affiliate, day, and optional keyword. When referred users sign up for an account, the account is associated with that affiliate.
TextLinkAds.com Integration
Simplified setup right on your site. All you need is your Website XML Key from Text-Link-Ads.com and you’re ready to start publishing ads. A built-in tool to customize the looks of the ads, including borders, background color, link color and font size. Access to your publisher statistics from within your website. See your site details, including how much money you’ve earned and how many links are being served. Cron-based updates of your ads. The ad links are kept up to date via Drupal’s cron functionality.
Pay2Publish
Pay2Publish lets users publish basic versions of listings (nodes) for free, and later be able to pay to “upgrade” them to custom Levels (categories) to add more visibility (Views plays) and/or show more information (CCK fields). set up different “Levels” with different costs and properties (Silver, Gold, Platinum style). Each level will have its corresponding taxonomy (category) term. to upgrade a node, the user will have to buy the desired “Level” and assign it to one of his published nodes. The corresponding taxonomy term will be assigned to the desired node.
PayPal Node
Use PayPal to charge users to post a specified content-type. Costs are calculated based on combinations of taxonomy terms. Nodes can be set to expire (become unpublished) after a specified number of days. Use this module to create a custom classified advert system, or charge for hosting any content that users might categorize.
Advertisement
The ad module is a powerful advertising system for Drupal-powered websites. It supports the random display and tracking of graphical (banner) and text ads. Ads can easily be displayed in themes, blocks, or embedded in site content. The module records comprehensive statistics about when and how often ads are viewed and clicked, including a plug-in module for generating graphical time-based reports. Ads can be assigned to multiple owners, each of which can be assigned their own set of permissions. Installation is simple by design. An API is provided allowing the development of additional functionality and integration with other Drupal modules.
Click Thru Tracking
This module provides the ability for site admins to track clicks on their site such as advertising campaigns and newsletter click throughs. The clicks are organized into groups, so ad campaigns can be tracked if they involve more than one node.
Driving traffic to an open source shopping cart site, such as zen-cart, oscommerce, opencart, magento, prestashop, etc. is difficult in the first place. So, once that traffic starts showing up, the last thing you want those potential buyers to do is to leave before making a purchase, especially true if they found you via PPC because that visitor is going to cost you money for that unfruitful click through.
Most on-line purchases are made using a visitor’s credit card and those names and card numbers are hacked all of the time. So, before you ask a buyer to make a purchase using a credit card, you must first create trust between you and the potential buyer.
The most used trust building factor is the VeriSign logo. VeriSign provides SSL encrypted solutions for on-line businesses. They have an excellent reputation for security and regular on-line buyers and retailers know this. So, use the VeriSign logo throughout your site to build consumer trust.
The second trust factor is to use SSL encryption to secure the on-line transaction. You’ll need an SSL certificate to transmit encrypted data. Sometimes, a web host will let you use its SSL certification but regardless, any savvy on-line buyer is going to avoid making a purchase unless s/he sees that little padlock in the lower right hand corner and an https in the address box. The “s” stands for secure.
Of course, Subscribing to the On-Line BBB definitely can also build visitor trust by becoming a member of the on-line Better Business Bureau which indicates a commitment to service and honesty. The BBB logo displayed on your site’s home page and checkout pages is a comfort to new buyers.
In conclusion, since using open source platform like zen-cart, oscommerce, opencart, magento, prestashop, etc. you should pay more attention on trust factors than those commercial ones, thus need more efforts on methods like using SSL, VeriSign, and BBB.
This post discusses the best shopping cart that is search engine friendly and gives you the most flexibility and features, by comparing oscommerce, zen-cart, opencart, magento, prestashop, joomla with virtuemart, and drupal with cubercart.
joomla/virtuemart paired up with either sh404sef or artio, makes it outstand other shopping carts.
magento's infrastructure looks good to seo, but haven't see all the plugins or if its seo friendly...
Prestashop is a good script too
cubercart itself is best to seo, thus going with drupal makes the pairs SEO friendly too.
PS
There is a choice if you like to go with wordpress with shopping cart, by using
wp-shopping-cart wordpress plugin, I haven't used this yet, but since wp is the best cms to seo, I believe this wp-shopping-cart wordpress plugin worths a try.
Today more and more people are engaging in online business. E-commerce is business carried through the internet. Nowadays more and more people are using the internet to promote and sale their products.
open source shopping cart packages include advanced platforms such as Interchange, and off the shelf solutions as Satchmo, osCommerce, Magento , Zen Cart , OpenCart , VirtueMart and PrestaShop or the dual licensed PhPepperShop. ...
