• Font Family & Style: Whether you use an existing font or look for custom ones online.
• Color Combinations: Which colors to implement and color effects, such as gradients.
• Simple Font Effects/Filters: This can be effects such as beveling or drop-shadows.
• Graphics, Thumbnails or Icons: This is optional, and does require a bit more experience if a custom made one is required.

If you look at the branding of some commonly known websites, such as ebay.com or yelp.com, you may notice that their logos have even less than the above features we will attempt, and don't require high-end photo editing tools to create.

Adobe Master Suite

The Adobe CS6 Software Suite has a row of great software that have the tools necessary to create a logo, but for beginners some software have to many unnecessary features. This excludes software such as Adobe Photoshop, which has too many tools and is not really emphasizing font based designs that we see in today's websites. A better choice would be Adobe Illustrator, which is similar to Photoshop but emphasizes more vector based graphic designing. Although you could use Illustrator to design, for the purpose of simplicity and this tutorial, we will use Adobe Flash, which will have all the tools we need to create a simple, yet effective logo design, without too many of the extras.

The newest version of the Adobe Suite at the time of this write-up, is CS6, which you can acquire a free trial for at the Adobe Creative Suite Page.

Working With Adobe Flash CS6

Open A New Flash Document

When opening Flash, you should see the following screen. We choose "Create New" -> "ActionScript 3.0", which is the most up-to-date starting template.

Set Your Tools

Upon installing Flash, this screen may look different, but this is the setup I recommend. For this tutorial, make sure that the Properties and Tools panels are visible, otherwise you can open these within the Window menu.

Designing your Website Logo

Choose the Text Tool

Choose the Text Tool (left of image) in the tools menu. When choosing it, you will see new settings appear in the properties menu (on the right of the image). Here you will choose the font style and size settings to start the logo text off with.

Place Your Logo Text

Write out your logo text and start experimenting with the font-style and size. For the example I chose a bolded Gill Sans MT with -2 letter spacing.

Changing Colors of Text in a Text Element

Once your text is places, you can select individual letters or words within your text element, to modify color, font size and style individually.

Finalizing Main Logo Font Properties

After finalizing the main text and font properties of your logo, we can start adding effects. The color I chose for "Design" is #FAEBD7.

Adding Text Effects

To start adding effects, we need to switch back to the regular select tool and then click on the logo text for the object element properties to be visible again.

Adding Text Filters/Effects

Text / Object Filer Options

On the properties panel, scroll down until you find the filters tab (usually the last) and open open if it isn't. Click the small white page on the bottom left as displayed on the image and choose bevel.

Adjusting Filter Effect Settings

The bevel will appear on the text as well as the settings for the bevel. Let's reduce the bevel's blur and distance to 1, to achieve a cleaner effect.

Text Glow Filter

Let's add another effect to our text logo, by clicking the page once more and choosing glow. Note that the order in which the filters are chosen can also change it's overall design (for example text shadow above or below a blur or glow.

Exporting your Logo

Exporting Flash as Image File Type

After experimenting with your logo design, you can export it as any image file-type. You may want to adjust your stage size, by clicking on any empty space of the stage and choosing the width and height via the properties tab, in order to export the exact image size you want. The text property usually adds to much padding, causing the exported image size to be inaccurate.

More Advanced Flash Image Design Effects

The above tutorial can often satisfy the regular web design clients, but if one requires more effects, or simply wants to try other design possibilities, can use some of the below features. This includes the moving of letters independent of the text object, image handling and Flash's Masking feature.

Breaking Apart / Separating Text

To make more changes to a texts design in Flash, one can choose the option to "Break Apart". This works with all object types, and can be done multiple times on the same objects, depending on how often they are nested. In this care, a text element that contains a word, will first be broken down in letters, and if "Broken Apart" again, will become a vector graphic object.

Importing Images into Flash

For this example, we want to import an image, to use as the logos fill, instead of a regular color (also known as masking).

