Many webmasters use Joomla for their websites because it is open source, free to use, has a lot of extensions and templates and is simple to use. It has also a large community of developers. There are many components, modules and plugins for every possible task. In other words, Joomla is a universal content management system suitable for simple home pages and complex websites. For most purposes it is enough to install a template and few extensions for common needs like displaying ads or Google Analytics. But sooner or later you need to modify the original display or standard layouts. There are two ways to make such modifications. You can either modify the original code or to override Joomla core files.

The first approach by modifying the core files might work but only until you upgrade Joomla. This process may overwrite the modified files and destroy your hard work. The other approach is to create core overrides in the template directory. For every extension Joomla checks HTML directory in the selected template directory where you can copy original files and modify them to suit your needs. Extensions are not only those you have installed, Joomla comes with many plugins, components and modules that are needed for normal operation. Creating overrides is easy. You simply copy files that need to be modified into template/HTML directory. There is a rule on how to create paths for overridden extensions:

TEMPLATE_NAME/html/EXTENSION_NAME/VIEW_NAME/FILE_NAME.php

One example for the overridden display of frontpage managed by the com_content component:

Original file PATH_TO_JOOMLA/components/com_content/views/frontpage/tmpl/default.php Override file TEMPLATE_NAME/html/com_content/frontpage/default.php

Joomla overrides are an elegant way to modify original functionality without modifying core files. Overrides work for built-in and custom installed extensions. Many times where you would like to change the blog display, add advertising code between articles or change any default layout, you don’t have to look for a special extension. All you need is to find the file in Joomla directory where this page element is created and create an override in the template/HTML directory. Of course, you need to be familiar with HTML and PHP code, but this is pretty easy because you will only modify existing code. This way you can customize your Joomla website without installing any extension. The advantage of overrides is that they still work after the Joomla files are updated, but the disadvantage is that they are linked with template. If you change it you need to copy overridden files and modify them for the new design.

WordPress is perfectly suited to building affiliate sites for so many reasons that it is now one of the most popular tools of all in the affiliate marketers arsenal. The keys to success as an affiliate are driving significant traffic to your affiliate sites and then convincing as many of those visitors to click your affiliate links and actually buy something. When they do, you make money.

Let’s start off by talking about traffic generation when it comes to WordPress for affiliate sites. For some reason that nobody really understands, it seems that WordPress sites tend to get very good listings in the search engines. Indeed some people have joked that the word “blog” really means “Better Listings On Google”. Perhaps it is the way WordPress sites are laid out, perhaps it is the regularly updated content. Whatever it is, WordPress affiliate sites are great for traffic.

There are also other ways in which WordPress sites are great for generating affiliate traffic. For example WordPress provides an RSS feed which allows readers to actually subscribe to your site, leading to regular, repeat visitors. You can also submit this RSS feed to a range of specialist blog search engines which again helps to generate traffic to your site.

The second element, as mentioned, is that once you have got some visitors to your site you then need to convince them to buy something.

Luckily WordPress has an impressive array of features here too. Firstly because WordPress affiliate sites are database driven it is very quick and easy to make changes to the layout of your site so you can quickly change the appearance to see what has the best results.

And lastly WordPress uses plugins – little pieces of code – that allow you to do all sorts of clever things with your affiliate site. And this too can increase your affiliate sales.

With the Information Technology emerging as one of the highest revenue producing fields, leading to the creation of most people as masters of web development in hardware and software. E-commerce web sites have made buying and selling everything possible over the internet, making it easier for buyers and sellers to interact with clients. As E-commerce offers the facility of buying from home without you having to travel and get goods delivered home. Often this advantage has been one of the reasons for it’s popularity.

Now the question arises of how and where to get an E-commerce site developed and by whom? However, setting up an E-commerce web site by hiring a professional web developer has now become an easy task. Moreover, this market is largely composed of fresh talented web designers hungry for survival, giving you the golden opportunity to take your pick. This sector comprises of expensive and affordable web designers as well. The market has seen a gradual switch/diversity in the services they cater. To create a niche in the IT world, today they offer more than merely developing a website. They develop the site along with writing and managing content, creating logos, uploading pictures, keeping your site updated till you have hired them, and much more. Certain things to keep in mind while hiring a professional web developer is to take into consideration the security of your E-commerce site, see to it that a user-friendly and comprehend-able web site is being developed which allows customers to use credit cards for buying solutions and integrate easy-to-use shopping carts.

By and large E-Commerce web sites are developed using Magento, Joomla with Virtuemart, OsCommerce, Ajax, also in.NET, PHP, JAVA and other programming languages. Third party shopping cart solutions are also available for the development of an affordable e-commerce web site. Various E-commerce sites possess difficult-to-use shopping carts with fewer features for customization that annoys buyers and sellers leading them to leave the website.

