Template Customization

Web Design – The Importance Of Design Simplicity For Business Websites. by John Parker

Posted on 12. Dec, 2006 by Dave.

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Search engines don’t care about Web Design. People do. While search engines will not index a website for its great layout, but for the content, people will forget the website that has nothing distinctive about it. No visual impact, no interest! Now, if you are a serious online entrepreneur and want to have a website that sends the right message to the visitors, you must know that there are some web design techniques simply inappropriate for a business website.

Many Web Design companies promise websites that respect the web standards, are usable and search engine friendly. Yes, that’s how any website should be. But these are simple tools. A professional company will mention them, but it will also let you know how a website will increase revenue, reduce expenses, bring more customers and so on. A professional web design firm will not fashion a website “out of the blue”, but conceive a design after understanding your corporate values, after analyzing the target market and respecting your brand image. That’s what you should care about when you choose a web design company.

There are many elements of web design that screw up a business website. Many are simple bad practices, other purely ugly and useless. For an unknown reason business websites with really bad web design are still fashioned every day. One of the worst Web Design techniques is to use Flash instead of text. Web designers have fallen in love with Flash, but that will do a website no good: it increases the size of the page and it is not search engine friendly. Flash is great for music bands, movie sites and other sites that need to make a “cool” impression. Business websites need to send other messages: reliability, customer support, experience and so on. There are some astonishing Flash creations on the web, but the most are simply annoying, useless and visitors just hate them. Flash is exceptionally bad when the designer forgets to put a “Skip Intro” button. On a second thought, a “Skip Intro” button will suggest that the content on that page is insignificant. So far is clear: Flash pages send out mixed messages. However, if you are really in love with flash and simply must have it on your website, create a non-Flash version. Small text could also be really annoying. If people can’t see your message, they’ll just go away, eventually to your competitors. Another bad web design practice is using too many images and animated buttons. There’s nothing worse than a website that twinkles and gets you dizzy while you try to find your way to the information through a bunch of flashy banners, buttons and useless pictures. Many web designers still use background images.

Seriously, have you ever see a global business website that has employed such a Web Design technique? Most of them have a standard, classic design, with simple navigation and plain text on a white background. The graphics are in perfect harmony with the content, they are not misleading and do have proper ALT attributes. There is a reason for simplicity in web design: creating websites that are simple, logical and easy to use, creating websites that sell.

It takes a real web designer to develop simple web pages that are both appealing and simple. Simplicity in Web Design should not by synonym with ugliness. Simple websites could be well-designed, elegant and bring other important benefits: they load faster, they are easier to scan and easier to navigate, they are quicker to design, build, redesign, maintain and they require less server space and bandwidth. Best of all: a simple Web Design will cost less and bring more!

About the Author
The author is a Writer working with a leading software development company, which deals with software outsourcing, offshore outsourcing and offshore software development. Get more valuable information at http://www.a1technology.com.

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10 Website Advantages by Mike Creati

Posted on 12. Dec, 2006 by Dave.

1. Gain a larger clientele base Everyday more people turn to the internet for their business solutions. Whether it is to research potential contractors, lawyers, or a new product, the internet introduces consumers to businesses they never would have heard of. Now people in Europe can learn about services a company in Seattle offers by the click of a mouse. Having a website introduces a business to new consumers and helps retain them as a client.

2. Educate consumers about your business Many consumers research services and products online before purchasing. By having a website, you can inform potential customers of your services or products and what separates your business from your competitors. A website will familiarize consumers with your business and make them feel comfortable doing business with you.

3. Increase customer confidence Customers can tell a lot about a company from the design of their website. An unorganized, unappealing website is a major turnoff to consumers. On the other hand, a professional looking website lets consumers know your business is serious and dedicated to their needs.

4. Cost effective promotion and marketing A website is a lowcost, effective way to market your business. Television and magazine ads are great ways to publicize, but are often too expensive and do not always provide enough information. A website does not have a page or time constraint, so there is no rush to get the required information across.

