Thursday, September 18, 2008
OS Commerce Watch: New Magento 1.1 Released
Those Magento boys and girls are at it again, kicking butt and taking names by releasing a brand-new, expanded 1.1 release of their already feature-rich open source e-commerce program. The company claims to already be the fastest growing e-commerce platform on the market – and not just open source e-commerce — with over 400,000 production downloads in only 16 weeks. This latest release will boost the world’s acceptance curve sharply with new features that will pique international interest.
The team's marketing messages, already good from the start, have become laser-focused and clearer than any open source e-commerce team I've seen. They have positioned themselves as the competitive solution for shops ranging from the mom-and-pop-type shop, through the medium-size shop selling up to $150 million per year, and their features make them ideal for an enterprise shop. The company is aiming this latest release squarely at world expansion.
Summary of New Features
This new release includes hundreds of bug fixes and performance improvements including SEO-related fixes, improvements in the Admin components, and also adds support for Canadian and European taxes. Expanded product options will win over the hearts of those who sell customized products, with custom product options, personalized products, and virtual or downloadable products. And an exciting new feature is a Web services API, which opens the door for Magento to be integrated with any application via a Web Services API.
Performance Issues Addressed
The company says one of the main goals for Magento 1.1 was to examine bottlenecks in the platform and improve performance. This new release addresses the key concerns of many 1.0 users, including many bug fixes and slow page-loading times. Changes have been made to the Admin so that data are loaded only when necessary, improving the responsiveness of the Admin significantly.
The company claims a 40-percent performance improvement. Some 1.1 alpha users reported performance improvements of 70 percent in their tests, while others complained that while the new version is much faster, it remains relatively slow. Many factors can influence the speed of the program, including server and caching settings, so if a store remains slow after upgrading, the store owner should seek out additional measures to improve the store's performance.
International Support Increased
Magento Version 1.0 was a US-centric product. Version 1.1 will see the expansion of Magento into many additional new countries where it was previously impossible to use the program due to tax law limitations. Complex laws in Europe and elsewhere for Value Added Taxation (VAT) formerly required programmers to extend the code. According to Varien's Chief Technology Officer, Yoav Kutner, the team has redesigned the tax module so it is more flexible for international use, as well as for changing taxation laws in the US. Already there are active user forums in nearly 50 languages. Translations of over 60 languages and dialects have been initiated by volunteers with varying degrees of completion, and 23 locales are 85 to 100 percent complete. As a result of these activities and changes, the number of version 1.1 product downloads should spike sharply with significant world-wide interest.
Additional “Wow” Product Features
The new version allows customers to create custom products, also known as bundled products or "kitting" (making kits). For example, a customer can create and purchase a computer with user-selectable options such as case, hard drive, RAM and monitors with pricing dynamically generated. Unfortunately, store owners who have already created simple products cannot convert the existing products to bundled products; they must go back in and recreate the product as a new, bundled product. But, this is a small price to pay for such an expansive feature.
Another welcomed product feature in this release is “customer-defined product options” such as specifying text or images for monograms, engraving, and custom printing.
Most exciting is that the company unexpectedly tucked into this release support for virtual or downloadable products. Roy Rubin, President of Varien Inc., the company that developed the program, said he Initially expected to release downloadable product support "right behind 1.1." It is rare indeed to move the launch of a planned feature up, and this new feature alone will create many new converts to the program.
Other New Features
Rounding out the gaggle of new additions to the program are a couple of small but nice new features; new customer attributes such as prefix/suffix (Dr., Jr.) and date of birth.
The “One-Click Upgrade” from 1.0
Rubin says the heavily-touted Magento "One-Click Upgrade" is now in place for this release, and that it will work with the public release of 1.1 as long as the relevant 1.0 code has not been modified. It is always wise, however, to make a copy of the site and install the upgrade on the copy. The company strongly recommends against installing on a live or production site, but how many store owners will listen only to the words "One-Click Upgrade"?
Industry Wait-and-See
Template companies that offer templates for many other open source e-commerce programs have taken a wait-and-see attitude towards releasing templates or skins for Magento. Likewise, many experienced open source programmers are unfamiliar with the object-oriented programming used by Magento. Slow release of programmer documentation to get programmers on board, and unfamiliarity with the Zend Framework on which the program is based, have all slowed the program's acceptance into the industry by Web developers. The company would be well-advised to speed the release of developer documentation even if it is not pretty or absolutely fleshed-out yet.