Layer Order

After importing a graphic image, it will usually be the top most element, but or masking we will require it to be a layer bellow the elements we want to mask.

Distribute to Layers

The easiest way to quickly place elements on individual layers, is with Right-Click->Distribute to Layers.

Making Text into Vector

In Flash CS6, in order to mask an object, the masking object has to have the following properties assure it works properly:

• Only one object should exist in a layer that you want to mask, and the layer to be masked should be below that layer. Multiple objects in a masked layer often displays incorrectly.
• The object must be in vector format or contain one.

In this case, if you have not yet broken the text apart until it becomes a vector, you should do so now.

Grouping Objects

Now that the text is no longer text, but instead a vector, it's less easy to handle. Overlapping vectors cause them to cut each other and if they have the same color, they simply merge. Therefore, it is suggested that you put 'Unbreak' the vector, which you can do by "Grouping the Vectors into one element, or converting the objects you want to mask into a Graphic or Movie Clip Symbols. Symbols are an important component for Flash, yet we will not be covering more of Symbol Objects in this tutorial.

Masking the Logo

Notice how after the vectors have been grouped or converted into a symbol, you can safely handle the object.

In this example, we grouped both words into their own objects, because we intend to only mask one of them.

Next, the "Design" object has been distributed to its own layer, and made sure its layer is right above the background.

Finally, we right click that layer, and click Mask.

Completed Logo Design in Flash

There we have it: The above image should display the resulting logo after the masking. Notice how the background only shows up behind the content of the layer above it. Once more practice is gained, one would be able to do the same in a Movie Clip Symbol (converting Design into a symbol first, then duplicating this effect withing that), to allow better control of the resulting clip.

Read the Original Post at Easy Logo Design with Adobe Flash CS6 by Internet Marketing Blog

1. Fast Magento Product Imports with Magmi
2. Magento Raw Product CSV Creation & Basics
3. Configurable Product Imports
4. Multiple Product Images, Attributes and Sub-/Category Imports
5. Custom Options and Tier Pricing
6. Creating Products in Bulk via Spreadsheet (Pending)

Importing Images, Categories and Attributes with Magmi

To import images and categories into Magento via Magmi, you will require the Magmi extended plugins which is also free and can be downloaded from their repository. After that's setup, you'll just have to check the options you would like to include in your imports (see below image).

Here are the instructions for the corresponding data-imports:

Import Product Attributes

Importing product attributes is relatively easy and works out-of-the-box. You first have to create the attributes, which is done via the Magento's admin backend, at Catalog->Attributes->Manage Attributes. After creating the attribute, you simply need to add the Attribute Code as a new column in your CSV spreadsheet and add values per product below that.

Product Categories and Subcategories

After applying the settings for the On the fly category creator/importer, you just have to add the header named categories to your spreadsheets columns. For each category you want to create, you simply add the category name (not the ID), for example Electronics. To import category trees/subcategories, you can separate categories with a forward slash / by default, like so: Electronics/Computer Accessories/Keyboards. You choose whether products should be imported to all categories in the tree, or just to the last one via the Magmi settings prior to importing.

You can also assign products to multiple categories, and add category specific settings. To import a product into multiple categories per row, simply separate each category branch with ;;, for example: Electronics/Computer Accessories/Keyboards;;On Sale/Keyboards.

Importing Multiple Images

The way Magmi imports images works the same as Dataflow, yet comes with a larger set of options. For the basic inclusion of an image per product, you simply have the fill the columns image, small_image and thumbnail with the file path and name of the image. The file path is relative to the media/import folder, so if your file path in the spreadsheet is /electronics/keyboard.jpg, then the image should be uploaded to root/media/import/electronics/*.

Magmi adds the feature to import multiple images per product, which works by adding the column image_gallery, and adding as many file url paths separated by a semicolon ";". More options can be found by pressing the documentation link for this option.

