Wordpress LMS Time for a Solution for ESL and Other Courses Online

This blog is about my experiences, thoughts, and ideas with the struggle with making money online. It is not easy at all. For every success story you have hundreds if not thousands who make less than minimum wages.  Our dependence on the search engines for traffic and limitations of current software can make our tasks very difficult or very easy, but in any case it is still quite a lot of work for most of us.

I first started with websites online with portallanguageservices.com which was at first an HTML site I made with Dreamweaver templates. It was great at first and I was adding information for my ESL (English as a Second Language) students to look at and some fun games for practicing vocabulary and tests for reading.  At the time, I only knew HTML so I was just limited to what was not dynamic or software online to use as-is.  After several months of adding content and seeing my visitors rise, I also saw that manually updating/adding HTML pages was getting quite tedious. I was having trouble getting a consistent look and I found myself spending time on getting the same design on each page often more than in writing my content!

I next went on to try Wordpress (which was much more limited then. It was before tags were added around version 2.3), Joomla, Drupal, etc.  I found Joomla to be tedious and Drupal to have a poor interface so I stuck with Wordpress and HTML.

Next I went to see if I could use any software for creating online courses for giving tests to my off-line students to take when they were not in class with me. I tried Atutor but the lack of help was unnerving. It worked and I was able to give tests, but I knew it wasn't anything I could easily modify or improve myself. I finally got rid of  Atutor with much regret after trying to set up a new course finding that half of my page content was cut off.  It seems they decided that we shouldn't have pages with a lot of text!  I couldn't get the Paypal system to work right either since that was just an add-on and the instructions were vague. I could pay, but the system wouldn't update.

I next went on to try Moodle. I admit the community is much larger and people were really friendly. There seems to be several ESL/EFL teachers online willing to help out, but I couldn't figure out how to create a course.  I know Moodle is powerful and can do very much what you want, but the interface was not very intuitive and I didn't want to have to take a course or read a book  to create a course! I was shocked to discover that almost a year and half have gone by since I joined Moodle.  I still have my Moodle install online, but I don't have it linked to my pages so it shouldn't come up for searches. In any case, the courses I was working on are set as unavailable.

Not much after joining Moodle, I started working on integrating affiliate datafeeds to my websites since I really didn't care for paying for Popshops which didn't quite meet my needs and without good sales, who wants to be paying a monthly fee?  With many hours of self-study and asking a couple friends in a forum some questions when I got stuck, I learned how to write PHP pages using mysql for databases.   Every so often I've added more code of my own or hacked other free scripts getting better. I'm far from an expert, but I am not a newbie in the least.

What happened to my first website? As I got more focused on creating my visual art which is my third activity, I admit I left it in a sorry state. I had started to convert it from HTML to Wordpress, but kept running into problems with integrating the quizzes and games many of which are in javascript.   Very frustrated, I left it in a worse state than it was in before with so many broken unredirected links that my traffic went from several hundred visitors per day to around 50 per day to old pages that unlinked still somehow get traffic! Ever since then it has been nagging me so a couple days ago I started my third attempt. I'm still in the process of moving that old content into "ordpress, but I finally have a plan for how to do it so it will be organized and logical even if it takes me until summer to finish!   I first mindmapped my ideas then I made a diagram of what I would do.

What about those pesky tests and quizzes and javascript games? I've put my PHP coding skills to use and I've turned my favorite quiz script into a Wordpress plugin integrating the logged in user info or email address for registering test and quiz  scores each test gets its own table and the scores are also placed in a master gradebook table recording the initial answers and then the most recent score and the number of tries for each test.

Anyone can take a quiz which makes it very internet friendly, but only registered and logged in users can see their answers in the gradebook while admins (think teachers) can see the gradebook scores for any test or student.    I like this system because they just have to log in to Wordpress and then navigate to the gradebook to see their results.

What more needs to be done? I need to do quite a lot of code clean up and I'd need to make an options page before distributing the code. Most of the settings are hard-coded and I've been using a separate database instead of the wordpress one although that would be easy to switch.   Other items on my to do list is to add recording of  passing grades from some of the activities that are not necessarily scored, but I'd like to see that a student did the activity.  I'm afraid I'd have to learn AJAX so that might be in 2011 or 2012 depending on what information I come across.Finally I'd eventually like to set up PayPal for membership to get certain features yet I'm not eager to learn their API or pay hundreds of dollars a year for a membership plugin.

Is anyone out there going through the same issues, just wishing that Wordpress had a LMS  quiz/testing/grading/gradebook system set up?

I would like to have Wordpress (or something as easy to use and expandable) for my LMS base because it is a great tool for communication. Most LMS are very closed system which is fine for an established schools, but not so great for private teachers and online educators. With Wordpress you can add content and the search engines can find it quickly.

I also think Wordpress would make a great LMS base because all of the busy work of registration and notification of new users.  Users can log in and edit their profiles right away.

Wordpress has hundreds of PHP based themes and custom page template options. You can easily use a free theme from wordpress.org to use or customize one to your hearts content by changing the CSS and PHP of the templates.

Wordpress only isn't an LMS because of the lack of plugins for managing course content and record keeping. I have seen some slow progress with a plugin for quizzes (but no grade keeping!) and another for a gradebook which is no longer supported (yet you have to mantain a CSV file with scores to use it).

I've given up on hoping someone else will do it for me so I decided yesterday to hack my favorite and previously abandoned PHP quiz script fixing its per-quiz table records to include a gradebook and a script for viewing scores of tests.  The missing element was user (student) management.  By using current user checks in Wordpress, I was able to show quiz scores based on level. The admin sees scores for tests by all students when logged in.  A normal Wordpress user only will see his or her scores when logged in.  A guest quiz taker or someone not logged in will see a page reminding them to log in or to register if they need to.   If you go to the "reading" option in the menu there and select an article, you will then be able to read then answer comprehension questions.  After adding your name and e-mail address, you get your results and an e-mail message with the test name and score for your personal records.   A logged in user seeing the quiz will have their name and e-mail filled out using information from their Wordpress profile.  Their user ID is also recorded when the grades are saved to the database.

Can you think of a better way of doing this?  I'm trying to keep it simple so that if I later switch to a different CMS as my LMS backend, it wouldn't take more than a few days to reintegrate the script.  I didn't want to create a separate user registration system since that just complicates it and it would break eventually as Wordpress gets updated.

What are you looking for in an LMS for Wordpress? What should it do or not do? I'm very limited in time since I need to work hard to pay the bills, but if I get help or enough donations, I might be able to fix it up enough for testing by other teachers.

Current issues:

• Need a way to record Pass/fail grades for activities online


• Need a way for a teacher to manually add grades for activities that are offline or cannot be checked by the server.


• Need a way to add more question types. Currently only works for T/F and multiple choice. I'd like to add a drag and drop ordering question for process or timeline questions. I'd also like to add matching and sorting questions.


