Here is a quick 4 step tutorial on how to install a Magento theme.

Step 1:
Unzip the theme package and upload the folder from the theme package to the root
directory of your Magento software using an FTP client. This will consist of a app and skin folder.

Step 2:
Go to Magento Admin >> System >> Configuration >> Design, write
“YOURTHEMENAME” in Themes/Default input box and click “Save Config” button.

Step 3:
Clear the store cache under Magento Admin >> System >> Cache Management and
all cookies for your store domain. It might be necessary in case something goes
wrong.

Step 4:
Create CMS pages and CMS static blocks in Magento backend.

If you are looking to build a website your company you may be asking yourself this question.

Should I get a designer to customize a template for me OR order a complete website design package?

The answer depends on your abilities and your goals.

If you are on a small budget and have some knowledge of  HTML and PHP coding, then my answer would be: Template Customization.

What is template customization?

Each template has a specific layout and look. In order to give it a unique look specific to your company, you need to customize it. You can either do it yourself or hire one of our designers.

Once we have customized the template according to your instructions we will send you the files. You can the make any changes you wish using Adobe Dreamweaver and upload the completed site to your server.

What is Complete Website Design?

This is where we handle the entire development process of your website. This is for people who don´t have the time and knowledge to build a website. The option is a little more expensive, it can range from $1500-$2800 but you don´t have to worry about anything. We handle the entire process.

If you are interested in getting a website built for your business, career or organization send us an email for a quote.

As much as flash can be fun and nice to the eye, it had it’s time. I am sure many other web developers can agree.

We do sell flash templates however we discourage our customers from using flash animation on their websites.

Here are some VERY big reasons NOT to use flash.

1. Not Search Engine Friendly

A little bit of flash on your site, like a small banner is ok, but when you have a full flash website, that is not good. Google does not index and rank flash websites. If you want your internet business to succeed, being ranked in the major search engines is quite important.

2. Not User-Friendly

Flash can be slow and cumbersome to your site visitors. If you have a small banner or animation that is ok, but when your entire website is built of flash, you are going to annoy your visitors more than anything. People want to find information easily and simply. If you make it a bother for them, they won’t come back.

3. Expensive to Create and Maintain

Creating flash animations and updating them takes about twice as long as other technologies like Javascript, HTML, Ajax and HTMl5. So not only is it more expensive to create, it also more expensive to update.

Bonus

How many big and successful companies do you know use flash animations in the design of their websites??? Almost none!

So if you want to have animations on your site I HIGHLY suggest you use Javascript, Ajax or HTML5 based technologies. It will save you a lot of time, money and headache.

For more information on the predicament of flash, read this article by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at ZDNet.

We have quite a lot of experience designing websites for online stores (e-commerce). We have used several types of e-commerce shopping cart systems but by far the best is Magento Commerce.

Magento has risen quickly in the past several years to become the premier e-commerce shopping cart system for professionals, small and medium sized businesses. Many other systems like oSCommerce, Prestashop, Virtuemart or XCart have not been able to compete with the level of features and functionality that Magento posses.

If you are just starting out, or looking for a better option to sell your products online, look now further than Magento.

Here are some of Magentos’s features;

Marketing Promotions and Tools

• Flexible Coupons (pricing rules) with ability to restrict to stores, customer groups, time period, products, and categories.
• Catalog Promotional Pricing

Search Engine Optimization

• Google Site Map
• URL Rewrites give full control of URL’s
• Meta-information for products and categories

Catalog Management

• Batch Import and Export of catalog
• Google Base Integration
• Downloadable/Digital Products
• Advanced Pricing Rules and support for Special Prices (see marketing tools)

Product Browsing

• Multiple Images Per Product
• Product Image Zoom-in Capability

International Support

• Multi-Lingual
• Support for Multiple Currencies

Shipping

• Shipping to multiple addresses in one order
• Multiple shipments per order
• Free Shipping

Customer Service

• Feature-rich Customer Accounts
• Order Tracking from Account

Order Management

• View, edit, create and fulfill orders from admin panel.
• Create one or multiple invoices, shipments and credit memos per order to allow for split fulfillment