I tried the latest version of Magento and there were too many bugs to bothered with it. Prestashop is looking best, but lacks themes and payment gateways. Zen cart worked well but is a pain to modify the templates to even get a flash file to ... The best is magento , followed by zen cart , both have got plugins and support community. I like open cart . For its simplicity but thumbs down to support and plugin support, joomla virtuecart is good but lacks community support.
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.
14 social bookmarking sites listed here, so make sure you're bookmarking this site !!!
DF = Do-Follow
NF = No-Follow
NF/RD = They using redirect, so it's No-Follow
Site PR Link Price
Betanews.com 7 DF Free
Businesswire.com 7 DF Free
Directionsmag.com 7 DF Free
Marketwire.com 7 DF Free
PRweb.com 7 DF Paid
BizEurope.com 6 DF Free
Emediawire.com 6 DF Paid
IndiaPRWire.com 6 DF Free
Media-newswire.com 6 DF Paid
Nanotech-now.com 6 DF Free
News.thomasnet.com 6 DF Free
PRLeap.com 6 DF Paid
PRlog.com 6 DF Free
programmersheaven.com 6 NF/RD Free
Of course there's much more tools, but I only listed the ones I use frequently, so your turn to share guys...
By my experience, I would say that it is not really necessary to register to thousand directories, just the most interesting, with a very high PR, and in a similar category of the content of the website. Also, create a page of your business in Wikipedia and About.us, if it's a serious business of course
www.dmoz.org 9
www.lii.org/ 8
www.hotfrog.com 7
www.somuch.com 6
www.skoobe.biz/ 6
www.netinsert.com 6
www.jayde.com 6
www.info-listings.com 6
www.gimpsy.com 6
www.geniusfind.com/ 6
www.ezilon.com 6
www.exactseek.com 6
www.clickey.com 6
www.canlinks.net 6
www.buzzle.com 6
www.businessseek.biz 6
www.abilogic.com 6
www.123kidzarea.com 6
www.bdcconcepts.com/directory/ 6
www.epooch.com 6
www.search4i.com 6
www.busybits.com/ 6
www.zensearch.com/ 6
www.dramba.com 6
For a website developed with Joomla, it would be better to add a shopping cart so as to attract more traffic.
Here are current opinions about the choice of shopping cart: with Virtmart or with Zencart.
Of course, it would be ideal to looking forward to the full Magento release, it definitely looks the goods. However, Magento is nice but not integrated (yet!)..
Joomla and Virture Mart seem like a good marriage of CMS and 'cart'...But Virtuemart is a pain when you want to customise things.
Thus, current solution for Joomla is with zencart and leave the joomla as it is.
ZenCart shop store is not for online shopping newbies, but it's a whole lot of fun for pseudo-geeks, and there's a learning curve. But Zencart is so flexible once you've got the hang of it! The community is awesome, you can find more info in the forums than any other open source shopping carts, such as magento, opencart, and prestashop, etc.
One of the secrets behind its power lies in the robust template system that "abstracts" the look-and-feel from the code and logic behind Zen Cart. This enables you to give clients a truly custom solution that integrates quickly and perfectly with their existing marketing websites.
I really love the ordered file structure of ZenCart that allows for customization. The shop itself is nice to work with. There's tons of add-ons, and nearly a dozen of them are very helpful, provide good solid content
Zen Cart gives web designers a robust and customizable electronic storefront that's easy to keep up-to-date with new features. It provides usable, intuitive and unobtrusive purchase flows right out of the box based on proven industry best-practices - there are no major revisions required to get things right for your clients!
Starting a web blog at your open source Magento store is a good way to promote the products you sell. This web blog will be a place for you to communicate with your potential customers and inform them about the advantages of your products. Posting interesting and useful articles you’ll make your blog a reliable online resource which will help you succeed in e-Commerce.
The best and the fastest way to learn is to have a blog implemented into Magento online store with the help of Lazzymonks Blog Extension for Magento. If you are attentive it won’t be a problem for you to enhance your Magento store with a stunning blog.
Note having started a web blog you can review the products you sell at your Magento store and answer your customers’ questions; you can also advice the best way your products can be used for. If you post interesting and relevant content your blog will rank well and search engines will come back to your site again and again bringing good traffic and future clients.
The biggest decision between open source shopping carts and commercial shopping carts is support.
There are lots of free open-source software out there, such as zencart, megento, prestashop, opencart, etc. The only problem is not all of them have good support systems. Some of them are better than others. If your e-commerce site goes down you shouldn't have to spend three days on a forum trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.