• Need a way to calculate a running grade for all tests on a site or a grade for a specific group of quizzes as courses by level or topic.


• There is no way to enter a quiz as having more weight than others for when I later add grade calculation.


• Need a script for quickly creating quiz forms and saving those forms to the quiz directory.


• Need a system for giving and receiving written homework although a special contact form would probably cover most circumstances since homework files could be email attachments.


• Need a way to add a calendar of events and assignments for courses with specific start and finish dates. This doesn't matter for open ended courses, but schools would want one.  I believe there is a plugin for this (yet no gradebook for recording that information).   Wordpress has a calendar widget and posts can be scheduled for different days in the future. You could schedule posts and put them in an assignment category however students can't see new posts until they go live whereas a normal syllabus would let you see every topic that has to be covered.  Pages could be used with topics and links, but a huge list of everything to complete might demotivate a student.

Recent developments online make many past needs unnecessary.  Twitter and Facebook have effectively replaced the need for a chat. It can be very easy to see updates and answer quick questions.

How do you install Google Analytics on Wordpress?

Question: How do you install Google Analytics on Wordpress?

Answer:

One way is to install one of the many Google Analytics plugins and activate it then go to settings for that plugin and give it the ID for the site.
Pros: If you switch themes,  your Google Analytics will still work.
Cons: It takes some time to select and install a plugin since there are so many for GA.

The other option is to go to wp-content/themes/yourthemename/  and paste the code in your footer.php (just don't do it between <?php and ?> )
Pros: This is very fast to do since you just past the code and save the file.
Cons: If you change to another Wordpress theme, you will need to paste the code in its footer.php

Thoughts regarding Buddypress 1.2

BuddyPress is a social feature plugin for Wordpress.

Buddypress 1.2 was recently released this winter (2010), and I've spent the last couple weeks trying to use it. This post isn't a review or a list of features, but instead my thoughts about this update. I have been running buddypress on my main visual art website, http://visualartgifts.com. It is a small community and marketing site for visual artists of all kinds and people who love art are also welcome to join for commenting and feedback.
I was pretty happy with the progress in 1.1, but there are still quite a few issues for BuddyPress to fix before I want to run it on other sites.

Upgrading to BuddyPress 1.2.x

I followed the instructions on the BuddyPress website for upgrading from 1.1.

Essentially you have to:

1. Deactivate BuddyPress and plugins that work with BuddyPress.
2. Update BuddyPress in the plugins page using the upgrade link by the plugin list. (or manually do it by FTP)
3. Delete old BuddyPress theme files from the server. (Previous themes don't work )  OR install a compatibility plugin.
4. Activate the default theme or make a child theme of it and activate it instead (first in the site options then in appearance-themes)

I admit that having to yet again change themes bothered me since I use my own customized theme for Wordpress and for external pages and scripts linked to Wordpress. I live having my different website components blend as much as possible.

Site Wide Recent Posts broke

The sitewide recent posts widget was broken completely in this version and I did let them know in a trouble ticket. I don't use the "activity streams" component since I don't want my site to be like Facebook or Twitter. I want it for blogging, forums, and messaging.   With activity streams off, the Sitewide Recent Posts widget disappears COMPLETELY.

When I turned that feature set back on, the Sitewide Recent Posts widget reappears, yet there are no recent posts displayed on site.

This really bothered me since that widget worked perfectly with BuddyPress 1.1 with Activity Streams off.  I understand that sometimes things break while improving other areas, but I always considered Site wide Recent Posts to be essential to a multi-blog community site.

I'm hoping that this feature will be fixed and working properly with version 1.3 when it comes out.

BuddyPress Profile Syncing

I really don't remember if the BuddyPress profile and the Blog ID #1 profile data synced in earlier versions, but it doesn't seem to be working right now.   It became important to be when I added extra fields to my profile info using the new feature in Wordpress 2.9.2.

Those fields don't appear in Buddypress's profile list nor profile page. I'm sure that this is complicated, but it is a sticking point for me.  If a user is a guest author/blogger, they have to be told to edit their "other profile" in the main blog. There really should be a way to truly merge them or at least add the variables to the Buddypress profile and have them saved twice.

New Default Theme for BuddyPress

The new default theme for BuddyPress is another case of one step forward and two steps back.  The default buddypress theme for 1.1 was quite attractive with separate widgets for the homepage and other main blog post sidebars.  It was easy to get those sitewide posts in the main widget and everything just worked.

The new default theme for 1.2 really seems to be dumbed down. You have just one widgetized sidebar to work with so you can't say what should go there for the homepage vs. blog pages.  There just isn't room there for multiple BuddyPress widgets and those look really strange on post pages!

What I did about the theme...

I knew that I had to "yet again" make another child theme of the default theme. I just don't believe in running plugins for compatibily. I figure that perhaps in version 1.5 there will be yet another make over and the compatibility plugin would just bloat more.

What I had to do was edit the functions.php and add new widgets and then edit the theme files to point to those widgets. I did that in a "child theme" basically you create another css file and save it in another directory in your theme folder while pointing to the theme it is based on. Next you just have to go in and edit each file in the default theme you want to modify and save each in the new folder.  To use the child theme you have to activate it in Site Admin -- Themes then activate it in Appearance - Themes.

You need something like the following at the beginning of your child theme's style.css:


/*

Theme Name: BuddyPress Your Theme Name


Theme URI: http://yourwebsite.com/themes/yourtheme/

Description: Your Theme Name theme for BuddyPress.

Version: 1.0

Author: Your Name


Author URI: http://yourwebsite.com/

Template: bp-default

Tags: buddypress, number of columns, keyword, blah

*/

If you want to use the CSS (style/layout settings) from the default theme, also add the following to the style.css file:

/* Inherit the default theme styles */

@import url( ../../plugins/buddypress/bp-themes/bp-default/_inc/css/default.css );

/* Inherit the default theme adminbar styles */

@import url( ../../plugins/buddypress/bp-themes/bp-default/_inc/css/adminbar.css );

Adding my own special widget sidebars and widget areas to the sidebar was a little more complicated, but if anyone comments about it, I'll write a post with more information.  It isn't any different from adding widgetized areas to any other Wordpress theme.

Final thoughts about BuddyPress 1.2.x

I see great promise in BuddyPress and it is still the best way to add social features to a Wordpress install. It is also free which is amazing.  If you are thinking of going beyond comments on your Wordpress site, I'd suggest waiting a few more updates before giving it a try. The code base is still going through radical changes even though it is beyond 1.0.  Any customizations you make to BuddyPress now will most likely need to be redesigned or fixed in later 1.x versions.