Read the Original Post at Magento: Importing Categories, Multiple Images & Product Attributes by Internet Marketing Blog

1. Fast Magento Product Imports with Magmi
2. Magento Raw Product CSV Creation & Basics
3. Configurable Product Imports
4. Import Multiple Images, Product Attributes and Sub-/Category
5. Custom Options, Tier Pricing, Related Products & other Product Types
6. Creating Products in Bulk via Spreadsheet (Pending)

Configurable Product Importing with Magmi

Importing Configurable Products is another great feature that comes with Magmi, but it can be a bit confusing for some, due to configurable and simple product having different columns and column count.

Start by creating a configurable product manually via the admin to assure that the super attribute and simple product relations are set-up correctly and working. After you successfully created a configurable product to go by, you can start with your configurable product spreadsheet, which requires less column headers due to most coming from the simple products. In a duplicated version of the simple products spreadsheet, cut down the values to the following (but do leave the columns you may require, such as page layout or custom designs if you intend to use them):

store,websites,attribute_set,product_type_id,category_ids,type,configurable_attributes,simples_skus,sku,has_options,name,product_name,description,short_description,meta_title,meta_description,url_key,url_path,cleaning_instructions,image,small_image,thumbnail,image_label,thumbnail_label,small_image_label,options_container,msrp_enabled,msrp_display_actual_price_type,gift_message_available,price,special_price,weight,msrp,status,is_recurring,visibility,enable_googlecheckout,tax_class_id,is_imported

You may notice that there are a few new column headers above, which are configurable_attributes and simples_skus.

The following are just suggestive notes, of how to successfully import simple/configurable products:

• SP (Simple Product) CSV: Include the super attribute as a column header, used when you manually created your test configurable product.
• CP (Configurable Product) CSV: Add the super attribute to this spreadsheet, under the configurable_attributes column.
• SP CSV: You should not include the categories or category_ids column in your simple products spreadsheet, or just leave them empty.
• CP CSV: Instead, list the categories in your configurable products CSV.
• SP CSV: Set the value for the visibility column to Not Visible Individually or to Search if preferred (you can change this after importing simple products if missed, within Magmi configuration for configurable products).
• SP CSV: The type column should be set to simple.
• CP CSV: The type column should be configurable on the configurable product spreadsheet.
• SP & CP CSV: Both spreadsheets should have the same value under attribute_set.
• CP CSV: List the simple product SKU's under the simples_skus of the corresponding configurable product, comma separated. These will be the products you intend to link the CP with.
• Lastly, import the simple products first, then follow with the configurable product imports.

Read the Original Post at Import Configurable Products in Magento by Internet Marketing Blog

The below tutorials should cover information to expedite any bulk product editing and importing projects, broken down in the following topics:

1. Fast Magento Product Imports with Magmi
2. Generating the Raw Product Import CSV
3. Configurable Product Imports
4. Multiple Images, Attributes, Category Tree Importing
5. Custom Options, Tier Pricing, Related Products & other Product Types (Pending)
6. Tips for Creating Products in Bulk via Spreadsheet (Pending)

Magento CSV & Tools

To take advantage of most tutorials explained in this article, you will require two things:

Magmi: Magento Extension for Fast Imports

In a previous post, we introduce a free tool for fast product imports in Magento, which you should download and setup. You can learn more about the extension and how to set it up here.

Excel or OpenOffice.org's Calc

To generate the CSV files, we require spreadsheet generating software that allow formulas/functions, such as Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice. Both work similarly, but although OpenOffice is more preferred, the examples below will be done via Excel, due to its more common use.

Magento Importing Basics

Both Magento's Dataflow and the Magmi Extension have the same behavior when it comes to importing. By default, these two tools will look for the importable CSV files in your root/var/import folder, and the images in your root/media/import folder (root being the folder of your Magento install). If those folders don't exist, you will have to create them in the specified path, or change where the tool you use should look for these files. This assumes that you have an FTP software, such as FileZilla, and have access to your target stores install folders.