Semaphore Software is one of the phenomenally hard working web developers company offering E-Commerce solutions like Open Source Ecommerce Integration, E-Commerce with Content Management System, Payment Gateway Integration, Secure Shopping Cart Solutions, Credit Card Processing Integration, X-Cart Integration, OsCommerce Integration and many more under $3000. We help you not only to built up an E-commerce but also with its marketing tactics as we are client orientated people/as we are experts in the realm of E-commerce web designing. If after a period of time you want to take over and manage the site yourself, developers at Semaphore will guide you to the entire process of updating your website, manage content and images, assist you to check the number of visitors with their IP addresses as well – Making you an expert at handling your own site. Our highly accomplished team of web developers caters to clients the best E-Commerce solutions that supplies absolute client satisfaction with our innovative and technologically advanced blend of results. Motivating, Visitors to re-visit our sites as they are user-friendly and super-easy to navigate. Semaphore web developers promise breakthrough success to clients – creating a trustworthy relationship for a lifetime.
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Building an e-commerce website — what does it entail? Again, don’t let me go into that harangue of telling you guys that this task is something only 21-year old eggheads in stiff white collars can do. You would either need a little of their help or search online for a reliable company that offers a package of services for high risk merchant account owners. And if you got lucky on the latter, you still would need to create a checklist on which elements you need to prioritize for your website. I’m talking about the bare bones. After you have decided on those, it’s time to figure out whether to add some fancy stuff on your website or keep things simple.

So what elements should you consider added on your e-commerce website? If you’ve published a book before (not e-book, but if you want to go into that detail, see my article “Homemade Remedy for Download Theft”), most likely you’d already be familiar with the steps you need to take from the time you’ve conceived the story to the moment it’s out in the bookstore shelves. Yes, you would need an endorsement from celebrities, too! Remember Harvey Mackay’s “Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive”? Well yeah, that one’s a classic.

Web copy, layout and other visuals, e-commerce elements, marketing elements, and customer service tools, are some of the basic stuff you need to incorporate in your e-commerce website. Each one of these elements come with its own set of structure that would also require a bit of search engine friendliness or better yet, full-blown SEO campaign.

THE WEB COPY

For your e-commerce website’s copy, consider the number of pages. Major search engines such as Google usually favor more webpages but be careful about using Javascript or adding frames. The simpler the structure of your text pages are, the better. Do not forget adding basics such as “About Us” or product description pages. When it comes to adding extra content such as blogs and RSS news feeds, the more optimized for the search engines (using keywords, backlinks, etc.) the better. You would also need the help of a flexible database so that each time you add new product or text elements, the storage can be extended. Administration area for uploading text content should be user-friendly.

IMAGES AND FLASH CLIPS

Images are important for your e-commerce website but be selective in handling them. Look into how they will improve your catalog or shopping cart before you assign your web designer into building elaborate Flash intro pages, logos, or banners for affiliate programs or other online marketing campaigns. Image incorporation can be expensive. Worse, they are not often crawled by Google’s spiders anyways. Also, the heavier the image files in your e-commerce website, the longer the loading time, the harder it is to retain customers who go by split second click-browse shopping method.

SHOPPING CART

Setting up the shopping cart itself requires the help of a good programmer but you can always make use of osCommerce. The important thing is that you are able to handle credit card payment processing with the aid of a low risk or a high risk merchant account provider. Your shopping cart has to be user-friendly enough to foster a good online shopping experience for your customers.

CUSTOMER SERVICE ADD-ONS

For a good discussion of customer service tools you need to add in your e-commerce website, see “7 Best Tools for First Rate Customer Service”. The key here is to provide interactivity measures for your customers to learn more of their buying tendencies, suggestions for improvement, inquiries, and above all, a way to reach them via mailing lists! Shouldn’t be complicated. When these foundations are built, you’re all set to sail in the gritty world of e-commerce industry.
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I have seen a pattern forming over the years where we will be contacted by a potential client with a story such as, “I paid over $5000 four months ago to have my ecommerce site built and it’s still up and the designers won’t fix it!”. I’m not a big fan of stories like this. For one, this means that this potential client has already spent their budget having something created that didn’t actually meet their needs – meaning that they do not have the budget to pay the going rate for having the site done properly. But the more disturbing aspect is when I have a look at what has already been built and find out that the ecommerce website is really nothing more than OsCommerce.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with OsCommerce, it is a FREE shopping cart solution built by many different programmers to be offered as “open-source”. It’s fine if a client really has a bare-bones budget because hey, it’s free. When we use a free solution such as OsCommerce, what we charge the client for is simply installing, customizing the template, and setting up initial categories, shipping, etc. Unless you are programming or installing many additional complex modules to interact with the base cart, I really can not fathom why a job using OsCommerce would cost $5000 or more. To me, this screams of shady business practices.