Search engines allow businesses to target a marketing group more effectively than any other advertising strategy. Consumers that utilize search engines know what they are in need of and show a stronger desire in that product or service. Having high ranking search engine results, your business’ web traffic will dramatically increase and provide you with more customers than any other source of marketing.

5. 24 hour global presence Consumers need information 24 hours a day. The internet is always active, and consumers around the world can look up information and conduct business at their convenience. A website allows a business to always be there for their customers regardless of the time of day.

6. Keep your clients updated Consumers feel more comfortable doing business with companies of which they are familiar. It is important for a business to keep clients updated with their latest news, services and products. A website is the best way to inform clients of specials or sales that a business is offering. This will help increase a business’ revenue.

7. Improve communication with customers A website enhances communication between consumers and businesses. A lot of the time consumers are interested in something on a website, but feel awkward or are too lazy to call for more information. Websites that are equipped with email forms allows consumers to ask their question in a moments notice. That is just one feature websites utilize to make communication easy. Other features are message boards, blogs, contact information and other web forms.

8. Keep the edge on competitors The popularity of the internet and understanding of the value of a website increases everyday. Businesses that have a website are already at a huge advantage over their competitors. In addition to having a wider clientele base, their business looks more professional and established. That also goes for the design of the website. When a consumer visits a clean well structured website and an average website that offers the same services, it is a nobrainer which business they will choose.
9. Provide convenient support for your customers 24hour phone support is great, but many companies do not have the funding to provide such a service. A website is a way to help support a customer’s needs when phone support is unavailable. Many websites have a frequently asked questions page that answers many customer concerns. Businesses can also provide common lessons and tutorials on their website that will help customers accomplish their goals. If customers still have support issues, a website can allow them to submit their problem via web form which will allow a business to provide an appropriate solution in a timely manner.

10. Improve businesstocustomer relationships Websites can improve businesstocustomer relationships in more ways than just via communication, support and uptodate general information. A website can also inform a user of their project’s status, account information or balance.

The convenience of a website helps increase productivity, performance and speed. Producing a reliable product or completing a particular service in less time than expected always makes a customer satisfied. It takes months to gain a good customer, but seconds to lose one, and it is hard to lose a satisfied customer.

About the Author
Mike Creati is the owner of Lunico Design LLC. He has his bachelor degree in computer science and is a member of Tau Alpha Pi.http://www.lunicodesign.com/

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Lawn Care Business Marketing – 5 Ingredients of Successful Offers

Posted on 11. Dec, 2006 by Chestin Salisbury - EzineArticles Expert Author.

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Small Business Marketing – 9 Work ‘On’ Your Business Ideas To Stimulate Growth

Posted on 11. Dec, 2006 by Chestin Salisbury - EzineArticles Expert Author.

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What is CSS?

Posted on 10. Dec, 2006 by Dave.

CSS means “Cascading Style Sheets”. CSS is a system of rules that directly effect the display properties of your web pages such as colors, fonts, colors, and layouts. CSS style blocks are also commonly referred to as rules. These rules can be embedded into an individual HTML page or placed in an external file that will control many individual pages on your website. Thus changing a property in one place in the linked style sheet will immediately make that change on every web page that is linked to it.

“CSS Web Template” is a website design created using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) technology. Cascading stylesheets provide web developers an easy way to format and to style web pages. CSS will be used even more because it is seen the same way by all browsers, making it the best option during the browser wars.

CSS templates allow enhanced browser and platform compatibility (CSS supporting browsers are used by 99,98% of existent web surfers). Your website will look perfect in Windows, Unix and Mac browsers. The template is primarily tested on multiple platforms to ensure better requirements compliance.

Style Sheets are the easiest way to provide a default font styling for HTML. So you can modify the whole text and link colors on every page by editing just a single CSS file! CSS also makes your coding much easier because you don’t have to repeat the many formatting tags. This streamlined code equals faster download time and reduced bandwidth usage.

CSS templates show 100% compatibility with Macromedia Dreamweaver and MS Frontpage. Other web editors also handle this technology easier than the usual HTML code.