Buddypress 1.1 Works

I've been following the development of Buddypress since it was first announced because I had been searching for a community solution that would have many of the features they announced would be included.    I had even tried an alpha version with horrible results last year.  At that point I had decided to wait until it was beyond 1.0.

qTranslate plugin incompatible

I was actually testing the 1.1 release candidate so I could help with some bugs and I did actually find one.  I also discovered that the current version of qTranslate the multilingual plugin I use totally breaks the new buddypress pages causing "page not found" or whatever your Wordpress 404 page says. This is due to something in the URL rewriting.  I reported it to the qtranslate forum on Monday, but now it is Saturday and there wasn't even a reply to my thread there. This is frustrating because Wordpress doesn't check language tags so pages that were translated display their content twice when the plugin is disabled.

The bug  I had discovered involved a Buddypress function being called when I had that feature disabled in the Buddypress configuration. I was happy to see that the if function exists check was added to the problem line of code the same day I reported it.

Buddypress adds several features and fixed one important problem.

Working Forums

The problem I had and any reader will notice is the integration of forums with wordpress. Wordpress's parent company started their bbPress forum software project before Buddypress but after Wordpress however my testing of the software over the last year only made me want to cry. It was never compatible with recent versions of Wordpress and for about a year there was always a message of it being just a month or two away of being up to date. Also the integration needed so that people wouldn't have to register and log in never seemed to work right.   When it was announced that Buddypress would use bbPress as the forum software I was brought to tears and I totally refused to try 1.0 since you had to manually install bbPress and I remember how much fun that was.

I had tried the SimpleForum software on my sites for several months and it was easy to install and configure, but when I updated my sites to Wordpress 2.8 the forums broke and no content would display even after following their instructions so that promising plugin lost my favor.

In Buddypress 1.1, special code was added so that the integration of the bbPress forum software was automated so you couldn't do it wrong. Additionally the display of forums is also handled so you don't need to log in to bbPress to edit themes and other frustrating tasks you'd want to avoid.  This is great because having to manage a separate theme for integrated forums just does not make sense.

Groups

Buddypress set up a group system which works like bbPress's main forums, but the difference here is that different users can join groups and start threads.  On a group page you can see who is part of the discussion group and the admin can manage it all there.

Friends

Being able to friend someone is fun, but the functionality is that you can invite your friends to join a group not any member.

Blog Directory and Member directory

I was surprised to discover that the system automatically added a directory of blogs (including blog 1) and a directory of members.  I thought I'd need a plugin for those, but they just appeared.

Sitewide Recent Posts

If you enable the Buddypress option to track posts, you'll discover a widget for displaying recent posts from all the blogs.  Before you needed a plugin to do that on Wordpress MU. I don't know when that was added, but I'm glad it was. It saved the installation and configuration of yet-another-plugin.

Buddypress still has much work to do even though it is officially 1.1 it still feels like a beta. Although it was announced from the beginning there still isn't a system for users to make a photo gallery.  You can use a plugin for that though.

There also isn't any way to set a membership level or be able to charge for features. (so you can pay for that dedicated server you'll need)  Since the plugin is for setting up communities, I think memberships really should be included as an essential core feature not something left for plugins.

In any case, I'm happy that the development of Buddypress is active and have great hope for Buddypress in the future.  It was nice to see that Buddypress took care of about half of my "wishlist" in the previous post.

Wordpress MU 2.7 Finally Released!

WordPress MU was just recently released and I've upgraded several of my websites without any problems or error message through out the upgrade process.  It even includes a nice horizontal toolbar on top in addition to the sidebar. I'm very happy with this release for the same reasons mentioned in my previous post regarding WordPress 2.7.

The only real bug I've found is with upgrading plugins. After upgrading one plugin, the upgrade options disappear for a day or so ( I haven't actually timed it).  I'll still see a number by Plugins in the menu, but the options on the plugin page are gone!  This bug first appeared in MU 2.7 "bleeding-edge" when regular 2.7 came out. I reported it informally at the time.

Another thing that is needed for WordPress MU is a way to select all users and all blogs on the page without clicking each one. This is important for not wasting time deleting splogger registrations. I've been fighting the battle and losing against sploggers due to the lack of effective solutions. A simple CAPTCHA is not enough and after several months of this drudgery I've removed the signup link and I've disabled user blog signups. Hopefully in future versions we'll be able to limit signups/per day/month by IP and other tools that could help. Currently in WordPress MU you only have the option to list domains you want to blog signups for, but I've noticed that since .info domains are cheap for the first year, a splogger could easily register hundreds of those. As soon as I block one, they register with another.

Wordpress 2.7 has been released Wordpress 2.7 Review

Wordpress 2.7 Review

Wordpress 2.7 was just released, and I am happy to say that they did it right.  I upgraded one of my smaller wordpress sites using the automatic upgrade plugin and dove in. Here is my review of Wordpress 2.7.

I'm glad to say that the water's fine.  First of all they rearranged the interface. Now the navigation menu is in the left sidebar. It uses JavaScript (probably AJAX) to give expanding sub-menus so it takes fewer page reloads to get to specific items.

New Color Scheme

The new color scheme uses different shades of gray and a light blue link color. That light blue link color makes my eyes sore with my flat panel display, but I suppose it looks good on CRTs.

Menu Icons

WordPress now has icons for each item in the sidebar navigation.

Write Posts/Pages Fixed

I don't know about you but I was so ANGRY when WordPress moved the category list from the right sidebar to below the post write area. I was so upset that I had to scroll down just to select a stupid category, something you have to do every post!  Thankfully, the category selection box is back to where it belongs in the right sidebar and above-the-fold.  It took a while, but I'm glad it is back  They also put Tags there which also makes sense.

They also added back the Preview button that had been removed a few versions ago.

New Screen Options

For those who are looking for a more minimalistic Wordpress, their prayers have been answered.

You can now click on "screen options" which is in the upper right part of WordPress, and you get some check box that you can check/uncheck (or "tick") to show or hide different parts.

New Quickpress

Quickpress is a nice option for people who want to just log in and start posting. In your Dashboard page (the page you go to after you log in), there is a Quickpress box which lets you just type a post title, content, and tags then save as draft or publish.

The only problem with that is that there is no way to select a category. I may not need all the bells and whistles, but I think the category is just as essential as the title. Hopefully they'll fix that or someone will make a plugin to put that there.

Plugins Page NOT Fixed

One change I didn't like with WP-2.5 was how they got rid of drag and drop widgets. This was especially useful when you had 2 or 3 sidebars defined. Unfortunately the drag and drop widgets are still gone. You still have to click on "add" and you still have to select the sidebar in a drop-down menu.

Add (install) Plugin Feature

Now, you no longer have to download a plugin and upload it via FTP to your server. I'm sure I'll love this feature because I have many websites (most use Wordpress MU and I don't know if Donncha will let us yet. He said to check the trunk or the current beta, so that is on my to do list.), but for the few regular wp sites I have, this will save time.  Just search for the plugin by term or if you've downloaded it to your computer, you can select it and upload it through the webpage. You're still uploading, but you don't have to extract the folder and move it over, you save plenty of steps either way.