Analytics and Reporting

• Admin Dashboard for Report Overview
• Abandoned Shopping Cart Report
• Best Customers Report by Total and Number of Orders

Site Management

• Control multiple websites and stores from one Administration Panel
• Web Services API for easy integration between Magento and any third-party application
• A/B and Multivariate Testing

Catalog Browsing

• Layered / Faceted Navigation for filtering of products in Categories
• Layered / Faceted Navigation for filtering of products in Search Results
• Product comparisons
• Product Reviews

Mobile Commerce

• iPhone Optimized

Checkout

• One-Page Checkout
• Checkout without account/Guest Checkout
• Shipping to multiple addresses in one order

Payment

• Multiple Payment Options Supported
• Payment Extensions Available through Magento Connect
• Configurable authorization and capturing of funds

Customer Accounts

• Re-orders from account
• Downloadable Products
• Recently ordered items

Magento uses a Template system to change the design of your store. We have many beautiful Magento Templates for sale in our template store.

If you are looking to start a new online store we can help, contact us for a quote.

In online business it’s vital to monitor your website and track statistics.

If you have a store selling t-shirts you would want to know how many people come into your store, how many buy and where they are coming from. This would help you refine your marketing tactics and target your market better.

The same is done with websites and it’s vital to your success.

A great (and FREE!) tool is Google Analytics.

In this tutorial I will show you how to install it onto your website.

1. Start by creating an account with Google Analytics.

2. Once you log in you will be shown your dashboard. At the very bottom of the page click on the link “Add Website Profile”.

3. Select the first option “Add a Profile for a new domain” and enter your website URL in the field below. Beneath that there is an option of tracking your Google Adwords statistics, go ahead and un-select that checkbox. Then click on “Finnish”.

4. On the next page you see it will give you the tracking code you must install onto your website. Copy the code and past it into a Notepad or Wordpad file and save it to your desktop.

5. Now you must install this code onto each page of your website that you want to track. It must be installed between the <head> </head> tags. I prefer to paste it near the last </head> tag, just before the <body> tag.

6. Once you have updated your website click on Finnish at the bottom of your screen. Google Analytics will scan your site and verify that the code has been installed and will start tracking data as of that date.

7. If you do not know how to edit your website then send the tracking code to your web designer for him to install it. If you are using WordPress, install the Google Analyticator plugin. It will do the work for you.

And that’s it. Good luck!

If you have decided to use a website template for your next website project, you will need several tools in order to customize your new template.

The two most common tools used by web designers are Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Dreamweaver.

These are not cheap pieces of software but if you purchase them, you will have them for several years. Your cost will be amortized over 3-5 years of using the software instead of paying a web designer to edit the website for you.

Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is a Photo and Image editing software. Every template you purchase comes with a PSD file. The .psd file extension is for files saved in Adobe Photoshop. Usually they come in layered format so you can easily change images, colors and fonts.

Adobe Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver is a file editing software for HTML, XHTML, XML, PHP and ASP files. Depending on the type of template you purchased it will come with HTML or PHP files. You can open these files with Dreamweaver and edit the links and text (content).

If you don’t have the technical know-how to time to customize your own template, you can easily hire a template customization firm like ours, check out our pricing, www.websitetemplatepros.com/template-customization-service/

In the web development industry there are several ways to reduce the cost of building a website. One of which is using website templates to remove the need for a graphic designer.

The second is to use open-source software like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento and OsCommerce. These content management systems are free to use.

A website template is basically a ready-made web page design where all you have to do is insert your logo, content and images.

Because open-source content management systems have become so popular there has been a growing demand for templates for these CMS’s.

As a result the top website 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

By using one of these types of template you can easily change the look of your website by simply purchasing a template and installing it on your server. Prices range from $30-200. So it can be very affordable.

