I have recently added the “Pin-It” button to FOODO, my Australian food website. I tried to play with adding to to every page of the website but it wouldn’t work, so I had to settle adding it only to the product pages.

The page you want to add the code to is called view.phtml located within your theme at /app/design/frontend/theme/theme/template/catalog/product/.

Most of the code used below is available from http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/. All we are really doing is defining the page URL, produce image location and using the produce name as the description.

At the top pf the page add the below piece of code. This will define the URL of the current page.

 <?php
$currentUrl = $this->helper(‘core/url’)->getCurrentUrl();
?>

Once that has been added you will need to figure out where you want to place your “Pin-It” Button. It can be anywhere on the product page. Paste the below code into view.phtml wherever you want the button to appear. The bold code are the elements being grabbed from Magento.

<a href=”http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=<?php echo $currentUrl ?>&media=<?php echo Mage::helper(‘catalog/image’)->init(Mage::registry(‘current_product’), ‘image’);?>&description=<?php echo Mage::registry(‘current_product’)->getName(); ?>” count-layout=”horizontal”>Pin It</a><script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js”></script>

Test your button to make sure it works as it should. The above code has been tested on Magento 1.4 and 1.5.

The blog post has to be about 250 words and use the link they send me in any way I see fit. Seems simple enough.

I have had reservations about adding the link but I am going to go ahead with it. It can’t hurt and if I get paid to do it then that is a bonus. More Digital seem legitimate enough and I guess the point of the whole thing to is create some back links for their client. If I get paid to do that, then I guess lucky me.

I’ll add the link tomorrow and we’ll see how long payment takes…

It is clearly spam so here is a copy of the e-mail. There doesn’t seem to be too much information about this particular e-mail online but as usual with these type of e-mails, don’t pay them anything…

The interesting thing about this e-mail is that they have my address. Though I suspect this is public information on the whois record of my domain name so it might be time to pay a bit more and make it private.

Attention: Important
Notice

DOMAIN SERVICE
NOTICE

2885 Sanford Ave SW

Suite # 19746

Grandville, MI 49418

United States of America

ATT:
DANIEL FELICE

ADMINISTRATIVE CONTACT

WWW.DANIELFELICE.COM

Domain Name:
DANIELFELICE.COM

Search Engine Submission

Attn: DANIEL FELICE

As a courtesy to domain name holders, we are sending you this notification for your
business Domain name search engine registration. This letter is
to inform you that it’s time to send in your registration and save.

Failure to complete your Domain name search engine registration by
the expiration date may result in cancellation of this offer making it
difficult for your customers to locate you on the web.

Privatization allows the consumer a choice when registering.
Search engine subscription includes domain name search engine
submission. You are under no obligation to pay the amounts
stated below unless you accept this offer. Do not discard, this notice
is not an invoice it is a courtesy reminder to register your domain
name search engine listing so your customers can locate you on the
web.

This
Notice for: WWW.DANIELFELICE.COM will expire on February 06, 2012 Act today!

——————————————————————————————–

Well, I have completed 74mins and 18seconds worth of “basic training” and have unlocked 20 $75 Adwords coupons to use with new clients. I also have access to various forms of marketing material to help me help my new clients understand the world of digital marketing and how they can benefit from it.

The only thing I need now is some new clients!

I have used Google Adwords for myself and my websites a number of times, but haven’t had much experience doing it for other people. I if am going to charge for it in the future, I should know what I am doing. So, to get some experience I am offering my services free of charge and $75 worth of Adwords to 5 people. I will start and manage your advertising campaign. My vouchers are only available to people based in Australia or New Zealand. Also, $75 is not very much to advertise with so don’t expect your traffic to increase by 1000% and your products to break your sales records.

Drop me an e-mail and we can get started…

Our options for up to date TV are limited in Australia. We have TV shows airing here when the current season has already finished in the USA. By the time we get into some shows they have already been cancelled in the US. We have a handful of free to air networks that fill a 30 minute time slot with as many commercials as they can fit in. We have 1 pay TV provider that has as many commercials as free TV and the shows are just as out dated.

For the price of 1 months worth of Foxtel Pay TV I can get an entire years worth of TV from the US that is up to date, has minimal commercials and I can watch my shows whenever I want to.

For the past year I have been watching Hulu and other US-based network shows using a VPN from StrongVPN. There are plenty of other VPN’s you can use, some of them are free and others you have to pay for. I have only used StrongVPN, which costs $55 per year. In simple terms, a VPN is remote server. In this case, StrongVPN allows me to connect to a server based in the USA giving Hulu and other network websites the impression I am in the US, meaning I can bypass any location restrictions.

So all you need to do is…

1. Ensure you have a good internet connection. I have Bigpond Cable which is pretty quick. The speed will also determine the video quality, so the better the connection the better the picture.
2. Visit StrongVPN.com and sign up to the $55 per year USA-UK special
3. Configure the VPN on your computer. Instructions can be found on the StrongVPN website or your VPN provider.

Once you have completed the above steps all you need to do is sign-up to Hulu and start watching. You can download the Hulu Desktop which is a great app and means you don’t have to visit the Hulu website each time you want to watch something. Other than Hulu, check out CBS.com, The History Channel and NatGeoTV for shows that aren’t available on Hulu.

You can do the above for UK television too. Instead of selecting the USA servers, choose the UK and you can get access to BBC iPlayer, ITV, Channel 4 on Demand and more.

Next time I’ll detail my entire lounge room setup.

Enjoy!

I applied for the program in November and got accepted. I am yet to start, but come tomorrow I would have completed my first training video and I’ll be on my way to becoming a Google Certified Individual.