Core Wordpress Upgrade

Finally, you can upgrade your core installation files. No longer do you have to go through the drudgery of downloading-extracting-copying-uploading-via-ftp to update WordPress to the most current version. Go to Tools-Upgrade and it will give you the uption to update online or

Updated Comments

You'll need to update your WordPress theme to use the new features. Comments now are threaded. Visitors can reply to a comment and it will be a thread instead of just having the new comment at the bottom like before. This is great for people who have good reader participation. It will be much easier to see what is happening.

Did I miss any changes in WordPress 2.7 that you think are worth mentioning? Please add a comment.

Using Popshops for Affiliate Marketing Product Tables: Service Review

Affiliate Marketing can be done in many different ways, but one of those is the display of products as a catalog or in an article or post. One service available for making affiliate marketing  product tables is called Popshops. I've used their service and currently have a Pro account which is one step up from their free trial version. I had an enterprise account for a while, but I later decided that current limitations weren't worth the difference in price. Here are some notes, basically a review, of Popshops to help you decide if it is right for you.

Popshops is faster than making a table manually in HTML

It is a time intensive process but using Popshops for handpicked product tables is much faster than making tables yourself.  You save time because it has a very nice graphic interface you can browse a merchant in the left sidebar or do a search for a keyword. When you want to add a product to a "shop" aka product table, you have to click a button, so this is only practical for handpicked products, not for adding hundreds or thousands or products. You'll click finger will go numb and your eyes will glaze over after a few hundred.

You get to set up basic table layout.

With Popshops, you can set the number of columns to display, their widths, product image width, spacing, font, number of characters in the description, and font size. They've recently added a "buy now" button.

Autofeed and automatic replacing of unavailable products is lacking

Popshops autoupdating features are still needing to be improved, their autogenerated results for related products normally show very unrelated products (at least in my experience ie baby clothes and women's tops on a table for men's swimsuits and china cabinets on pages for children's furniture) fortunately you don't have to turn on that feature. so if you are deciding between handpicked product tables using copy/paste and Popshops, go with Popshops, you'll be happy.

Wordpress Plugin

They have a wordpress plugin that allows you to add a shop to the end of a post when it is displayed by Wordpress or easily add the HTML of a product to a Post.

Account Upgrades

They offer different subscription plans starting at $5/month (as of writing this article). If you want RSS (limited to the number of products in a shop), you'll need an enterprise account which is much more expensive.  I wanted to go beyond that limitation, so I ended up writing my own RSS script in PHP. I don't blame them for that. Popshops wasn't designed for RSS, they just added it as another way to display a product table.  They're working on premium services for coupon feeds.

Summary

I found that while "shop" or product table creation was fast and easy, especially with their Wordpress Plugin for adding a shop to a post, keeping shop tables updated is a major chore once you have a few hundred shops in your account.   To be fair they do have a page to show you click tracking and shops with unavailable products. I only wish there was a way to set up keywords and negative or exclusion keywords so the autogenerated products and replacement products would actually be related.

Popshops wasn't and isn't designed to show many products or a catalog or even a category of products from a merchant or a group of merchants so if you are looking to do so you'll probably be happier with webmerge if you want HTML or writing your own PHP script if you want dyamic lists of an entire product category or product catalog. Of course, there is nothing stopping you from doing both or all three.

Am I happy with Popshops? Yes, I am. I am just a bit picky and my needs have grown since I started using it.  Since my newer needs weren't being met, I had to learn PHP and start writing my own product display scripts.  Hopefully they'll address some of the areas that need improvement in the coming years and I'll be able to use it more.

Add an XML Google Sitemap to Your Online Business

Keep Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other Search Engines informed with an XML Sitemap

If you are like me, you wonder what's with Google. Google seems to find blog posts with out much trouble, but when it comes to other pages, it seems to just ignore them and let them languish.  If Wordpress is only a small section of your website, then a sitemap becomes an essential tool for informing Google and other search engines that your pages exist and should be indexed.

Google will index your content sometime before the cows come home

While Google's bots will eventually find any content on your website linked by other pages, you'll find that Google will not quickly index non-blog content especially without a Sitemap.

You can find information on the structure and coding for an XML Sitemap which works for Google at http://www.sitemaps.org/

Consider an XML Sitemap written in PHP using your database

You can write your sitemap file with .php extension as long as the Sitemap content uses XML as shown. Making a script to create your Sitemap is a good idea because as your website grows, it will become harder and harder to keep a manually updated sitemap current. Basically you query your database's posts and articles and then echo that information in XML.  What? Your website is just plain HTML pages?  You could probably use a script that spiders your site and makes an XML file, but you'd have to run it frequently.

A Sitemap script that is the same file that Google fetches is the best choice because it would be current everytime the search engine requests it.

Consider an online XML Sitemap creator

A third option would be to use a free Sitemap spider service online. They will spider up to 500 pages as they are found from the homepage of your website.  This, like other "spider" script sitemap creators, has the weakness of just adding what they find which could easily be duplicate content due to variables and search options and other URL issues that will also give you sitemap errors and warnings.

Avoid duplicate content

When creating an XML Sitemap remember that you don't want to include duplicate content, so if there is more than one path to a specific post, article, or product on your website, just include the best path where the content is going to be found more long term.

Consider making a Sitemap Index

you'll also find on the above mentioned site, information regarding the creation of a Sitemap Index. The Sitemap Index is also XML (but you can have a php script make it). You can submit the Sitemap Index file to Google Webmasters Tools as your Sitemap and Google will then check every sitemap listed inside that file.

There are a couple great benefits to using a Sitemap Index. First, you can make modular simpler Sitemap files and list them or not as needed. Second, you only have to submit one Sitemap file per site.

There is a limit to the size of a sitemap index as well as the number of links, so even if you have a small website now, it wouldn't hurt to start off with two files, your Sitemap Index which you'll submit to the search engines and your actual sitemap file.  It will only take a couple minutes more to start off right, and you'll save plenty of time you'd have lost later submitting separate files to each search engine.

Ready for the next step, add your Sitemap to your Robots.txt file

While you should submit your Sitemap or Sitemap Index to Google, Yahoo, and other search engines, consider also including it in your robots.txt file.  It is very simple. Just add:

Sitemap: http://yoursite.tld/sitemapfilename.xml

If your website is mywebsite.com and your sitemap index is   sitemap.xml then you'd add:

Sitemap: http://mywebsite.com/sitemap.xml

Unfortunately you cannot use relative URLs, so you can't just say /sitemap.xml

I really wish they'd allow relative URLs for those of us with multiple websites, but I guess they just didn't think that far ahead.

Website Automation is Important

Are you Automating your content and site upkeep?

While there are so many things that must be taken care of with an online business, Internet based businesses need to analyze their processes and procedures to see what can be taken care of in a more efficient and/or automatic manner.

It really doesn't matter what kind of business you have. Whether you are a blogger or a merchant selling tangible goods or perhaps you're somewhere in between like a blogger, you need to see where you can improve.  An investment of a week or two now could save you much more time in the coming months or years.