Enthusiastic Community
Still, the company has been responsive to the concerns of its users with the product it has released today, and that responsiveness to end users is refreshing in the techno-centric world of open source e-commerce. With this release, it's time for the industry biggies — osCommerce, Zen Cart and CRE Loaded — to sit up and take notice if they haven't already.
In its short four-month existence, Magento has already been nominated for a number of prestigious awards, including the O'Reilly 2008 Open Source Awards and SourceForge.net's Community Choice Awards. Magento was a finalist in SourceForge’s categories for Best Project for the Enterprise, Best New Project, Most Likely to Change the World and Most Likely to Be the Next $1B Acquisition. How many eCommerce programs can claim that, open source or not?
The bottom line: Magento is already loved and accepted by end users and the community. This new release will just create more, worldwide converts. It’s a real winner.
source:- ecommerce-guide.com/
Five Tips For Improving Ecommerce Website Usability
ECOMMERCE AND USABILITY: What did you spend in man (or woman) hours and advertising dollars last month to drive traffic to your ecommerce storefront? And what will you spend this upcoming holiday season? If you're like most Internet retailers, it might just seem like the total expenditure of a small nation. Is it more than you need? What are the other options to improve long-term customer value? Let's look at some practical tactics for improving the usability of your ecommerce site to increase long-term customer interaction with your products and your brand.
- Identify Users By Email Address; Not Username:-
It might seem like a good idea on the surface to enable people to customize their user experience with personalized usernames, but most consumers change their personal profiles frequently. How do you ensure your "forgot username" function doesn't get overloaded? Try using an e-mail address to identify users rather than a username. E-mail addresses (while changed frequently) are easier to remember, often require no special characters and are most always unique, so users avoid the problem of someone else already taking their preferred username.
- Shorten the (Perceived) Distance To Checkout Completion:-
Can't see the forest because of the trees? Probably so. Often times, ecommerce merchants think they "get" the optimal user checkout experience, but breaking the process up into shorter segments allows users to focus on one step at a time. There's less to think about at each step and less information to enter (or screw up). Consider splitting the ordering process into just five sections (supposing they are logged in); delivery address confirmation, delivery option selection, entering payment details, order review/submission and confirmation.
- Address (and Publicize) Common User Issues:-
All the time you've spent building out a comprehensive FAQ section should not go to waste. It's important that throughout the ordering process, common user questions and queries are addressed. Users might want to know how long delivery is expected to take, or if they have to enter extra information such as their date of birth, they might want to know why. Go through the ordering process and ask yourself at each stage: What queries might a user have? Answers to these queries should either be provided on-screen, or through a hyperlink. Take this a step further by cutting off issues at the pass. If you give your users a "dashboard" to see account activity, this is the perfect place to highlight these issues.
- Establish Trust With Users:-
Many consumers are still not 100% comfortable buying online - no surprise, right? They might be concerned about giving out their credit card number, or about not receiving the items they've paid for. It's therefore important that you acknowledge and allay these concerns to put users' minds at ease. Try and think about the concerns users might have at each step of the ordering process, and try to address them. For example, who is this person or company I am buying from? Including information on your company and the people behind the company is essential to your success. Links to this information should always be included in the navigational architecture of your users' experience, but consider calling out this information within a sidebar during the actual checkout process. If you're worried about abandonment or leakage in general - open up the link in a new browser window.
- Success From Confirmation Emails:-
Once a user has placed their order, a confirmation e-mail should be sent immediately - no waiting until you can process the order. Confirmation e-mails should be brief and tell users important information such as the order number or tracking code. Including contact information for a real customer service associate from the company might be a little too much for the business process of smaller enterprises, but if you can manage, there is no substitute for conveying yours is a quality product from a quality company.
source:- websitemagazine.com/
How to Make Your Page Search Engine Friendly and User Friendly
Every web publisher wants to attain top positions in the search engines to increase traffic. To attain a high ranking, your site has to be search engine friendly.
Search engine spiders index your web site. They only read the HTML code in your web pages. They don't read graphics, JavaScript code and other scripts and features.