Generating the Raw Product CSV and Columns

To generate the basic CSV file to use for imports in the target Magento store, you will want to do a product export from the admin of that store by doing the following:

1. Login to your Magento Admin
2. Go to the Dataflow Profiles via System->Import/Export->Dataflow - Profiles, and choose Export All Products.
3. In the Profile Wizard, just make sure All fields is selected in Export: under Data Format, which it should by default, then click on Run Profile and Run Profile in Popup.
4. After the Profile executed, you should find your generated .CSV file in a folder of your Magento install, by default in root/var/export called export_all_products.csv.

Once you have the exported spreadsheet open, copy the entire header row to a new Excel Spreadsheet. The spreadsheet will vary per Magento store, because it includes all the custom created attributes, but at the very least, the minimal product import/export values on Magento 1.7 are:

store,websites,attribute_set,type,category_ids,sku,has_options,name,meta_title,meta_description,image,small_image,thumbnail,url_key,url_path,page_layout,options_container,image_label,small_image_label,thumbnail_label,msrp_enabled,msrp_display_actual_price_type,gift_message_available,price,special_price,weight,msrp,status,is_recurring,visibility,enable_googlecheckout,tax_class_id,description,short_description,custom_layout_update,special_from_date,special_to_date,news_from_date,news_to_date,qty,min_qty,use_config_min_qty,is_qty_decimal,backorders,use_config_backorders,min_sale_qty,use_config_min_sale_qty,max_sale_qty,use_config_max_sale_qty,is_in_stock,low_stock_date,notify_stock_qty,use_config_notify_stock_qty,manage_stock,use_config_manage_stock,stock_status_changed_auto,use_config_qty_increments,qty_increments,use_config_enable_qty_inc,enable_qty_increments,is_decimal_divided,stock_status_changed_automatically,use_config_enable_qty_increments,product_name,store_id,product_type_id

When importing via Magmi, many of the values can be disregarded and importing will work normally, but if you do intend to import via the Magento Defaflow method or do want custom values for the below columns, then you may want to add the following columns that I left out (although it may work without):

country_of_manufacture,meta_keyword,custom_design,custom_design_from,custom_design_to,product_status_changed,product_changed_websites

It is important to note that the order of these columns do not matter when importing via Dataflow or Magmi. Simply having the column headers is sufficient for it to be queued during import.

Importable Product CSV Sample Download

The below Product CSV sample is based on Magento 1.7, but may also work on earlier versions, starting at 1.4.

Magento Product Import CSV

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Read the Original Post at Magento Raw Product Import CSV Creation & Download by Internet Marketing Blog

What we know is that Google intends to help visitors find what they are looking for and therefore helps provide significant information on how Search Engine Optimization specialists can do the same for their content and that of their clients. Knowing that, we can assume that every search algorithm update that Google makes intends to improve that experience for the users, hence making it more difficult to shortcut high website rankings with SEO techniques that may have been approved at one point.

Keep SEO Natural

Another important point that Google's search quality team highlights, quoting from the following interview, is:

[...]if you want to please Google with your SEO, then forget about SEO.[...]

The above has been brought up from multiple sources at Google and simply signifies the importance of investing in quality content and a good website that is user friendly, rather than focusing on ranking search results pages. Another example that occurred with some of our clients, who have had a website for over a year prior to our consultation, already had a PageRank factor of 2, only requiring on-site improvements leverage that for traffic. On the other hand, some sites may have had for very long without any increase, or even fallen in PR.

Ways to Avoid PageRank Loss

On the above mentioned link to the Google Webmaster Guidelines, you will find the section called: Quality guidelines - specific guidelines. This section explains the different techniques that may cause Google to devalue your website and its content, which can lead to PageRank dropping or, in some cases, becoming blacklisted on the Google search engine. At first glance, most site-owners may not identify any of non-recommended techniques on their sites, but sometimes these techniques still apply by accident, when attempting white-hat SEO. Here are some examples:

Auto-Generated Content: Purchasing Articles & Scraped Content Risks

Many site-owners and SEO's are already aware of content significance and the role it plays in keyword rankings and increasing web traffic. However, the common mistakes that are being made in this regard are: Copying content with making little to no changes to it; and attempting to generate unique content via paid articles and/or automatic tools (such as article rewriting tools/ a.k.a. content spinners).