Check for repetition

If you're like me you probably don't know where to start and you probably started your web site as a hobby or as a supplement to your regular brick-n-mortar physical store.  That's ok, just start with where you are at now.  Ask yourself what tasks have to be done regularly. It might be a good idea to make a list of activities that you have to do every day, every week, and every month.

See which activities are very repetitive. Those activities are good candidates for automation.

Automation Examples

Consider using a CMS

Are you writing your web pages in plain HTML and copy/pasting product information in?  Parts of your website creation process can be automated. You could save the time spent on adding HTML, page layout, and menus, by installing a CMS such as Wordpress, Drupal, or Joomla or a forum like bbpress, or Simple Machines Forum.  By installing a CMS or Forum on your website, you preset the design and categories, and entries get added to menus. You'd just work on adding the content to entries such as blog posts or forum threads.

Automate your product displays

If you are an affiliate marketer or a merchant, you'll want to look into automating your display of products using a database.  In affiliate marketing, many merchants make datafeeds available which are electronic spreadsheets with a list of available products and other relevant information.  Affiliates can use PHP and MySQL to integrate those datafeeds into dynamic pages that visitors can browse or search.

HTML Make-a-Page creators are a short-term solution

While some affiliate networks offer HTML page creation with code ready to copy/paste into a website or blog entry, that static page information will soon become out-of-date and will require updating.

Don't rely on static HTML pages

I had made the mistake of relying too much on static and other difficult-to-update displays on my sites and found myself caught between spending half my time updating existing pages or creating new content. It was very frustrating because it worked, but I didn't know how to progress. I was so busy updating product information that I didn't have time to write original content!

Learn PHP and MySQL or hire a programmer

In this case you'll most likely want to hire a programmer or learn PHP and MySQL yourself.  I know it sounds complicated, and yes, PHP is a programming language unlike HTML which is just simple coding, but once you finish your first couple scripts, you'll find that it isn't too difficult with a little planning and patience.  If you are an affiliate marketer you'll need at least a couple scripts. You'll need one to import datafeeds into your MySQL database and another for displaying products. You can then expand your ability by allowing user search or by displaying products by keyword, category, or really any other feature you can think of.

Automate your XML Sitemap

Another great option for automation is your XML Sitemap, also called your Google Sitemap.  You can write your Sitemap in PHP and submit your php script to Google Webmasters.  If you have dynamic content this is crucial otherwise you'd have to do it manually!  That could take weeks for a large website.

If you have a small website, you might not think it matters, but what about when your site is larger in a year or two? Your Sitemap was easy to update manually when you had only 30 pages, but it won't be so easy-to-update when it has 200.  If you later delete a page from your site, you'll have to look through 200 pages to find it while a well written sitemap script will include all pages that currently exist.

Standardize your website design

If you have multiple websites, consider what goes into maintaining and updating them.  Are you customizing each site, or are you making different aspects modular?  If you need to update your CMS or your custom scripts, could you copy the files over to the other site and have them just work?   By standardizing things like page width, and locations where your scripts and software are installed, updating could just be a matter of uploading everything to the same place on each site.   There are tricks you can do in PHP that let you get the IP address and website name which you might need in the script, so instead of having to open and configure your configuration file, you could tell your script to look up the domain and IP it is running on and do different things based on that information.   By autoconfiguring your scripts, you'll save plenty of time when you need to upgrade. I only wish CMS designers would do the same thing!

Servers are good workers

Servers once set up and running can save you plenty of time once everything is set up. Servers don't get tired, sick, or bored. They don't limit themselves to business hours either. Any activity that you can give them is going to be much cheaper than paying someone or spending the time to a task by yourself. Even with shared hosting, you just go to your webserver's control panel and add a "Cron job". Cron jobs just tell a server to run a script using the frequency that you set. So if you want it to run a backup, or a datafeed import at 2:00 am, just set it up. If you can write or pay for a script to do a task, you can later set it up as a Cron job, your script will run, and the task will be done, rain or shine, or even when you're on vacation!

WordPress 2.6 First Impressions

I already mentioned my opinion of the theme selection in my previous post about WordPress 2.6, so I'm going to leave that out of this entry.

I just updated one of my WordPress 2.5.1 sites to WordPress 2.6. I used the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Plugin which saves you the steps of a manual upgrade.  I didn't get any errors, and I've been using this plugin since upgrading to Wordpress 2.5.  This plugin is not yet for use with Wordpress-MU, so don't try it until the plugin's webpage says otherwise.

I mention this because Wordpress Multi User is changing its next release from 1.6 to 2.6 to help reduce upgrading confusion. I personally think it will cause as much confusion as it will remove, but I digress.

The automatic upgrade plugin never reenables my plugins after upgrading Wordpress, but now it isn't a big deal since Wordpress 2.6 lets you activate or deactivate more than one plugin at a time.  No more one at a time change drudgery.

After upgrading I reactivated my plugins and used the plugin updating feature that was added in Wordpress 2.5 to update my plugins that had notices.  You'll want to check every week for plugin updates. A few plugins seem to break or act funny after every Wordpress version revision.

I do not see any of my current plugins breaking with this version. My page loaded no problem.  I didn't get any strange PHP errors either.

WordPress 2.6 was released on July 15 2008

WordPress 2.6 is out

If you are using WordPress, and you probably should be if you are not, you'll want to know that WordPress 2.6 has been released.

Widget Bug Fix

First of all, it fixed the Javascript bug that came with 2.5 that made moving widgets a pain.

Plugin Management Improvements

It also separates active and inactive plugins on the plugin page so it is easier to manage them instead of one big list like before.

If you upgrade your install or WordPress, you can finally enable and disable more than one plugin at the time.  That takes a lot of the work out of updating!

If you decide to replace a plugin with a new one, you still need to upload the new one via FTP,  If you forget to delete the plugin being replaced, you can now select it from the deactivated plugins and select delete.  That will also save some time.

Remove and Auto Blogging Setting Change

If you use any remote or autoblogging software, you'll now have to enable it on the Write page since it will be disabled on any new installations.

Theme Selection Pain

The theme selection page is now more work than ever! You now have to go through a theme preview page which appears in an iframe, so it is two clicks instead of one.  I like having previews. I don't like being forced to see a preview!   They could have added a button or link for switching to one, but they didn't.

If you keep people from framing your site via Javascript as a security measure, you'll now have to remove that code before you'll be able to switch to your theme otherwise you'll see a preview page with no switch to theme link. What a bummer!

Post Revisions

Wordpress 2.6 includes the ability to go back and see previous versions of a post. It will inflate your database a bit, but it will help with those oops I didn't-mean-to-make-those-changes moments.

Image Captions

With WordPress you can add captions to your images, so now you can actually tell people what is in an image and have it appear together.