I’ve said this in a number of other articles, that I believe honesty is always the best policy. If you are using any sort of pre-developed software (whether it’s free or if you are paying for it), do not fool your client into believing that they are receiving 100% custom work. I find that even when using software, there are aspects that are custom (usually the design), but we make clear in our estimates and contracts which is which and what the client is actually paying for.

Designers and programmers are always on the look out for things that can help them while doing a job, everything from free scripts to stock photos to the latest software. As a designer or programmer, you have to judge for yourself what works best for you and what would benefit your client the most. I find the clients are much more comfortable working with you when they know exactly what you are doing for them and what they paying for and it’s simply more ethical to let a client know when you are using a free or pre-built solution.

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Joomla is a very powerful open-source content management system that is used for many commercial and non-commercial websites. There are thousands of extensions that can add functionality for almost anything imaginable. While the original installation provides basic functionality and many users only install a suitable template, there are some simple extensions that make life with Joomla much easier and pleasant.

The first required extension is JoomlaPack. It is an elegant solution for complete backup, from files to the database. This is a component every Joomla website should have installed. The second very useful extension is the “eXtplorer” component. This is a complete file manager for Joomla. With eXtplorer you can browse the directory structure, download, upload, view and edit files. The user interface of eXtplorer is very similar to typical FTP software. You have a total access to all the files and directories.

In general, Joomla provides user interfaces for uploading image files. In most cases this is enough. But in some cases you need to upload a file to a different directory, to edit a file that belongs to some extension or otherwise access the Joomla installation. A common approach to do this is to use a FTP client software which is usually used to upload the files to the web server. This is a standalone application that must be installed and configured. If you are accessing your website from a public computer then it is very likely that you will be only able to use the browser. In such cases a file manager extension is a great solution to have all the files under total control without any additional software. The security aspect of this relies on the security of the website. If you are not using the default user name and your password is long and complex enough, then you should not be worried.

The second advantage of Joomla file explorer is the ability to unpack archives. You can simply upload a zip file containing many small files and then from the file explorer interface unzip this archive. This is a much faster way that uploading individual files.

Joomla can access its files in two ways. Directly or by a FTP account. FTP access is a convenient way to solve issues with file permissions. Usually, for security reasons the account is configured to access only the website directory. However, it can be configured to access the whole hosting directory. If this is the case then you have a very elegant way too access all the files, not just those that belong to Joomla. This means that with only one Joomla component you can have web access to every single file. This is a great advantage when you need to transfer some files and all you have is a web browser.

Joomla is a great web content management system. With a simple file explorer extension you can make it even greater.

Want to know what is involved in selling your products online? This article will explain the basic elements that go into making an ecommerce site work.

E-Commerce opportunities on the internet are mind-boggling. Ecommerce transactions in the U.S. are projected to hit $198 billion in 2006 according to shop.org. According to eMarketer, Canadian consumers spent $3.8 billion online in 2004 and that number is expected to rise to $5.7 billion in 2006.

There are four main costs to setting up an e-commerce store:

Hosting costs/shopping cart software Hosting costs for an ecommerce shopping cart solution range from free to $79.95 per month or more. Before you purchase a shopping cart system, there are many things to consider. When choosing shopping cart software, you need to consider the number of credit card processors and shipping services it supports. Credit card processors and shipping services can change, so the software will need to be easy to update and be well supported to keep up with the changes in the market. You will also need to consider how easy it is to set up and add products and how easy it is for the customer to use. Shop in some the shopping cart’s sample stores before you make your decision. It is also important to determine if it can handle the tax system where you are selling and if it supports your chosen method of shipping, whether it is by weight, fixed amount, or both. You also have to consider the company who will be hosting your site and/or shopping cart. If your shopping cart is going to be hosted by the same company that hosts your site, you need to ensure that it will be fully supported. You will also need to ensure that your order forms and shopping cart will be secure. Ask your web hosting provider if your hosting package includes the use of their secure server (SSL) or if it will cost extra. Most commercial shopping carts are hosted separately from your site, and the SSL is included in the montly fees you will pay for the software. Some popular shopping carts are: o X-Cart.com – A popular commercial shopping cart. o Oscommerce.org – This is an open source based online shop, (so it’s free!) but it is not easy to set up for a ‘newbie’. You will also need to find a host that supports it. o Zencart.com- Another free open source program that is maintained by volunteer efforts. It is based on oscommerce, and a little easier to set up. Like any open source program, however, it does not have support staff to help you if you are stuck. To solve any problems, you have to rely on forums and other users to help you. o Cartville.com o Paypal.com – Paypal offers a free shopping cart, but it does not work with many tax systems, like the one in Canada. Development Costs Whether you hire someone to develop and customize your store or you do it yourself, there are costs involved. You will need to customize the color, logo, shipping, tax and addresses, just to name a few. You will also have to set up your products and product options. Cost of a merchant account The next cost involves setting up a method of receiving credit card payments on-line. Setting up a Paypal account is the least expensive option (2.9% + $0.30 USD per transaction at the time of writing). Costs for your own merchant account are higher – there are usually set up fees ($500+), transaction fees (up to 3% per transaction) and a monthly flat fee as well. If you already have a merchant account set up off-line, an e-commerce account will be significantly cheaper. Promotional Costs You should also budget for advertising and search engine marketing to drive consumers to your site. After all, what good is having a store if no one comes to shop? This article is by no means all encompassing, but it does cover the basics of selling online. An ecommerce site is an affordable way to sell your products to your customers. Compare the costs with setting up a physical store front – the cost of selling on-line is truly cost-efficient. But Beware! Even though opportunities abound in today’s market, if you try to run an ecommerce website on the cheap you will ultimately limit its potential. Good luck with your store!