Just a few simple changes to your web pages can give your site a huge search engine boost. Even better, it can bring in ongoing FREE targeted traffic.
It's important to create a search engine friendly site while at the same time keeping your site friendly to your visitors. You want to structure your pages for maximum search engine exposure without compromising the content or look of your site. After all, what good is traffic if your visitors won't read your pages?
Keyword-rich, theme-based web sites will give you both targeted traffic and good search engine ranking.
Here are 10 easy steps you can take to make sure your pages are search engine friendly and user-friendly.
1. Selecting a domain name:-
There is a lot of disagreement about whether search bots give importance to the keywords in your domain name. I suggest that you select a domain name that indicates what your site is about. Even if it doesn't matter to search engines, it's important that it tells your visitors what the topic of your site is.
2. Focus on one theme:-
Search engines love specialized content. If you have several topics, then you should create several web sites. The more you focus on one topic, the more your page will be optimized for search engines and the more relevant it will be to your visitors.
3. Create multiple content pages:-
Make a separate page for each important keyword and key phrase. If, for example, you want your site to come up for the key phrases web consulting, web design, and search engine optimization, make three separate pages. Create a web page for each major keyword. Don't create automated pages just to get search engine exposure. To keep visitors at your site, you have to give them good content. Keyword-rich articles are a good way to optimize your pages for search engines while providing useful content to your visitors.
4. Optimize each content page for ONE of your key phrases:-
Put your targeted key phrases in your content. Include them in your page title, description tag, ALT image tags, comment tags, and in internal and external links. When providing a title and description in the META tags, your listing may be displayed in the search engine listing as you provide it. Make your titles and descriptions informative and compelling to attract potential buyers to your site. Provide a benefit or solve a problem.
5. Put your keywords in your content:-
Search engines are looking at how often your keyword appears on a page. That's how they determine relevancy. Short pages provide a larger percentage of keywords and are better for search engine optimization. The keyword density of a Web page is important for search engine optimization. How often you should mention your keyword throughout the text is different for each search engine, but it varies between 3% and 5% of your text. In other words, use your keyword 3-5 times for every 100 words on your page.
6. Naming files and directories:-
Put important keywords in all file names and directories/folder names describing the content. For example, to promote e-book covers, I name my files ebook-covers.html, cd-covers.html, box-cover.html, etc.
7. Naming graphics:-
The search bots don't see your graphics but they can see the description of your graphics and navigation buttons in ALT tags (alternative text describing your images for visitors who browse your site with the images turned off). If your navigation links are images, I recommend that you provide text links in addition to the image links for search engine optimization.
8. Navigation:-
Have your main navigation links on your home page so search engines can follow your links and index your pages. This is just as important for your visitors as for the search engines.
9. Link your pages together:-
You can easily link to all your pages by creating a sitemap.
10. Directory structure:-
Put your important files in the first level. Sub-directories that lie deep are more difficult for search engines to scan. Creating a site map for large sites and providing a link to your site map on your home page is a good way to get all your important pages indexed.
Make it easy for search engines to index your site. Apply these simple tips, and you will be well on your way to having a search engine and user-friendly web site!
PHP upgrade improves Windows backing
Version 5.3 features improved support for Windows, said Andi Gutmans, who is participating in development of the release and is CTO at PHP tools vendor Zend Technologies. Gutmans spoke about the release during an interview at the company's ZendCon 2008 conference in Santa Clara, California on Wednesday afternoon.
"The community has worked on creating a much better binary package for PHP on Windows, which includes the latest [Microsoft] compilers," to benefit performance, Gutmans said. Additionally, more recent third-party libraries are featured for running PHP applications on Windows, with support for XML, graphic manipulation, and database access.
Namespaces, a capability enabling mixing and matching of PHP code from various sources, is highlighted in 5.3. This feature enables better maintenance and reuse, Gutmans said. "It allows you to modularize your applications for better maintenance and it makes it easier to use various frameworks together," he said. Frameworks like Zend's PHP framework and PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository) could be leveraged, said Gutmans.
A full implementation of garbage collection, which provides more efficient use of memory, is featured in PHP 5.3 as well. With garbage collection, long-running PHP scripts will make more efficient use of memory by avoiding conditions that could lead to memory leaks, Gutmans said.