Google Gears

Google Gears is a caching system for administration files, it is supposed to speed up the process. You have to click on Turbo to enable it. You also have to install Gears in your web browsers.

There are more changes, but they are pretty minor.

Should you upgrade now?  It is normally best to wait a couple weeks before upgrading Wordpress because there is the risk that a plugin you use will be broken.

WordPress 2.5 is out

I have been testing Wordpress 2.5 for about a week since it was released and it is pretty nice. I just wanted to mention a couple things.

1. You will save time with its plugin updating feature however if you have your plugin folder's permissings set to a restrictive level it won't work.

2. Any plugin that adds a button to the visual editor will need to be updated to work.

How to Upgrade WordPress

How to upgrade WordPress introduction

Sometimes it seems that by the time I get my websites upgraded there is a new version or minor update to WordPress. After a while, upgrading WordPress seems as easy as brushing my teeth or tying my shoes. I do understand that for a beginner, this process can be frightening. In reality, WordPress is probably the easiest and simplest CMS or Blog software available. I have personally tried Joomla (which I like) and Drupal (which I don't like). I also tried Google's Blogger which has obviously been dumbed down to the least common denominator so that you can't customize it.

I do not accept liability for your ability to follow these steps, nor to I accept liability for any changes that may occur to Wordpress or its upgrade methods. Essentially, I'm saying that these steps have worked for me for upgrading the last few versions of Wordpress and they probably won't change in the near future. This article/post assumes that you know how to use FTP and how to download a file from Wordpress.org.

Short version - Steps for upgrading WordPress blog/CMS software

1. To be safe, backup your database via your webhost's control panel via PHPMyAdmin (ask your webhosting company how)


2. Disable all plugins


3. Download the newest version of Wordpress from wordpress.org.


4. Extract all of the files to your copy of Wordpress on your computer (your backup, you do have one right?) overwriting the older files with the same name.


5. Upload your Wordpress directory or your website via FTP to your server overwriting files with the same name.


6. go to http://yourdomain.com/wordpressdirectory/wp-admin/upgrade.php or http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php and follow the steps until it says it is finished.


7. Re-enable your plugins

If you never installed any plugins, then you can skip steps 2 and 7. The options in step 6 depend on whether you have Wordpress installed in your main directory or subdirectory. When uploading your updated files you could omit the wp-content/plugins and wp-content/themes directories. The default theme might have been updated, but your custom themes and plugins are not updated with Wordpress. Plugins and custom themes are maintained by their authors.

Don't forget to update your plugins!

Sometimes a plugin stops working due to a change in Wordpress's API. After you upgrade, be sure to check for new plugin versions. The most recent versions of Wordpress will warn you when your Plugins are out-of-date. You'll need to replace the plugin with the same name in your wp-content/plugins directory and upload the plugin via FTP. It is recommended to disable a plugin before uploading a new version and reenable it afterwards. A plugin will sometimes break otherwise. If you don't and you find errors just disable and reenable the plugin and that will take care of most issues.

How to get started with affiliate marketing?

I'm sure that many of you are interested in affiliate marketing due to the flexibility it gives. Perhaps you just want to make a few extra dollars or pounds for your next vacation or to save for retirement. That is ok too! You can put as much time and effort into affiliate marketing as you want because you are your own boss.

The problem for many is how to get started and people make some bad decisions, waste thousands of dollars on gimmicks, and then give up. You won't be making thousands of dollars per day unless you spend hundreds on advertising your sites, but you don't have to! I have been doing affiliate marketing since September 2007 and I haven't spend on advertising at all except for a coupon I got for Google Adwords for $25 I got from my web host. Without spending a dollar on advertising, I made almost $400 in December even though I've only been doing this for a couple hours a day for a few months. If I had put in 40 hour weeks I would have made much more.

Here are the basic steps involved:

1. Plan! What kinds of products and services do you want to promote? Pick something that interests you and that you have at least a little knowledge about. If you love to cook, you might want to have a website about gourmet foods and kitchen products. If you like sports, perhaps you'll go for exercise equipment, supplements, and sportswear. In any case pick a topic you enjoy! It will be difficult to motivate yourself to work if it isn't something you like.

2. Brainstorm! Make a mind-map of the topic that you chose and then make an outline and think about how you might organize your website. Also think about the visual aspects of your website so that it will also be attractive. Decide what kind of interactive or social features will benefit visitors. What kind of content will you use?

3. Pick a name! You need to give your website a name so make a list of possible names based on your topic and mind-map and put them in order.

4. Sign up for web hosting! You need a home for your website, so sign up for a cheap shared web hosting account. I recommend signing up with BlueHost or HostGator. In fact, I am currently using Bluehost for all of my current websites.

5. Register your website when you sign up for hosting.

6. Start your site using either HTML pages or a CMS program such as Joomla, WordPress, or Drupal. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. Many web hosts have a quick install option for CMS or blogging software. Both BlueHost and HostGator have special quick installs for WordPress and Joomla! called Fantastico.

7. Sign up for affiliate marketing programs for your topic. I recommend starting out with .

8, Start adding content and mix relevant and useful affiliate links in with your content. Don't hard sell! You are providing a benefit for the visitor.

9. Integrate a website statistics service into your website, so you can see what works and what doesn't. I suggest using Google Analytics which is free. Also check your statistics in the affiliate network to see where your sales are coming from and which programs are converting to sales.

10. If a program doesn't convert and you know that your content is good, replace the program with one of another merchant and see if you get better results. When I first started I had used some programs that just wouldn't convert. I tried some others and they did. What do I mean by convert? Your statistics will tell you when a visitor clicks on an affiliate link on your website, If the visitor makes a purchase on the merchants site and the sale registers, it "converted". In other words, the click through converted into a sale.

Consider adding content description meta tags to each of your webpages for better search traffic (SEO)

Would you like more traffic to your website?

Whether it is a blog or a shopping site you need traffic for your website to be a success. One way to do so is to work on your SEO, otherwise known as Search Engine Optimization. Typically people optimize for Google, but it is also good to consider traffic from Yahoo and ask.com as secondary targets.

Content First, SEO Second

Once you have good original content on your website, it is time to consider SEO. There are many different tasks involved in SEO, and I admit that I still need to do many tasks on my websites as well, so I've added the webmaster and SEO category and a SEO series for these articles that any website can use to improve its results.

The main problem is that it is a lot of work! SEO is not yet automated. If you use a CMS like Wordpress or Joomla, you might find special plugins and modules to help you, but you still have to type in the information that the system needs.

The focus in this post is in adding a Meta content description tag to each page of your website. Meta tags are nothing new. Meta tags are informative HTML tags placed in the header of a web page's code. There are many meta tags used for many different reasons.

Adding meta page descriptions to static HTML is simple

Add the following to each of your page headers describing that page:

<meta name="description" content="Brief description of the contents of your page.">

Add a description of that specific page instead of the 'informative description here'. If you use static HTML pages on your website then simply go into your code with your favorite editor and add the code in between the head tags. You should be concise and descriptive. You should not repeat the title since that is going to be seen in the search result above the description.