I know that some commercial e-commerce software come with a little higher price tag, but as with anything else, usually you get what you pay for. I would just suggest that when choosing an e-commerce software you do your research. Especially if you are planning to go the commercial route. Call the company up and talk to them. See how friendly they are and if you get a good vibe from them. If you are considering the open-source route, make sure you feel comfortable with the on-line community that supports the cart before you implement it. That way when you have questions or issues that you need to fix you can maybe find a quick solution.
Besides, On the downside of open source shopping carts is that it can be quite challenging when a new version is released. It takes time to catch up with a stable version of free open source shopping carts.
The commercial software is quite good and user friendly at this part; however, we found it difficult to properly set up conversion tracking for our various advertising. Although we were growing profitably with this cart, there was always a sense that some of our advertising was being wasted or ineffective.
Whether you are looking for a CPA (Cost Per Action) affiliate marketing program to join so that you can find products and services to recommend, or you want a program to run your company’s affiliate marketing program, these following programs can make or break your affiliate marketing efforts, :-)
• Commission Junction (cj) - Some of the largest businesses online use Commission Junction. While that’s no reason to rush right over to CJ, you shouldn’t discount it either. They clearly know what they’re doing.
• ClixGalore - ClixGalore has quite a selection of affiliate programs to take advantage of. If you want to start an affiliate marketing program for your company, they can help you with that too.
• LinkShare - One of the leading pay-per-action marketing programs online. Wal-Mart, Lego, and other recognized brands use LinkShare. Not a bad pick.
• ShareASale - A custom program that operates to bring affiliates and products together. Great program.
• Clickbank - Clickbank specializes in digital products: E-books, podcasts, videos, downloads, etc. One of the first affiliate programs to come online, Clickbank pretty much wrote the rules on affiliate marketing and just about every program now online owes a debt to Clickbank for paving the way. If you specialize in retailing digital products, you just might do well at Clickbank.
When you’re ready to start your affiliate marketing program or you are looking for a product to sell as an affiliate, try one of these programs.
It's well known that Google is one of the best potential sources for traffic, however, as you may or may not be aware, YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine behind Google. Doing businesses using online video is going to maximize their YouTube efforts by employing some easy strategies to gain more visibility.
Also, one in five searches are image searches, and that alt tags and file name optimization are key. Thus, try to Rank Higher in image searches by:
Add images to your Google Local Business profile
- Enable Google Image Labeler in your Google Webmaster Tools account.
- Add images to local business citation sources.
- Add images to blog posts or news articles for syndication in Google news.
Ranking in Maps/Local Search may seem fairly obvious, but the strategies are different because you need to think about terms a local searcher would use to find your business. They’ll most likely use the city and state in their search, so you’ll want your site to be optimized for those as well as business-specific keywords.
finally, Ranking in Blog Search has the following positives:
- Number of RSS subscriptions
- Clicks on SERP post links
- Blogrolls
- number of "high quality" blogrolls the blog is in
- ability for visitors to tag posts
- whether or not people are tagging them
- References to the blog by sources other than blogs
- Pagerank
In summary, there are lots of opportunities to get your site found other than just regular google search.
It is really based on each one's expectations to choose which Open source ecommerce shopping cart to be used. They are actually very different.
For instance, Magento has alot more features "out-of-the-box" than Open Cart, from the outset this software appears to be ideal. It’s very much geared for the modern web developer with it’s trendy feel, complete with snazzy design and gradients on the demo store.
BUT, Magento is a lot more complicated and alot more resource hungry.
Some considerations:
1. Magento requires a fast host which has been optimised for Magento. This host costs loads more than than your average host that can host Opencart.
2. Magento requires lots of time to understand and modify the layout.
Try out Opencart on a free hosting account and see if it's what you need.
I would choose Open Cart for a small site and Magento for a large huge site or if I was a developer deploying multiple sites for my clients.
I left Magento because it runs and I don't consider paying for a dedicated server to be cost effective for my size.
There are always debates between choosing cb (clickbank) or cj (commission junction) as your CPA affiliate program. Here are the comparisons I summarized based on some debates over Internet:
Clickbank (cb):
high percentage commission and 15-day payout. Because Hottest selling products online are digital ebooks. However competition is a bit higher bit if you can break even the ROI is awesome! So choosing Clickbank if your audiences buy digital products.
if you like "freestyle" method of promoting, since creating affiliate links and starting is pretty easy in clickbank, however, clickbank affiliate links can be changed to their own affiliate names easily and thus it will cut your commissions.
If you're just looking for blind traffic to your website and require credit card payment services, go with ClickBank, because CB doesn't give it's merchants much as far as reporting goes, and no contact with the affiliates running your program.
Finally, CB has more refund rate.
Commission Junction (CJ):
CJ has tons of high-quality products, but too many rules for cj. don't do this and that, or your relationship with the advertiser will be cut.