Good news – now you don’t need to fight with complicated HTML tables trying to modify the layout of your site. Our CSS templates use blocks instead of tables. So you can move content blocks by simply dragging ‘n’ dropping them in your HTML editor. Moreover, these tags are better understood by JavaScript and other web programming languages.

CSS technology is a great step forward in web development. Separated content and presentation adds more flexibility to your website. And, you’ll have no problems with future modification of your website. All templates are based on w3c.org technologies and standards that make your website much more user-friendly.

Related Articles
CSS in Flash the return of Crisp and Legible Text

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How To Design Your Web Site With CSS by Herman Drost

Posted on 08. Dec, 2006 by Dave.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allows you to create fast loading pages, increase your search engine rankings, and modify your whole site with one style sheet. So why don’t more people use them? This is because they got so used to html design and are afraid or too lazy to upgrade their skills. Some will also use ready made templates that contain flashy graphics, bloated code and sometimes even contains hidden code embedded in the page. In this series of articles I will show you how to create a simple web site using CSS, so you will have no excuse to begin incorporating them into your future designs.

What are Cascading Style Sheets?

Cascading Style Sheets is the name of a simple language that allows you to add any style (font, colors, graphics, links, layouts) to your web pages.

Benefits of Cascading Style Sheets

1. Separate content from presentation – you can separate your HTML markup, text, graphics and multimedia from presentation.

2. Consistent site wide look and feel consistency – you can apply one style for 100s of web pages all at once. So if you had to change the color of all pages on your site, you only have to edit one style sheet. This saves you a huge amount of time, especially if you had to edit each page separately.

3. Web site maintenance – apart from being able to make site wide changes easily through one CSS file, the clean code it generates makes it easier to update. Properly marked up web pages permit them to be maintained by more than one person. It will also work in more browsers. Web site redesigns will take much less time.

4. Improve search engine rankings – search engines generally spider the code at the top of your web page first. For most sites that means the navigation bar will be spidered first (resides at top of page code). CSS enables you to position the code for your content at the top making your page search engine friendly. Properly marked up HTML pages can easily found and properly categorized by search engines

5. Fast loading – CSS reduces the amount of tags used therefore producing clean code. Tableless design can reduce your load time by 25% to 50%.

6. Reduce bandwidth – compacting the amount of code used will reduce the amount of bandwidth needed to host your web pages. Therefore you won’t have to pay higher fees when adding more web documents to your site.

7. Accessibility – increasing accessibility with CSS means being able to serve web content to a larger audience, increasing web site usability, even for non-disabled people. Content can easily be formatted for projection as well as screen display. Tableless layouts display well on hand-helds.

8. Improve the printing of web pages – most printers will only allow you to print a portion of the web page. With CSS your whole document can be printed.

When you use CSS it becomes quick and easy to apply new styles that can not only effect all styles on your web page but even your whole site.

In the next article I will explain how to layout a web page using CSS.

About the Author
Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com. Affordable Web Site Design and Web Hosting. Subscribe to his “Marketing Tips” newsletter for more original articles. mailto:subscribe@isitebuild.com. You can read more of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/article

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Tables vs CSS – Which is better? by Mike

Posted on 08. Dec, 2006 by Dave.

When I started exploring the design possibilities of the internet back in 1996, NetObjects Fusion was (at that point) a revolutionary WYSIWYG editor that allowed you to place pretty much any components anywhere you wanted on the page. Unfortunately for Website Pros, Inc. Macromedia had also seen the potential in WYSIWYG editors and developed what is arguably the most popular web design tool ever – Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver has managed to keep up with the requirements of the modern day web developer by constantly updating and improving aspects of its design, layout and functionality. With the latest release of Dreamweaver, Macromedia have again improved on various features but have also come to realise the potential and the need to support (in more detail) the new designer’s technique – cascade style sheets (CSS).

