Many people are looking to start a new web based business to supplement or replace their current income. The internet has made it much more affordable for anybody to start a new business. With a simple domain name, hosting package and a website, you can start marketing your products or services worldwide.

By hiring a web development company to create your new site, you do not need to have the technical know-how required to build a website. Because the internet is relatively new, most web designers are young adults in the early 20′s or early 30′s who opted to get a degree in web development.

There are many web development companies offering their services and it can be quite daunting to determine which company is the best for your needs. You will also find that prices can vary considerably and it can be quite confusing. It’s also very important to find an honest and reliable company as there is a lot of online fraud.

Many people who start a new online business do not have a large budget. However, there is a solution. By using a Website Template to build your site you can save a lot of money, usually about 50% off the total cost of creating one from scratch. A web template is a pre-designed webpage that only lacks content and photos. Website templates reduce or eliminate the need for a professional graphic designer, thus reducing the overall cost of building a website from scratch.

There are free website templates and premium website templates. If you are serious about your business I would highly recommend you purchase a premium design template. I find that free templates tend to be poor in quality or definitely not as nice as a premium template. There are many sites selling templates and you can usually choose from thousands of different designs. When choosing a web template you want to pick one which has the layout and functionality you require.

The first step in creating a website is to design a layout. This will involve choosing various fonts, frames, graphics, a color scheme and basic functionality. The next step is creating this design in an html editor, which can require a great deal of skill. The final step is to add the content — the actual text and images. A website template eliminates the first two steps automatically. By loading the template into an HTML editor like Adobe Dreamweaver, text and images can be added to the ready-made pages. Usually, a number of page template options are available.

If you are looking for a professional, friendly and reliable company to help you customize your template you may want to check us out. We’ve been know to deliver some pretty amazing results

In the web design industry there are several ways to reduce the cost of building a website. One of which is using a website template.

The second is using open-source content management systems (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento and OsCommerce, which are free to use.

A web template is a pre-made website design where all you need to do is insert your logo, content and images.

Because open-source CMS’s have become so popular there is a strong demand for templates for these CMS’s.

As a result the most widely used (and the best) templates used in the web design industry are the following (in descending order, first being most popular).

1. WordPress Themes

2. Joomla Templates

3. Drupal Themes

4. Magento Themes

5. OsCommerce Templates

You can simply search for a template, purchase and download it for as little as $35-$200. Compared to the price of $1000-2500 to hire a graphic designer to create a design from scratch.

Creating or adding a new article in Joomla is fairly easy once you get the hang of it.

Joomla uses the term “article” when referring to pages or blog posts. It is basically an piece of content and can be used in any format. As a page, post or news item.

Joomla places their content in Sections and Categories. This may be confusing for people at first but it allows for much more complex structures of content.

For this tutorial we are going to keep it simple. We are going to skip the part of creating a section and a category for a different post. I am going to go straight to creating or adding a article.

Example
So you have a Joomla website and you want to add a About Us page.

Steps to adding the page (Article)

Step 1 – Start by logging into your admin panel

Step 2 – Put your cursor over the CONTENT tab at the top of your admin panel. Then click on Article Manager (see image below).

Step 3 – On the top right hand side of your screen there is a New button with a white plus(+) sign inside a green circle. Click the button (see image below)

Step 4 – You will then proceed to add your article title, content and keywords. You will also need to select the Section and Category but we will leave this for a later post. You do not need to enter anything for the alias, however you can if you like. And you can choose to publish it to the Front page (home) if you like. You will also need to enter your description and keywords for your article. This is not required but recommended for SEO purposes. (See image below)

{ Click the image to enlarge }

Step 5 – Once you have completed step 4 you are ready to save your new page and publish it. If you click the Save button at the top right hand corner, it will save and publish your new article and then take you back to your list of articles. If you click Apply it will save and publish your article but you will remain in that window. Sort of like the Save and Save As feature in Word.

And that’s it your done! Now you can go to the front-end of your site and view your changes.

Good luck

]]> http://www.websitetemplatepros.com/how-to-add-a-new-article-in-joomla/feed/ 0 http://www.websitetemplatepros.com/tutorial-how-to-clear-magento-cache/ http://www.websitetemplatepros.com/tutorial-how-to-clear-magento-cache/#comments Sun, 08 May 2011 22:22:03 +0000 Hans Desjarlais http://www.websitetemplatepros.com/blog/?p=153

One of my favorite movie titles from way back was “The 7 Steps of Shaolin”. I didn’t get to see the movie, but I sure was amused by the title. I suppose the plot would have been a novice undergoing 7 intense steps to become a Shaolin Kung-Fu master.

I was playing around with Joomla! 1.5 when I chanced upon an online tutorial on how to embed youtube video in Joomla! However, the tutorial is only applicable for the previous Joomla! version (1.x).

After much tinkering around, I finally discovered how to place youtube videos in Joomla! 1.5 articles. I’ve summarized them in 7 easy steps to show you on how to do this:

Step 1: Browse the youtube website for the video you want to embed.

Step 2: Look for the Embed field box, and highlight the entire text

Step 3: Copy the Embed text:

Step 4: Login to the administration of your Joomla! website, and view the article list (Pull down the Content menu and select Article Manager). Click to edit the article where the youtube video will play.

Step 5: The editor for the article is displayed. Click the “Edit HTML Source”. (Note: I’ve set the Display on Front Page to “yes”).