CJ has dynamic affiliate links, so can't easily to change...
If you're looking to build relationships with your affiliates and already have access to credit card processing, go with Commission Junction.
BTW., there are many affiliate networks which offer similar services to CJ, and do so at far more reasonable prices. For instance, there's Shareasale.com if your program is for a shopping cart type per-sale website.
In summary, choosing CB for good commission rates and choosing CJ for better company choices.
Customizing the open source ecommerce shopping carts for a unique online experience for visitors is vitally important for shopping cart owners. Below offers the evaluation of each open source shopping cart application's customization capabilities.
osCommerce
Layout of the osCommerce pages is table based. There is very little customization that can be done from the admin panel.
Zen Cart
Based on osCommerce, Zen Cart's layout is DIV based and relies more on CSS than its predecessor. ZC also offers more configuration options from the admin panel, such as configuring the columns and side boxes to include and offering an admin based editor for changing information included on several standard pages including the main page.
Magento
Magento has implemented their own version of "Themes" in the design of the Magento pages. Their themes are implemented on a modular basis and provides an unprecedented flexibility in design choices, including the ability to have different designs on a per page basis. This flexibility comes at the cost of complexity, including a complex software architecture.
OpenCart
OpenCart has a relatively simple architecture for controlling the look and layout of pages. Even without formal documentation, It is not very hard to figure out how it works and how to make changes. The architecture makes it possible to create multiple template sets that can be applied from the admin panel.
PrestaShop
PrestaShop allows for the turning off and on different page elements from the admin panel as well as the ability to edit the home page title and description. This includes the ability to change the position of the various elements. Beyond that, they use a theme architecture similar to OpenCart's. There are CSS files and template files that can also be edited.
1. Use the following sites where they evaluate ClickBank products. These sites can be helpful for a beginner like me to decide which products to promote.
http://www.clickbankguide.com/productreviews.htm
http://www.clickbankhotshots.com/
http://www.clickbankproductreview.com/
ClickBank Affiliate FAQ page: http://www.clickbank.com/affiliate_faq.html
2. Find products that are highly relevant to the content of your website or web pages.
3. Carefully read about the product from its vendor’s site before you start to promote it. If you don’t think the web site is trustworthy enough or the product has good quality, don’t promote that product. If you wouldn’t want to buy it, probably other people wouldn’t buy it either.
4. When you write reviews of ClickBank products to promote them, be a honest consumer rather than be a salesperson or an affiliate. Focus on the strengths of the product while frankly talking about flaws.
To have Magento working on GoDaddy Linux platform, you can follow a few steps from the installation instructions on forums from Internet:
1. Install Magento eCommerce application by downloading the latest Full Release Magento package (magento-1.3.0.zip), uploading the zip, and unarchiving it using the GoDaddy:FileManager:Unarchive function. Should unpack into a magento/ directory.
Note: There are also some special instructions on the forum for people who do not want to install to a magento/ directory but to the root.
2. Ensure that the directories app/etc , var , and media are writable by the web server. To do so, navigate to the directory with your FTP client and change to 777.
3. Make sure that you have the full mysql database name, and the correct address for where your mysql database is stored.
Still, people complains that the big problem is speed, it is painfully slow. Any optimizations help would be appreciated.
PS:
A common error, which usually comes up if you’re hosted by GoDaddy, is the no input file specified error.
There are a couple of things you can do to fix this, but we’ll start with the one that usually works. In your magento/ directory, there should be a file called php.ini. Rename this to php5.ini. If that doesn’t work, add the following to the end of your newly renamed php5.ini file:
cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1
And if you’re still getting the error, add the following to the top of your .htaccess file:
Options -MultiViews
there’s a few more things that can be done, just check out the official posting about this issue here.
PPS
If you are needing a quick jump start with developing with Magento, I strongly recommend reading through the material provided by the Magento site.
with referring to this godaddy installation instructions for magento:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/5023/
I have almost successfully installed and run Magento on godaddy for a deluxe share hosting package with php5 environment: I can see the front page shown after the installation on godaddy, but magento is still not running properly: magento can run homepage, wishlist, popular search, etc all right, but it run into blank pages at many points, e.g. about us, customer service, etc. The only difference I can see is the step 10. select destination...leave at root default. I didn't do this because I have other program on it, so I chose a directory for the installation. And I did add php5.ini as the instruction shared, changing the .htaccess file by following the detailed guide for GoDaddy params also didn't work.
By all means, to my opinion, magento is not suitable to run on a share hosting package. Installing magento on Godaddy share hosting account can only be used for demonstration purpose, I guess.