Dynamic pages often require coding or SEO plugins

If you use a dynamic header through a CMS or website template using PHP then it is trickier, since one header is used for all of your pages. In this case you could perhaps make your own PHP modification if you are a programmer, or you could search for a plugin or module to add that information for you. Even with a plugin, you will still have to add that data in your CMS software. In a wordpress blog, you'll probably see it as an extra field in your writing admin. page after the plug in is activated. Once you activate a plugin with this functionality you'll have to go and add meta data to each page, post, and article you have.

Meta page descriptions improve search click through rates

You won't see results until Google's webcrawler rechecks your site. It doesn't matter if your pages are static or dynamic. This could take between hours and weeks. After Google's search engine updates your information and a page on your site appears as a search result, your description will appear after your page's title. By giving a more detailed description of your page, your page will be more interesting to the person searching and you should get more clicks. It should also lower your bounce rate, since people know what your page really contains.

What meta descriptions won't do for you

Adding meta descriptions will not improve your page ranking. Your web pages will appear at the same rank. This optimization is for increasing clicks on your pages when seen in the listing. You will need to do other optimizations to improve page ranking.

WordPress 2.3 is available

Wordpress blogging platform version 2.3 was released

Just in case you haven't been keeping up with the news in your WordPress dashboard, WordPress 2.3 has been available since Monday evening.

Wordpress 2.3 has many benefits for blog owners to make upgrading worthwhile, but you should wait a few more days before upgrading to give plugin makers a chance to test and fix their plugins to work with this new version. Only the Plugins that use  Tags and Categories should be affected.

Changes in WordPress 2.3

• Wordpress 2.3 now supports tagging. Tags are like keywords that can be used in a tag cloud. Wordpress 2.3 can import tag information from: Ultimate Tag Warrior, Jerome's Keywords, Simple Tags, and Bunny's Technorati Tag


• Wordpress 2.3 now has better canonical URL support.  It can fix www vs no www issues and keep links working after a 'page slug' changes.  A page slug is the URL info for the post or page its self. When you type a post, WordPress automatically makes a page slug with the same title and hyphens between words. If you change the title, no problem. Change the slug and links break.


• Wordpress 2.3's Pending review feature makes guest blogging easier by sending the admin an authors posts separately instead of mixing the post in with drafts like before.


• Improved TinyMCE visual editor support


• Wordpress 2.3 now includes update notification.  As long as a plug in is listed in the official Wordpress plugin directory, Wordpress admin will let you know when a plugin is out of date. It will also let you know when a new version of Wordpress is available


• Multiple Category widgets - This must be foreward thinking since there are currently no options to display categories differently. Perhaps a plugin writer could use this function.


• Simple tag cloud - Using the tagging feature. There are very few options. Look for plugins to improve this feature.

I've been checking the plugins directory and I've been seeing that MANY plugins have been updated for 2.3 and some have been posted and reposted to fix new bugs, so don't be surprised!

Joomla 1.5 RC2 and Kontera ads

Kontera ads and Joomla 1.5 RC2

Some of you have been searching for Joomla 1.5 and Kontera.  Kontera runs hover-pop-up advertising which links to keywords. They offer a wordpress plugin, but they don't have a plug in for Joomla 1.5.

I recently tested the old Kontera plugin for Joomla 1.1x on my Joomla 1.5 RC2 installation using legacy mode.  I had no trouble at all setting it up.  The old Kontera plugin for Joomla 1.1x works on Joomla 1.5 when legacy mode is enabled.

You can get the old kontera plugin from http://extensions.joomla.org/

http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,1675/Itemid,35/

Let's hope that there will be a native 1.5 version soon, but if the lack of a Kontera plugin is keeping you from an upgrade, don't worry Just enable legacy mode.

Amazon.com released website widgets!

Amazon.com announced yesterday that they are releasing widgets for websites and blogs to make it easier to promote their products on websites.

Amazon.com has had the option to include web advertising on websites however it has not been as good as it could. The banner ads were garish and the product linking options felt a little limiting.

With Astore advertisements working, we see that they can be make to match the colors of your website, but only astore products. Now they have finally announced 7 new widgets for Amazon.com products.

Make Money as an affiliate

While you won't be able to quit your day job, but it is great to have a few dollars to save, or get paid with gift certificates so you won't spend as much of your own money on Christmas gifts. We all know how that adds up. Although you don't have to have an Amazon affiliate account to use most (6) of their widgets, there is no reason why you shouldn't. There is no membership fee.

Display Amazon products more easily

The following widgets are currently available:

• Slideshow


• My Favorites


• Wish List


• Product Cloud


• Amazon Unbox Video Previewer


• Quick Linker


• Search

Slideshow

Slideshow takes product pictures and turns them into a slideshow. You can ad captions to each picture. You can do a search by keyword in each Amazon product group. You can't use a category. This would require periodic maintenance since products would eventually be dropped or discontinued. I think this would be great for a micro-website.



Amazon does not yet have its own plugin for Wordpress blogs like this one. Copying the code in HTML view didn't work so I added it as a 'direct code' ad using the Adsense Manager plugin.

My Favorites

My Favorites lets you select your favorite products and have them show up in an 'I recommend' box along with details. You can change the title, colors and width starting at 160px which is a typical sidebar size. If you have your website color's hexcode you can use that for a color so everything matches perfectly. You can make it 'taller' by increasing the number of rows, so more products fit. You have to select individual products not a category, so this will require some maintenance as well.



Amazon does not yet have its own plug in for Wordpress blogs like this one. Copying the code in HTML view didn't work so I added it as a 'direct code' ad using the Adsense Manager plugin.

Wish List

Wish List takes your Amazon favorites and includes them in a widget for your family as well as blog visitors with similiar tastes. To use this widget, you'll have to use an e-mail address that currently has an Amazon Wishlist set up. It could be your own, or belong to someone else. The system will check for you. Wish lists could be for you or help you plan an event for someone else like their wedding gifts. Don't forget to make the list public or it won't be available.

Even though I had set up my wish list, Amazon could not find my list.

Product Cloud

Product Cloud takes keywords and makes them show up as keywords in a jumble called a tag cloud. When someone 'mouses-over' a keyword, a small pop up appears with information about a product with the same keyword. This could be effective on a website that focuses on a specific issue. When a visitor clicks on that pop up, they end up at the amazon product page. I'm very excited about this widget. This widget lets you change all the colors, width (160px+), height, and it does let you select a category so you'll be able to set it up and forget it.



Amazon does not yet have its own plug in for Wordpress blogs like this one. Copying the code in HTML view didn't work so I added it as a 'direct code' ad using the Adsense Manager plugin.