Another feature, PHP archive (phar) files, enables bundling of a PHP application into a single archive. This makes it easier to distribute and deploy a PHP application, Gutmans said. The concept is similar to the JAR (Java Archive) files used in the Java world.
Version 5.3 also offers significant performance enhancements as well a client library integrating PHP with the MySQL database. In general terms, PHP 5.2 applications should function on the PHP 5.3 runtime, according to Gutmans.
Internationalization support has been enhanced, for building of applications that can be multilingual. Specifically, the ICU (International Components for Unicode) library is being exposed. Developers can perform functions like sorting and transformations.
Although Gutmans previously estimated a late-2008 release for PHP 5.3, the release now is expected to reach the release candidate phase in the first quarter of 2009. General availability will follow.
Also at ZendCon on Wednesday, Zend offered insights on what it views as the next-generation of PHP applications. These will be easily maintained, extensible, powerful, and lucrative, said Wil Sinclair, manager of the advanced technology group at Zend.
The first generation of PHP applications was very simple and lacked testing, he said. They had layers for presentation, application control, database access, and business logic. The next generation of applications has had perhaps millions of users, is object-oriented, and is typically modular, Sinclair said.
Next-generation systems have been built on the Model View Controller framework and are unit-tested. "Now, we've got an assurance of quality, not necessarily a guarantee," Sinclair said.
PHP has entered the commercial world, he said. Sinclair presented as an example Magento, an open-source e-commerce platform built on PHP 5 on top of Zend Framework. Built by Varien, Magento has had more than 450,000 downloads and more than 170 Magento Connect extensions. The application has processed millions of dollars in transactions, according to Sinclair.
The first public beta of Magento appeared in August 2007, and the 1.0 launch was on March 31, he said.
"We definitely see Magento as a next-generation PHP application, said Roy Rubin, founder and CEO of Varien.
Meanwhile, open-source WSO2 leveraged ZendCon to make a play in the PHP realm. The company launched WSO2 Web Services Framework for PHP (WSF/PHP) 2.0 this week, featuring a scripting language library enabling developers to build and consume SOAP and REST Web services. Security and reliability are offered for enterprise SOA, the company said. The technology was demonstrated at ZendCon.
Data services, interoperability, and security are extended in the release. Developers also gain a framework for deploying PHP services meeting enterprise SOA standards, according to WSO2. Additionally, developers can bridge to tens of thousands of PHP Web applications and enterprise data sources, applications, and services.
Capabilities are added in four key areas with version 2.0:
-- Replay detection to track whether a message is fresh or has been sent previously, thus preventing replay attacks that could lead to denial of service
-- WS-Trust backing to issue, renew, and validate security tokens for trusted relationships
-- WS-SecureConversation support to allow a series of messages to be protected by a single session key and improve efficiency of the operation
-- Public Key cryptography standards enablement for handling multiple client x509 certificates simultaneously
Developers can send and receive binary data as attachments using MTOM or a SOAP message with attachments. MTOM in version 2.0 has been optimized via caching. WSDL support has been expanded via tools. WSF/PHP 2.0 is available for download now.
source:- techworld.com.au/
SEO Services are the Best Option to Maximize your Business ROI
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the latest drone in the click away world today. SEO is gaining prominence as it not only promotes your website aging and memory loss also helps in getting leaps and bounds of traffic. SEO is the technique of shinning a light on an otherwise least searched website and making it most searchable.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a technique which helps you to build a global customer base. Search engine friendly website is more user friendly, reaching the target audience easily. SEO by and large serves as a preeminent web advertising bargain.
The need of the hour to capitalize on how to use search engines to target your niche markets & your prospective clients as:
• At least 80% of the traffic emanates from a particular Search Engine to find goods, supplies & services online.
• Trafficking Patterns: Google: 63%, Yahoo: 21%, AOL: 2%, MSN/Live: 9%, Ask: 3% Others: 2%.
• 75% of Internet users generally have an intention of purchasing a product or service when using search engines.
Guidelines to adhere to when selecting the professional SEO services:
Pre-Contract Guidelines:-
• Do not be misguided with firms which guarantee your website getting ranked 1st position in search engines.
• Do not talk to the sales people of the SEO company, talk directly to the SEO experts and find out what exactly they will be working on your site
• Research to find the SEO Company’s existing clients base and verify the actual results if possible.