Our Company

Website Template Pros was launched in December 2008. Our goal is to offer affordable web development services to professionals and small businesses. We are a division of Pro Web Group Inc, a privately help company based in Canada. As the founder of WTP I strongly believe in professional and effective marketing approach for all web based businesses. Having a professional and attractive website is important to building credibility and attracting new clients.

Our Products

We have over 10,000 website templates available for download starting at only $25. They are all designed by professional graphic designers and meet the strictest web standards. We also have many templates for some of the most popular content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento. You can purchase one of the templates and download it immediately to your computer. The entire process won’t take more than 10 mins.

Our Services

We offer two services for people looking to build a website. The first is template customization. This is where we take your existing template and customize it to your specifications. Once you confirm the changes we will send the customized template back to you. This service is designed for people who has a basic understanding of Adobe Dreamweaver and web design but don’t have the technical or artistic abilities to edit the graphics and layout on their own. The second service is Complete Web Design where we build a website for you based on any website template. We will customize the graphics to your specifications, install the template on your server and customize the navigation, pages, layout, and images, insert logo and much more. This is basically a turn-key solution for any professional or small business.

Since 2009 we have helped over 200 businesses market their products online. We have clients from all walks of life, from universities to self-employed moms to doctors. Each of these people understands the importance of having a “web presence” in the 21st century. Their goals are to compliment their existing business or start a new business with their new website.

When your computer crashes or your server crashes and you lose all data, that is when you are caught with your pants down, so to speak.

Anybody working in the IT industry must understand the importance of backing up your data on a regular basis.
Because the above scenario will eventually happen, the only thing you can do is prepare for it.

Over the weekend one of our computers crashed with a lot of important customer data.

Fortunately we have backed up only 1 hour prior. So we were able to be back up on our feed within 1 day, instead of potentially 1 week.

It’s vital to any IT company, professional, freelancer and individual to backup all their website files, MYSQL database’s, customer files, etc. in order to continue doing good business.

There are several ways you can do this.

The first is buying a external hard drive and backup up all your data onto it and keeping it in a safe place. A simple HP external hard drive with 300Gig of storage cost me $80. Quite affordable for the benefit it will provide you.

The second is using an online storage solution like OnlineStorage.com.

The companies featured on this site will allow you to upload and store many gigabytes of data on their servers, so when yours crashes, you can simply download the data again. The top rated company on this site charges $5.95 per month for unlimited storage space.

Think about the cost/benefit ratio of this. $60 a year to backup ALL your data in case you lose everything, it’s a no brain-er in my opinion.

So don’t procrastinate, go out and buy a backup tool now and start backing up your data now so you don’t end up regretting it.

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If you’re looking for a friendly and reliable company to help you customize your website template make sure to check us out, www.websitetemplatepros.com

So you have a business idea and you have a website built and ready to go.

But you don’t know how to advertise it. How do you reach your target market?

For people who are unfamiliar with internet marketing this can be a daunting task. I will show you the 2 most effective means of marketing your new online business.

Pay-per-Click Marketing

PPC marketing is basically where you pay every time someone clicks on your ads. PPC marketing can be seen in Google, Yahoo, MSN and even Facebook. Remember the ads which show up on the right when you do a search in Google, well those are sponsored ads which people pay every time you click on it. Prices range considerably, from $0.01 to $30 a click for very competitive markets. This doesn’t work for everybody but if you have a very tight niche business this could definitely boost you sales. When I started my first internet business back in 2001 I was spending a little over $3000 a month on PPC ads with Google. I was paying approximately $0.20 per click and it generated a little over $90,000 in sales on a monthly basis.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This is where you optimize your site to appear in the organic rankings of search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. It takes more time to rank but the investment is for the long term. Also you can expect to get a lot more traffic this way since most people click on the organic results when doing a search. The idea behind SEO is building quality back-links to your site, having quality content on your site and good on-page optimization. You can expect to pay anywhere from $100 to $3000 a month for this service depending on the level of complexity of service you have chosen.

Here at Website Template Pros we use SEO for our marketing campaign after trying PPC. It proved to be too expensive for us since it is a very competitive market so we opted to go with SEO only.