Having always designed using table based layouts, I recently (less than 3 months ago in fact) decided it was time to look in more detail at CSS, to learn what it could do to improve the quality of my work, specifically in terms of positioning and layout of website elements. At that point I already had a basic understand of CSS and how to use CSS to influence text styling, link styles, table colours and borders etc. The challenge was (more clearly) to see if designing layouts using CSS instead of tables was (to me) easier and more beneficial – could I be persuaded to change despite my dedication to tables?

My choice of two books (which I’m still reading incidentally), are both written and published by Sitepoint. The first (The CSS Anthology – 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks) is an excellent practical guide, not only for beginners but also for people (like me) wanting to learn a bit more (or in fact a lot more) about the potential of CSS. Whether you want to know how to justify text, create a pure CSS drop down menu or implement a liquid, two-column layout, this book is an excellent start or continuation for anyone interested in CSS.

The second and probably more relevant book that I chose (again by Sitepoint) is the 2nd Edition HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables using CSS. This book again goes over the basics of CSS, but in a more concise and brief manor. The main bulk of the book concentrates on more examples of positioning and layout. In short these are two books that I know I’m eventually going to read from cover to cover – two books that will always be to hand and provide the answer to my question when something goes wrong or I don’t fully understand exactly what I’m doing (something that happens on a regular basis).

So what have I learnt in the last few months from reading these books, reading relational website articles and listening to peoples points of view on webmaster forums? Quite simply I was quite stubborn in the beginning. I had tried about a year ago to use CSS for layouts but hadn’t got very far (although at that stage I had no books to use for reference). This time around I had the knowledge (or more accurately the books of knowledge) but was already expecting my own personal failure (based on my previous experiences). Luckily though I stuck with it and now know a lot more (although obviously not everything, by a long shot) about the potential of CSS.

Obviously (just by looking at my site) you can see that I have indeed changed from table based layouts to CSS layouts – but what truly changed my mind and would I ever go back to tables? Is this site simply a one off?

Read the full article @ http://www.michaelthorn.co.uk/021106.php and find out if i really have been converted to pure CSS layouts!

About the Author
Visit http://www.michaelthorn.co.uk for the full article and other articles on web design, SEO and adsense!

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Boost Your Business With Blogging!

Posted on 07. Dec, 2006 by Dave.

Business blog is an incredible online marketing tool that saves you thousands of dollars but provides great business opportunities in just one click. Blogs are user-friendly, customized and flexible medium for disseminating useful information for effective positioning of your products in the market. Companies engaging in business blogging have a definite edge over its competitors. Here are some advantages.

Word-of-Mouth.

In a survey, there are currently 14 million blogs with 80,000 more being added each day and about 30 percent of the 50 million users are blog readers. Imagine how much gain your company will have, if your products are advertised through blogs. With Internet, information spreads so quickly especially if an impressive write-up goes with your product. Soon your blogs will be passed on to hundreds of possible customers.

Awareness and loyalty.

Open communication with your customers creates trust and loyalty among them. Being there to respond to their questions and comments make them all the more willing to try your products and services.

Feedback.

Blogs is good for product research and reviews. It would be easier to improve on your products if you observe your customers’ thinking and behavioral patterns. You can also take immediate action to your customers’ concerns.

Community halo-effect.

Bloggers are reasonable, friendly and helpful. They are more than willing to create blogosphere of comments regarding your product. The only thing you have to do is embrace and take active part in the culture and your product will surely be considered in their next stop to the supermarket. For better marketing results, actively promote your business blogs by submitting your blogs to blog search sites and directories. Do not forget to paste in with your blogs, your URL. Be sure that your blogs contain exclusive information with value and are always updated to keep readers popping in, read up your blog, move on to the next and click on again for updates. Blog is like a setup booth in the biggest trade show on earth everyday. Marketing possibilities are just around the corner waiting to strike your sale scales up.

The Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are important too in conjunction with your blogs to get the best benefits. Use effective keyword phrases to generate high ranking status in the search engine traffic. In this way you have better chances of people finding your website leading to your blogs. More traffic means more potential sales. For this to be successful, you can use RSS for news update feeds which can be read through RSS reader application. This is a very useful tool for business and internet marketers as well. If you are already convinced with the potentials of business blogs for marketing and targeting sales increase, your company is now ready to start blogging.