• The SEO Company should be transparent and should be reliable.
source:- corsavoo.com/
Blooging with Joomla
There are many modules that can be changed around in a Joomla template to further expand the creativeness of the web developer that has been tasked with managing the corporate website. The upholstery cleaning orlando Content Management System website has a blog that developer’s use all of the time to discuss the various areas of programming that go into creating a Joomla template.
Some of the software modules for the Joomla open source program are free, and others have been developed by the core software development team and are offered at a reasonable price. There are many blog residential carpet cleaning available in the core management teams databases, so any type of blog can be selected and used on websites around the world.
A Joomla site is easy to manage and any corporate blogs could be updated several times in a very short amount of time. The community clean furniture that are devoted to extending the open source library get very creative when they are coding for a blog module, and many of these blogs will have insertion points where photos can placed to let the world know what the blogger looks like.
The expandable framework offered by Joomla gets the creative juices flowing. By adding a browser based interface to their website, a blog could be generated to publish upholstery cleaners new york releases, or keep employees at several corporate offices in tune with the latest changes in corporate policy. The blogs are not restricted to one size either because the framework of Joomla is so expandable.
The blogging software that is included in the Joomla Content Management System is part of a large number of extensions that are made available by open source code developers around the world. This blogging software is compatible upholstery cleaning las vegas image and multimedia galleries on a website, and will work well when posted on a website that simply features directory services for clients to use around the world.
Freedom of Speech is virtually assured with the blogging software in the Joomla Content Management System. In fact, people might want to discuss many things during the course of a day, and through those discussions feel very open about sharing their extension for Joomla with the rest of the upholstery cleaning orlando Joomla can be test driven before it is implemented into any company intranet, and it is very search engine friendly, so the rest of the world will quite possibly notify the corporation that they are happy to read the positive news about their company through this handy copy of blog software.
source:- corsavoo.com/
Topics
- .net (2)
- .net developer (2)
- .net development (2)
- .net development india (2)
- affordable web design (1)
- Analytics Business (1)
- Apache OFBiz (2)
- Apache software (2)
- Apache software foundation (2)
- Apache way (2)
- ApacheCon (1)
- ApacheOfBiz (1)
- Biz Talk 2009 (1)
- BizTalk Server (7)
- BizTalk Server 2009 (3)
- Blogger (2)
- Blogging (2)
- BPO (1)
- business web design (2)
- CMS (1)
- CMS benefits (1)
- Cms tips (2)
- Codding standdard (2)
- compiere (1)
- Computer (3)
- Content management (2)
- Content Management System (4)
- CRM (1)
- Cutomise Joomla (1)
- dedicated web designing team (1)
- design (1)
- development (3)
- Drupal (3)
- Drupal Customization (3)
- Drupal Development (3)
- Drupal Layouts (3)
- Drupal News (2)
- Dynamics (1)
- E accounting software (1)
- E-Commerce (4)
- E-Commerce News (2)
- e-Commerce Software (4)
- E-Commerce solution (6)
- Ecommerce (4)
- Ecoomerce News (5)
- Financial Accounting Service (1)
- Firefox (1)
- flash (1)
- flash web design (3)
- Framework (1)
- Google (2)
- Google Apps (1)
- Google News (1)
- google web talkit (1)
- Hire Drupal Developer (3)
- hire php programmer (4)
- Internet explorer (1)
- Introducting Magento (1)
- IT companies (2)
- IT development (1)
- IT Industry (4)
- Java Developer (2)
- Javascript (2)
- javascript framework (2)
- Joomla (7)
- Joomla accessibility (4)
- Joomla Article (5)
- joomla cms (5)
- Joomla community (4)
- joomla components (5)
- Joomla developers (5)