Amazon Unbox Video Previewer

Amazon Unbox Video Previewer shows movie studio and TV network previews for a range of new release and classic movies or television shows available from the Amazon Unbox video download service. You can select which attributes to use in selecting new video previews. This lets you adjust the size with a minimum of 510x425. You can also select by genre and studio. Do you want only movies or TV and movies, no problem!



Amazon does not yet have its own plug in for Wordpress blogs like this one. Copying the code in HTML view didn't work so I added it as a 'direct code' ad using the Adsense Manager plugin.

Quick Linker

Quick Linker lets you quickly add Amazon search results to your site via HTML code and a keyword.

Search

This new search widget is much more attractive than the old one. I am very excited about it. I did not ever add the old search box to my website because I thought it looked too ugly. I did not want to redesign my website to match it! It is even better because the search results show up in the widget on your website instead of taking the visitor directly to Amazon.



Amazon does not yet have its own plug in for Wordpress blogs like this one. Copying the code in HTML view didn't work so I added it as a 'direct code' ad using the Adsense Manager plugin.

Learn more

You can find more information at http://widgets.amazon.com/

Adding a Shopping cart to your business website: Introduction

Start selling online by setting up a shopping cart on your website or externally.

Depending on the business model you choose, you might want to consider adding a shopping cart to your website. The process of adding a shopping cart to your website can be very easy or very hard depending on the level of integration that you require and what kinds of products you are going to sell.

First you must determine:

1. Will you host the store externally on a third party website, or internally on your own server or hosted server.

There are several companies that let you create a store on their websites that you can link to. When someone buys a product you earn a commission.

Other stores and shopping carts online will let you store your downloads on their site for a fee. If you don't have your own domain then this could be a good short term option for getting started. It would also be good for people who are not interested in maintaining a server and shopping cart installations.

You could also have your own website and install commercial shopping cart and store software. This would give you the advantage of having technical support in most cases, but costs could get quite high once you include web hosting.

The other option which would be best for the long term with your own products, would be to have your own website and install free shopping cart and store software. This would be best because A. you'd be able to customize the look of the site B. Your only monthly fees would be hosting costs. As you sell more products, your cost/product will be cheaper.

2. Will you be selling your own products, affiliate products, or both?

Some shopping and store systems will be designed as a full store and others have the option of being used in 'catalog' mode. Typically affiliate product sales are completed on the manufacturer's site, so there is no need to actually go beyond having a 'clickable catalog' which sends the customer to the merchant site to complete the purchase. If you are selling your own products, you'll need to have a complete system for shipping, taxes, etc.

3. Will you be selling digital downloads, tangible goods, or a combination of the two?

Not all shopping cart and store software is designed to allow digital products. Most seem to have been designed for tangible, physical goods. Digital stores don't need to have 'items in stock' or shipping information. Recently there has been more interest in digital product stores however they seem to be only beta versions and have very limited cataloging functions. Most online stores that include a digital download option limit you to only one download per product listing or have multiple downloads with all of them available to the purchaser. I hope that we will see more flexible programs in the future.

4. Are you willing to pay for this service or software, or does your lack of budget require a free version?

You can pay between hundreds of dollars and a few dollars to set up your e-store. If you already have web hosting set up then you could use free shopping cart and store software then set it up yourself. If you do it yourself, expect to spend many hours. Try to avoid editing the basic code since you'll lose your changes when you upgrade to the next version. If possible, choose premade templates with your own logo then change the template colors to match or go well with your logo. Experiment with the system for at least a few days to make sure everything works properly before linking it to your main site. Make sample purchases and try different options.

5. Do you require 100% integration into a CMS, Content Management System, or are links or IFRAME pages adequate?

There are modules for integrating certain shopping cart and store programs into a website so that it will share the look and feel and registered users. This makes the whole process simpler. Even if you cannot integrate your shopping cart, you can at least try to use the same page layout and colors across your website.

6. Will you require technical support, or are you willing to do a little coding and forum/tutorial research?

If you need hand-holding support then go with commercial software. You have to spend much more, but in the end you'll have your store set up and ready instead of wasting days or weeks trying to figure out how to install and configure it all.

An alternative is to find someone who is already familiar with setting up stores and shopping cart software and negotiating payment for him or her to do the installation and configuration of a free program for you.

7. Do you require more than one download per product listing (for digital products)?

I have so far tried Wp-ecommerce (for Wordpress), VirtueMart 1.1beta (for Joomla), and Zen Cart. The only one that has allowed me to set downloads linked to attributes was Zen Cart. Wp-ecommerce only allows one download per product listing. I even offered to pay for the modification, but the owner is not interested. VirtueMart 1.1 allows multiple downloads however you can't let the visitor select a file. Instead the buyer has access to all of the downloads listed for that product, so if you were hoping to sell digital photographs at different resolutions and prices, these two applications won't work unless you want each size for each product show up as separate products which looks very bad and will cause you extra work because if you decide to add another version you have to add more products! I bet you could waste many hours doing that.

After several hours of looking reading and guessing I finally tried Zen Cart. Zen Cart is related to OsCommerce so it is possible that OsCommerce also has this feature. Zen Cart is an independent free shopping cart store that you can install on your own server, but it doesn't have Wordpress or Joomla integration. I was able to set up a shopping cart with one product and multiple download options. It worked. I, as a shopper, was able to specify the product download I wanted and the correct price appeared and the download link worked. It also sent my business e-mail address a message to let me know of the 'sale'.

8. Do you require special payment option modules, or is PayPal good enough?

You'll have to check each program to see which methods of payments may be processed.

In this category of CrucialBusiness, Shopping cart and stores, I/we will be adding information from our and my own experience, books and e-books that you can read to learn more, and information about opensource as well as paid shopping cart and store products and services to get started. You could also read the more general category, sales, which most shopping cart and stores articles will be cross-posted. If you have experience with Shopping cart and store creation for online business, please contact us via the contact form on this site and you can be a guest writer/blogger (including an about the author with a link to your own site).

As you read more about this topic, keep in mind your answers to the questions in this post and good luck!

Amazon.com Astore ads are now working

 Amazon.com's Astore banner ads now display Astore products

Amazon.com Astore ads seem to work now.  I had mentioned in  a previous post that a defect of Amazon.com's Astore was that the astore ads didn't work.  I tested the ads yesterday on several of my websites and they appear to be working. I don't understand the criteria used for selecting which products show. I do get the impression that it might just be taking products from the first category in the Astore related to the website.

One thing that is nice,now that it is working, is that the colors used match the Astore, so if you make your Astore colors match your website, the Astore ads will also match.

Adding Amazon Astore ads to your website is the same as using google ads (without a plugin).  You select your ad size, colors, etc on the Amazon website then you copy and paste the javascript code into your site code.

If you are using WordPress for your website, paste the code into your template files. Javascript doesn't work in pages or posts made via the editor nor does it work with text widgets. Just don't forget to copy the ad code when you change themes.   If you know of a WordPress plugin for Astore ads, please let us know via the comments.