But first, you have to be in tune with your company’s business objectives and determine if blogging will really help you achieve your goal.

1. Several blogs are dedicated to teaching people the do’s and don’ts of blogging, READ them! Include in your reading materials blogs that are consumer-based too to give you an idea.

2. Setup several test blogs right away. If your initial try out with blogs worked well, you can now start setting up your blogs.

1. Study blog design. Blog hosting services provide pre-designed templates. But if you opt for paid blog service, you can ask your artist to design and layout your blog site to match the company’s identity and needs.

2. Choose a topic. Its good to have a line-up of topics you want for your blogs but be sure they are in consonance with your business objectives. This would be a test of your flexibility and open-mindedness since results may be going against the set objectives.

3. Remember the following safety measures in blogging: ? legal issues are sometimes involved in blogging; it is safer to include disclaimers and limitations of liabilities; ? corporate communication and legal department are responsible in educating the senior management on how blogs might affect business; ? create blogging policies; set limits on who gets to blog and what information are allowed to be made public; ? avoid outright marketing blog or you will shy away your readers; ? make content updated, relevant and fresh; ? reinforce the company’s core values; and, ? encourage employees to use it.

4. Start blogging and complete 20 posts before going to marketing.

5. Begin marketing.

6. Regularly monitor the coming ins and outs of readers and get updates. Then, measure your results.

7. Adjust if needed. You can always play with your designs in the blog site as long as it remains to match the company’s identity.

8. Strive to be consistent with your topic all the time.

9. Try to have unrelated topics with general and broad appeal.

10. Schedule updates regularly. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday would be best to update blogs. Once you have done all these things, you can now ultimately enjoy the benefits of business blogging.

About the author:
For more information about blogging see the blogging section of
The Free Ad Forum at: http://www.thefreeadforum.com/infowizards/CAT/Blogging_74_
1.html

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Making a Website Using Website Templates – by David Dugan

Posted on 07. Dec, 2006 by Dave.

There are some amazing websites on the net these days. It used to be that if you wanted a really good website it would cost you thousands of dollars and months of time. Not any more! The quality and availability of website templates these days makes it easy for anyone to have an amazing website quickly and easily.

Initially you may be overwhelmed by the choices in templates for your site. There are many sites that have many different templates available. This is a good thing though. Just take some time up front before you begin searching to identify the type of site you are going to make. Once you have done this it will be easy to sort through the different templates as most good sites have them categorized for you.

Theme or category isn’t the only thing to decide however. Once you’ve found the template you want to use for your website you then need to decide on the leve of customization you want for it. If it is a good site then you will be able to change things like color, font and logo without to much trouble. Other changes should also be avaialable to you but will be more difficult to implement. You may need certain software or have to pay an additional fee for example.

A quick side-note on web hosting. In choosing your template you should be sure of what features your hosting company provides you. Depending on the template your server may need to support certain functions. PHP is a good example. Many free or discount hosting companies don’t provide scripting to their clients. Be sure you check before choosing your template. Some last notes on website templates. Whether you need a template for a – system like osCommerece, PHP Nuke,phpBB or a custom site of your own, you can find one quickly and easily. Some research and organization on your part will save you time and money in the end. Don’t be fooled by some of the free template sites you see out there. You always get what you pay for.

About the author:
D. David Dugan recommends the web hosting solutions offered by
DD&C at http://hosting.dugancom.com and the website templates at http://templates.divinfo.com

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Content Management Systems Demystified

Posted on 06. Dec, 2006 by Dave.

A content management system can be puzzling to non-web savvy users. It can even be complicated for web designers and programmers. This is not a guide for the latter, rather it is a quick overview for the former. If you have heard of a content management system (or CMS) and are wondering what one is, this is the place to start.