- joomla development (8)
- Joomla Extensions (1)
- joomla installation (4)
- joomla news (6)
- joomla open source (4)
- joomla oscommerce (1)
- joomla templates (3)
- joomla themes (2)
- joomla tips (2)
- Joshue o connor (1)
- KPO (1)
- Legal Outsourcing (2)
- Linux (1)
- Linux Computer (1)
- Linux server (1)
- Logo Design (1)
- Magento (11)
- Magento Blog (4)
- Magento Customization (10)
- magento demo (1)
- Magento Developers (5)
- Magento Development (9)
- magento Enterprise Edition (1)
- Magento India (5)
- Magento News (7)
- Magento Released (1)
- Market Transforming (1)
- Methodology (1)
- Microsoft (6)
- Microsoft BizTalk (5)
- Microsoft BizTalk server (5)
- Microsoft Dynamics (1)
- Microsoft project server (1)
- Microsoft Share Point Server (5)
- Microsoft Share Point Server 2007 (2)
- Microsoft SharePoint Server (1)
- Mini calendar (1)
- Moss Mini calendar (1)
- MS SharePoint Server (4)
- Multimedia Flash (1)
- MySQL (1)
- MySQL Server (1)
- Naming Convention (1)
- New Bloggers (1)
- news (8)
- Object Oriented Programming (1)
- Office SharePoint Server (3)
- Offshore Outsourcing (6)
- Offshore Outsourcing development (5)
- Offshore software development India (2)
- offshore software services (1)
- Online Business (1)
- OOP Languages (1)
- Open Source (12)
- Open source customer (8)
- Open Source Development (12)
- open source development news (8)
- open source news (11)
- Open source software (2)
- Open-source Framework (6)
- Operating system (1)
- out sourcing india (3)
- Outsource (2)
- Outsourcing company (3)
- Outsourcing Firms (5)
- Outsourcing India (2)
- Outsourcing Services (7)
- Php (7)
- Php Articles (4)
- Php Developer (4)
- Php Development (6)
- php development india (2)
- PHP file formatting (1)
- php framework (6)
- PHP language (2)
- Php Programmer (4)
- Php Programming India (2)
- php zend framework (4)
- php5 framework (1)
- PHPBB (1)
- PHPBB Books (1)
- PHPBB Customization (1)
- PHPBB Templates (1)
- procedure oriented programming (1)
- Product development (1)
- Professional web design (2)
- Programming languages (1)
- Project-planning application (1)
- SBS 2008 (1)
- Search Engine (4)
- Search Engine Marketig (5)
- Search Engine Marketing (2)
- Search Engine News (5)
- Search Engine Optimization (10)
- Search Engine Optimizer (5)
- SEM (6)
- SEO (16)
- SEO | SEM News (5)
- SEO Ahmedabad (10)
- SEO Article (15)
- Seo Article India (6)
- Seo Benefits (3)
- SEO benifits (2)
- SEO Company Ahmedabad (8)
- SEO expert (10)
- Seo India (6)
- SEO News (12)
- Seo News India (3)
- SEO Service Ahmedabad (3)
- SEO Services (4)
- Share point (4)
- Share point development (6)
- share point Development Company (2)
- share point server (4)
- Share Point Server 2007 (1)
- Share Point Server Solutions (2)
- SharePoint (1)
- sharepoint Blog (4)
- Sharepoint Development India (3)
- Sharepoint News (3)
- SharePoint server (1)
- SharePoint server 2007 (1)
- Sharepoint Server Solutions (2)
- Sharepoint Solution (3)
- Site web design (2)
- Small business (1)
- Small Business Server 2008 (1)
- Software (5)
- software development (4)
- Software Development Article (3)
- software development india (2)
- Software Development Methodology (2)
- Software Development News (4)
- Software Outsourcing India (9)
- software product development (1)
- SugarCRM (9)
- SugarCRM news (9)
- SugarCRM Solution (9)
- SugarCRM's Tracker (4)
- Symfony framework (1)
- Technology (1)
- web design (8)
- web design article (6)
- web design India (6)
- web design templates (6)
- web design tool (4)
- Web Development (1)
- Web portal (2)
- web portal development (1)
- Web portal news (2)
- webdesign (1)
- website design (2)
- Window Server 2008 (1)
- Window SharePoint services (1)
- Window SharePoint Timer (1)
- Windows Server 2008 (1)
- Wordpress customization (1)
- Wordpress Developer (1)
- Wordpress implementation (1)
- WordPress Magazine Themes (1)
- Wordpress Solution (1)
- Wordpress Solutions (1)
- Wordpress suport (1)
- Wordpress Templates (1)
- Yahoo News (1)
- zend encoder (5)
- Zend Framework (11)
- Zend Framework Coding Standard (3)
- Zend Framework Solutions (6)
- zend smarty (3)
- zend tutorial (6)
- ZF Developers (2)