First you need to find a nice template that you like. There are many free WordPress template sites. It is very easy to find Go to Google or any favorite search engine and do a search for” Free WordPress Templates” or “Free WordPress Themes”.

Static WordPress site rarely need the the blog items like calendars or archives etc. A simple solution is to navigate in your WordPress administration panel to design>widgets. You can then add or subtract the widgets you want and you can make the sidebar look exactly as you like. This way you don’t have to touch any code.

Now for the plugins. I recommend these basic plugins.:

Add the all in one seo plugin.

Add the privacy policy plugin. Optional, but I always have a privacy policy on my sites.

Add a sitemap plugin if you want. This is very good for search engines to find all your content.

Add a Google Sitemap and register it at Google. This is very important and will help you do well in Google.

If you want AdSense or affiliate banners add the ads manager plugin or any of the other WordPress plugins available. I like and use ads manager. It is very versatile and it can also can be used to easily add other types of banners to a page and control it by the Admin panel. With ad manager you also need the exec php plugin. This is really important this if you are going to hard code includes into the template. I use it to add banners to the sidebar via widgets and the text widget. If you don’t know what this means then you can forget it.

Find the plugins at WordPress.org or do a Google search for each of the above plugins. If I am looking for some type of plugin I usually do a Google search by “keyword” and then “WordPress plugin.” I always navigate to the authors site for the latest plugin and instructions on how to use the plugin.

Activate the plugins in your WordPress admin panel. They are located in the plugins link to the right if you are using WordPress 2.5. Again, I recommend that you read the instructions that are on the individual author plugin sites as to how to use each WordPress plugin.

Create a page. Label it whatever you like. Scroll down the page writing panel to the “all in one seo” area and add keywords and description to your page. This is the same as adding the keywords and descriptions to the meta content in the head portion of your template.

Scroll down some more to comments and pings and turn off “Allow Comments” so you won’t see a user comment box. I want my site to look like a static site so I don’t need commenting. If you want also un-check Allow Pings. It is up to you. I always un-check both.

At the bottom of the page you will see a “page order” area. If you want to have a certain order to your pages in your category menu then name the page you want on top of the menu 1 then the next page you create 2 etc. You can later change the order of your pages by using this feature. This is good so that maybe a sales page will be on top.

I also tend to use the subcategories Parent – child a lot. As an example, I will make a page called “articles” and then add different article pages as a subcategory to articles. I then add some form of introduction to the main article page and have the other articles easily accessible off the main article page. A nice touch for me is that I like to find a template that has a horizontal menu bar with drop down lists. I think it looks very classy. For me everything is then neat and orderly. But this technique is up to you.

In the WordPress admin panel go to settings>reading. On top you will see reading settings. Then “front page displays”. In the front page displays check the radio button “A static page (select below)” and then from the front page drop down menu click the page you want to use for your front page. That page I usually title Welcome or I will add a keyword rich title. If you don’t want any title leave blank.

With just these little changes you have the start of a static website with WordPress. The key is to use pages instead of posts, add keywords and descriptions via the “all in one seo” and your site is a really nice static website. Remember you can control the way the sidebar looks with widgets.

Do not choose templates that make use of the WordPress tagging feature initially. Some of these templates are called newspaper themes. They are a little harder to do and take a little more to understand. Once you master the basic look then you can branch out and try the tagging features of WordPress.

You can add to this basic formula to make your site even more user-friendly. Again, the above tips will give you a basic static and great looking website.