A CMS can basically fall into one of two categories. It can be a catch-all that is intended to do a million things. Alternatively, it can be very specialized. To add to the complication, some specialized CMS’s can be integrated into a catch-all CMS. We won’t really get into that specific situation much here, but I will mention when it’s possible.

Also, there are tons and tons of CMS programs out there. I’m only going to be mentioning some that are available for free and are open source. That way, if you read about something here that interests you, you search Google and get it immediately with no monetary risk to you.

Catch-All

PHP-Nuke is an excellent CMS for a news site. It is divided into modules, each of which performs a specific functions. In addition to modules made by the PHP-Nuke team, there are tons of other modules available from 3rd-party programmers. The primary module for most sites using PHP-Nuke is the News module. The Reviews module is for reviewing books, movies, or pretty much anything you would want to review. The Advertising module helps you set up banner ads on your website for revenue. A Downloads module is available for web site visitors to download PDF files, movie files, or any type of file. A Recommend Us module allows users to (you guessed it) recommend your website to someone else.

The possibilities are really endless for someone who decides to use PHP-Nuke. However, because it is a catch-all content management system, it isn’t for everyone. It may have way more features that you need.

Drupal
Drupal is a CMS that also uses modules. There are lots of modules available. A Story module provides a similar functionality to PHP-Nuke’s News module. A Profile module supports configurable user profiles. The Blog module enables keeping an easily updatable blog. An Upload module allows users to attach files to news stories or blog entries.

Again, you end up with the same issues as other catch-all CMS’s where this may be more CMS that you really need. But Drupal does have about the same amount of modules out there as PHP-Nuke does. Drupal even does a better job than PHP-Nuke of listing the best modules at their own website.

Image Galleries

Gallery is the definitive gallery software. You can upload images, sort into albums, resize, delete, restrict access, etc. You can even plug it into most catch-all CMS’s, including both PHP-Nuke and Drupal.

Coppermine
Coppermine is another popular gallery. It has most of the same features as Gallery, but cannot plug into catch-all CMS’s as easily as Gallery. Also, if you are wanting visitors to your site to be able create albums, Coppermine currently doesn’t support that.

Blogging

bBlog is reportedly used by thousands of bloggers world-wide. It allows for text formatting, visitor comments, syndicated RSS feeds (If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry about it. You don’t have to for your visitors to be able to use it.) and categories. The downside is that bBlog is not quite as powerful as some of its competitors. However, if you have a site that’s a pretty straightforward blog, bBlog can be a simple, effective solution.

WordPress
WordPress is one of the most popular free blogging software packages. It’s very easy to use, and unlike bBlog, it has a toolbar for text formatting. Of course, it has visitor commenting, searching, categories and other features. Being much more popular than other blogging systems like bBlog, there are a lot more plugins available from third parties.

Forums

phpBB is probably the single most popular feature-rich free forum software out there. It’s so popular that it comes pre-installed in some catch-all CMS’s, including PHP-Nuke. The downside is that it can be extremely complicated. You may not need 10 different forums for 500+ users. If not, this software package may be a bit of overkill for you.

WWWBoard
WWWBoard is a simple forum package. It shows all the message subjects on one screen. Once you click on a message subject, you are shown the message itself. From there you can reply, or view another message in the same thread.

Remember that for the majority of the software I’ve mentioned here, you have to have mySQL database capabilities on your server, in addition to PHP capabilities. If you are using free hosting, you probably don’t have that. If you’re not sure, contact your web hosting company and ask them.

About the author:
Tim is the owner and senior web designer at T&S Web Design. His
company has developed and maintained website for dozens of small
businesses and organizations. Tim also maintains a blog with
free website advice for small business owners, GetASiteOnline.com.

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The Disciples of osCommerce, Zen and CRE Loaded

Posted on 05. Dec, 2006 by Dave.

osCommerce is a powerful and open source e-commerce storefront system, that’s not without a few shortcomings. We pointed out a few of them in our review here a little while back. We also pointed out that one of its great strengths was its extensibility, which is manifested in many user-contributed modules as well as spin-offs. Two such spin-offs of osCommerce are Zen Cart and CRE Loaded — both of which are based on osCommerce and both of which enhance it in a number of ways.