Step 6: The HTML Source Editor for the article is displayed. Now paste the copied Embed text from youtube, and click the Update button, found at the bottom of the editor.
Step 7: We are now back at the article editor. The final step, click “Save” button.

That completes the 7 steps! We are now ready to view the video on the Joomla! website. As we browse the website, we see the youtube video, ready to play. Enjoy watching ^——^
Source: http://jundolor.blogspot.com/2009/04/7-steps-of-embedding-youtube-videos-in.html

Ok, if you want to install a contribution for your OsCommerce shop you should follow the steps below:

1. Please, go to http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions and download a contribution you need

2. Save and unzip a file

3. Each contribution has a detailed instruction on how to install it and implement into your OsCommerce shop, so you should check all the readme files within the package or on a website before editing.

4. E.g. if you download a contribution for ” InfoBoxes ” then you should copy a .php file with this box to /includes/boxes folder

5. It depends on a contribution but most likely you will need to turn this new infobox in column_left.php or column_right.php files.

6. Now you can update the files on your server and check all the modifications.

Please note:
1. We are not responsible for any contribtion you will use. All of them are installed at you own risk.
2. Some contributions may not work with your template right away as they will have to be altered to fit the major template design.

Information source: http://info.template-help.com/after_sale_support/Working_with_osc/article11.html

Once you have downloaded a ZIP file, you should unpack the archive and save the unpacked files to any folder on your computer.

Your archive manager will create an “osc” folder inside your unpacked root directory. You should upload the contents (every single file and folder) of this folder to the root folder of your server.

This is if you want your shop to be opened by typing your domain name in the address bar of a browser like http://www.your_site.com
If you want to place your shop into some folder of your server called say “shop” just create this folder on your server and upload the contents of the “/osc” folder to the /shop folder. In this case your online shop will be available at this address “http://www.your_site.com/shop/”.

Click “Install” to get the next step.

For the correct installation check in both matchboxes (“Import Catalogue Database” and “Automatic Configuration”) and press Continue.
Because osCommerce uses a database to store data, you should fill in all the fields to provide the information on your database server. osCommerce installing script will import values from the file “web_root/shop/install/oscommerce.sql” to the database that you point to (“web_root” is the path to your web server’s root catalogue).

Database Server – your database server address
Username – the name of the user who has rights to create and change databases and tables
Password – password of the user
Database Name – the name of your osCommerce database
Session Storage – special storage to keep sessions’ values (we recommend you to choose “database” here)

Press “Continue” for the next step. osCommerce will process the test connection to the database server now. You will be informed about the results. If osCommerce fails to process the connection, then you should get in touch with your administrator to check your server settings.

Press “Continue now”. osCommerce will add the values to the database now. This process may take several minutes.

Check the osCommerce configuration settings. It’s recommended to keep these settings unless you have to change them. After checking the settings press “Continue”.

We recommend that you save the settings with the form but create a new account (user) for OsCommerce.

To finish the installation press “Continue”. You will be shown a notification about the successful installation.

To have a look at your on-line shop, press “Catalog”.
You will have 2 or 3 notifications at the top of your browser. To hide them you should:

1. delete the catalogue “install” from “web_root/shop” folder
2. mark “web_root/shop/includes/configure.php” file as read only.

To make any changes to your online shop, you should type “http://your_site/shop/admin/” with your browser.
We recommend that you rename your admin folder with any other secret name (secret_name) and enter the admin section using this name “http://your_site/shop/secret_name/”.

You have received your Full Site Template .ZIP package and unpacked it. Let’s see what we have inside.

“screenshots” – contains screenshots of the template.

“site” – contains the .HTML files and style.css file (a non-animated version of the template)
- “images” – contains all the images used in .HTML files;

“site_flash” – contains the .HTML files and style.css file (an animated version of the template).
- “flash” – contains .SWF flash movie(s) used in .HTML files.
- “images” – contains all the images used in .HTML files.

“sources” – contains source files
- “clipart_library” – contains free clipart .PSD files – all the elements are arranged in several files.
- “flash” – contains .FLA source file(s).
- “fonts” – contains all the fonts used in .PSD and .FLA files – True Type (.TTF), Adobe fonts (PFB\PFM), or both.
- “psd” – contains Adobe Photoshop .PSD files.

Note: For security reasons the sources folder is in a zipped file and is password protected. To uncompress a password protected ZIP file you will need to have a zip file utility program installed and the correct password. As soon as the zip file begins to uncompress, you will be prompted to type in the password. The password is the ID number of your order. You can find this number on the order page which we provided to you through a link that we sent to you via the email.

Please, help us preserve the quality and uniqueness of our products by not uploading the sources folder either zipped or unzipped to the server.

Our templates are delivered in .ZIP files. A .ZIP file is a single compressed file that contains the complete set of program files. Compressed files are valuable in the electronic world because they significantly cut your download time, and they make it possible to download just one file rather than the full set of files (which can often be dozens of individual files).

To decompress (unzip) a “.ZIP” file, you need a copy of an unzipping utility. We recommend WinZip. It is a shareware program, which needs to be registered (paid for) if you plan to continue using it. It is also distributed in a “.ZIP” format, but it is a “self-extracting” variety – simply download it to you temporary directory, and “RUN” it to extract the program files.

When unzipping a package using WinZip, make sure that the Use Folder Names (marked on screenshot) checkbox is marked to prevent the loss of a folder from your web design template package.

We recommend using Staffit Expander for decompressing “.zip” files on MAC.