This will allow me to provide AdWords services and consulting to my clients, which goes hand in hand with the other web services I am able to offer clients. The program also gives me 20 $75 AdWords to get my new clients kick started in online advertising. I’ll let you know once I have completed the program and maybe I can give you some advice in getting your business kick started online.

I am not going to promise to blog more about WordPress, or making money online or whatever else I have said I’d blog about in the past. This blog bears my name so I’ll post whatever I feel like blogging about and we’ll see where it takes us. Maybe if it becomes more of a personal blog I’ll create one for business and all things Internet related.

So a quick rundown of whats been happening…

FOODO still exists and been running fairly well. Sales were up for 2011 as they should be and we hope to continue to build it to a point where we start making some profit in 2012. It still has a fair way to go, but it doesn’t cost us anything to run as it is breaking even and we still have our full time jobs so we will keep working on it and trying new things until it starts meeting our goals.

In 2012 I plan to do more freelance work as last year was a bit quiet. I really didn’t push myself hard enough last year to get new work due to various things happening in real life. This year I plan to land some new clients and build my freelance business which eventually might lead to something more permanent.

Last year I didn’t commit to any new projects as I was focusing most of my free time on FOODO. In the past I have had a few projects running at once with NameSeek, BuddyPress Themes and a few others. I have a few ideas so hopefully they can become reality in 2012.

On a personal note, 2012 will also be the year of “The Wedding”. In October last year I proposed to my long-term girlfriend Ruth in the NSW Hunter Valley. Wedding plans are well underway and in August we will be married and the honeymoon will follow in October. We will travel to Europe for about 5 weeks visiting Malta, Sicily, Amalfi, Santorini and Dublin.

It is going to be a big year!

The copy of the website was exactly the same as it was on the older server, which was all according to plan. We switched the name servers and the website was up and running. So far so good.

In our testing we found a few images here and there to be missing, so normally the thing to do is to flush the cache and reindex. That is when things started to turn for the worse!

After we flushed the image storage cache, we took a look at the site and all of the products had disappeared from the main page and as listings on the category pages. All we could see was the header, sidebar, breadcrumbs and pager. The rest of the page was empty and the footer was gone. We could still browse the product by the URL, which showed up everything as it should minus the image.

We spent hours disabling the cache, reindexing the data, making sure every folder has been migrated from the older server, checking that the images were still linked in each product. We Googled the issue and a potential solution was to disable all the products and then re-enable them, that didn’t work. I added a few new products with new images, that wasn’t showing any images either.

Tearing my hair out by this stage I pointing the nameservers back to the old server and once it replicated it was back to normal, although we still had a broken copy of the newer, faster, better server.

I decided to SSH into both servers and check the folder permissions. While in the \media\catalog\product directory I noticed that the older server had a \cache\ folder inside it and the new server didn’t. I thought this was a bit odd as the copy of the website on the new server should be exactly the same as the older one, and the only change we had made was that we flushed the image storage cache.

Another thing we noticed was when we compared the permissions between the two servers was that the older server was owned by a user “foodo” and group “nobody” whereas the new server was “foodo” and “foodo”.

By this stage it was fairly clear what the issue was – permissions. It turned out that when you “flush” the image storage cache it deletes the \cache\ folder inside \media\catalog\product\ . The next time the site is loaded it should start to regenerate the cache folder. Due to the permissions issue Magento could not recreate this folder, therefore the images were not being found by the front end and the page stopped loading, which is why the products were missing as well as the footer.

What I still don’t understand is even though we turned off all caching, we could still not see the product thumbs and main images.

Once we applied the permission changes (changed group to “nobody”), I pointed the name servers back to the new server. We flushed the cache again, reloaded the site and everything was back to normal.  I also renamed the \cache\ directory to \cache1\ to make sure after we refreshed the site again, it recreated the directory.

It was a fairly stressful 24 hours, and as per usual asking questions on the Magento forums did nothing. Every time I have had an issue and posted on the forums, it has never been replied to.

Magento is such a great platform, though it is very bugging and the support isn’t that great. The community tries, but it is no WordPress. Whenever I recommend someone use Magento for their e-commerce needs I warn them to be prepared to rip their hair out at least 2-3 times a year.  That is number 1 for

The biggest challenge FOODO is facing at the moment is an issue that many online Australian business face when dealing with third party shipping – cost.

We aren’t yet big enough to have our own logistics so we have to rely on Australia Post at the moment. This is becoming more and more of an issue for us as we grow. We have more orders being processed and therefore more items being shipped which just means we face more problems with shipping.

Broken items, late delivery, items being lost. It is a massive problem at the moment. To add to all of that it is also expensive. Depending on what is purchased shipping can sometimes be more than the item itself.

Our business model also does not help. One customer might buy product from 3 different producers, therefore it is being shipped from 3 different locations, which in turn means shipping is going to be charged 3 times.

In a lot of cases when buying online locally in Australia, the item itself might be cheaper than in store however the shipping is expensive which negates the saving therefore it makes more sense to just go out and buy it in a shop.

Retailers are complaining that Australian’s aren’t buying locally at the moment as it is cheaper to buy the same product from overseas. The products are cheaper, as in most cases the shipping is too. If they want us to buy local, apart from the big retailers making their prices more competitive (which is a separate issues in itself), shipping and courier companies have to make it worthwhile and cost effective for us who want to buy local and support Australian business.

Who is going to pay $11.00 to get a $5 bottle of Olive Oil shipped? Exactly….

<iframe src=”http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=80″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ style=”border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:80px;” allowTransparency=”true”></iframe>

Copy the code and place inside the view.phtml file in your templates folder “app/design/frontend/default/YOUR TEMPLATE/template/catalog/product”