One of the most disturbing items that I found when originally evaluating osCommerce was its lack of a proper security setup for an administrator. I’m pleased to report that both Zen Cart and CRE Loaded have addressed this issue and both have some form of a proper administrator login. Both of these applications are based on osCommerce and as such have a similar core base of functionality and operations. Where they differ is in the new modules/features added and how close or how far they stray from their progenitor.

Zen Cart

Zen Cart carries the moniker, “the art of e-commerce” as its tagline and as a virtual mission statement for how the software should work. Installation of Zen Cart, much like osCommerce, is simple and easy to follow. The step-by-step installation goes a step beyond the ordinary by alerting you if something is not properly configured, for example file permissions. Though this may sound trivial at first, it can be a serious troubleshooting issue later on, as file permissions are not always what they should or need to be right off the bat. By identifying any potential ‘gotchas’ at the installation phase Zen-Cart facilitates a pleasant installation experience.

Zen Cart coupons
This setup screen in Zen Cart allows users to create electronic coupons.

Though Zen Cart is based on osCommerce and has a similar menu setup, the default setup does not look like a typical osCommerce installation. The main Zen Cart Admin screen starts with a “dashboard” type approach that lays out the core statistics of your e-commerce activities (hits, sales, customers, products, orders). This is different than the default osCommerce (and CRE Loaded) main screen, which is a list of admin options. From a business point of view, starting with the core statistics is probably a good thing and gives you an immediate first glance at what’s going on. From an admin point of view though, you need to navigate through the lengthy pull down menus to get to the various administrative options. For a novice the pull-down menus may seem a bit overwhelming at first.

The default configuration of Zen Cart does not, for some reason, have an inline WYSIWYG HTML editor enabled (that makes editing certain content easier) by default. For that you’ll have to select the option under the configuration menu and enable it.

Added Features

Beyond some aesthetic changes, the major differences between osCommerce and Zen Cart come from Zen Cart’s long list of added features. Among the modules included are a Gift Certificate/Voucher module which allows you to create, send and manage the digital coupons. The Downloads Manager enables you to effectively manage downloadable sales (pdf or other media files). Attribute configuration options in the Download module allow you to configure how many days the download is available for and how many downloads per purchaser.

Zen Cart also has an option that allows for integrating phpBB bulletin board support, though you’ll need to install that software on your own separately.

I found the documentation for Zen Cart to be very un-zen in that it is disparate, text heavy and not always easy to follow or understand. There is a 59-page Administrator Manual that is available as a separate download, but unfortunately it is not up to date and currently matches Zen Cart v1.1.2. This large tome is detailed and indexed properly but is likely overwhelming for the average user. There is a much simpler “First Steps To Setting Up A Cart, Newbie Guide” that a user contributed in the support forums that, though less detailed, is probably sufficient enough to get going with the application and to properly set up a reasonable storefront.

Zen Cart index template
One of the Index page templates included in Zen Cart.

CRELoaded

CRELoaded looks and feels much like osCommerce (as opposed to Zen Cart which has its own Zen Cart “look” by default) such that it even carries the osCommerce logo (by default before customization). The purpose of CRELoaded is to supercharge osCommerce – a purpose which is stamped on the footnote of every page with the statement, Powered by osCommerce Supercharged by CRE Loaded Team.

Installation of CRE Loaded lacks the “gotchas” notification for file permissions that Zen Cart has. This can be a bit annoying once you get into the program and realize that you need to go back to your server to set the appropriate permission. The installation setup also does not allow you set up the original Admin user/password setup. Though, if you read the README.txt file (which I didn’t) you’ll discover what the default is admin@localhost/admin). The administrative capabilities of CRE Loaded are greater than those of Zen Cart, as it includes multi-admin capabilities, which allow more than one admin to be specified as well as permissions for different admins.

If you would like to continue reading The Disciples of osCommerce, Zen and CRE Loaded by Sean Michael Kerner you may do so by simply going here

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The future of eCommerce store development!

Posted on 05. Dec, 2006 by Dave.

As a long time web designer I’ve dealt with any number of
eCommerce options over the years. In general you’ve always had two major options:

1) You build and code from scratch. This required a great deal of knowledge in various coding languages in addition to the ability to design an attractive interface which will work within the construct of the website’s structure. 2) You pay a company with pre-built systems. This was not only extremely expensive but rarely allowed you freedom to create any sort of pleasing
design as it would have to conform to their limited header/footer customization.

Well, I’ve seen the light now! The future is here and (unfortunately for people in “the business” like me) it’s unbelievably easy to do.

These free solutions are Open Source based online shop e-commerce solutions that are available under the GNU General
Public License. They all contain a rich set of out-of-the-box online shopping cart functionalities that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, fees, or limitations involved. Most of these Open Source solutions provide an e-commerce platform, which include the powerful PHP web scripting language and the fast MySQL database server. With no special requirements, they are able to run on any PHP 4.1+ enabled web server running on Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows environments.

Unbelievable right? Well,, it’s true and I’m loving it.

In addition to the obvious advantages of these open source stores, there are many less obvious benefits such as – Active user forums where you can get answers to most any question without dealing with charges or “canned responses” from a profit company. – The ability to change the design of your store nearly instantly by simply selecting a new “template” from within your administration panel – Countless free “add-ons” and “modules” which add all types of additional features to your store. – As the projects continue to grow and the stores improve you can upgrade, and of course the upgrades are free also.

In my opinion once of the greatest of the above features is the ability to change the design and/or appearance of your site with the ease of a few uploads and button clicks (ONCE YOU HAVE A DESIGN DEVELOPED). The most common complaint I found from OS users was the same one I’ve heard about other e-commerce packages. People weren’t aware of how much work would be involved in getting an original design put together. They would get to a certain point, hit an unexpected bottleneck, and be unable to keep going. The majority of the work involved in
getting your store up and running was getting a design to function within the limits and restrictions of the store’s code. Every implementation will run into these problems, and everything takes longer and costs more than you plan for it, whether it’s proprietary or open source. There are now; however, easy solutions for this issue which will prevent you from
getting overwhelmed. Many businesses on the web (example:http://www.bg-website-templates.com &
http://www.bluegelmedia.com ) who focus on web template development have entered a whole new era in template design. They have begun development of stunning designs for Open Source eCommerce solutions such as OScommerce, ZenCart, and CRE Loaded (the most popular of these Open Source eCommerce solutions). This allows you to easily implement a perfect store design within minutes. While these design templates are not free like the eCommerce solution, they are worth the mere $50 average
price, saving you weeks of frustrating design.

You can find more information on these Open Source eCommerce Solutions at their hub sites. Just type in the OS solution name you wish to research into your search engine and their home
pages will show up. The most popular solutions are ZenCart,
OScommerce & CRE Loaded. But there are many other ones out there to choose from; however these three have proven themselves over time and have such large user bases and support groups that I
would recommend trying one of them first before attempting to delve into lesser known solutions.

To sum this all up. While large companies will always need a custom built solution for their online stores, the average small business no longer needs to spend five or ten thousand dollars to have a quality store developed. The use of a free OS solution along with an inexpensive design template will have you selling online for pennies on the dollar compared with a custom built store. Even if you don’t feel you have the skill set to work
with the OS solutions, you can hire any competent developer to implement it for you. Sure you’ll be charged, but the price will be a small percentage of what you would have paid.

Written by Gene Torrey

Webmaster/Lead Designer.

I have spent nearly seven years in the pursuit of how to make high end websites using small business resources.

This article may be reproduced if all content, links and byline remain intact.
Ecommerce Web Templates can be found using this link.

About the author:
Written by Gene Torrey Webmaster/Lead Designer. I have spent nearly seven years in the pursuit of how to make high end websites using small business resources.

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