Here are some of today's scenarios for the above examples:

• Copying product information from manufacturers when creating an eCommerce Store.
• Rewriting Articles from other high-quality sources and re-posting them: This is a common occurrence when hiring writers to write content about specific categories, un-related to their field of study, such as Medical or Technology related articles.
• Relying on content aggregated from other blogs, such as RSS feeds.

Link Schemes: How Link Building Can Backfire

Link building, whether building links on other sites to point to yours, or having links on your website pointing to another, can both have tremendous (positive and negative) effects on your sites PageRank and rankings. Google tries evaluate the links based on their relevance to the current pages content.

For example: If the current post is regarding clothing and a link is provided to a page on another website that is completely irrelevant, the post will lose credibility. This is done to prevent links being built with the intention to increase PR and search engine rankings, as well as the attempt to stop paid linking services.

Repetitive links, such as those commonly found in the sidebar and footer of websites, that link to external web-pages, should also avoid repetitious anchor texts, or even have a 'nofollow' attribute in some cases, to avoid negative effects.

Keyword Stuffing & Over-Optimization

Another common mistake is made when too many keywords are being stuffed into a page, often found on index pages, which derives from the misconception that the index / homepage of a website is meant to rank SERP's for all the main keywords. This usually also correlates with links being built mostly to the index page, instead of to the possibly more relevant sub-pages of a website. Some examples are:

• Recalling all services a website offers on all the pages, instead of linking to the actual pages specifically about the service.
• For local service websites, a similar blunder takes place when listing multiple locations on all pages, instead of having a page for each locations contact information (also see local SEO tips).

Negative & Spammy Content

Lastly, another issue that transpires is the creation of spam-similar content. Obviously, if the intention is to offer quality services/products to your visitors, this won't be a concern; However, if you are running a WordPress blog, eCommerce website, or similar Application type websites, it is important to prevent the generation of fake content, with the intention to spam or link to external websites. One of the most common forms of this are fake comments, usually auto-generated, that appear on WordPress posts. Similarly, this type of content can present as a fake review on an eCommerce product page, fake post submission on guest-post enabled blog sites and more.

Other Google PageRank Increase/Decrease Factors

This article attempted to capture the most often found SEO flaws that occur for the average site-owners, that do not intend to use any black-hat SEO techniques. There are many more strategies still being used today to manipulate rankings, nonetheless, we always recommend the most natural and recommended way to gain PageRank and overall strong rankings: Providing good quality and relevant content for visitors. We rely on Google to further its search technology to better identify what content is best for the users. Please feel free to add any other common SEO factors that are relevant, questions or possible revision suggestions.

Read the Original Post at Google PageRank Increase & Decrease: How to Avoid PR Drop by Internet Marketing Blog

The average importing process of 200-300 products, not including the setup of the importable CSV file (which, alone, can take hours), takes about 1-2 hours on an average server, followed by a manual confirming of the imported products due to Magento Dataflow's lack of documentation for errors during importing. The abundance of options to import Tier-Pricing, Configurable Products, as well as Related-, Upsell-, Crosssell-, and many other Products variations and features, furthers its inadequacy in efficient bulk product handling.

Magento's positive reputation among e-Commerce CMS's in combination with its lack of data-entry capabilities, other than its default product creation features, leave room for many commercial plugins and extensions that are equally hazardous and, yet, far overpriced.

Fortunately, after researching and testing the most popular methods in the Magento Community, both Commercial and Free, in search for the most appropriate solution in mass product handling consequently led to, what we think may be, the best and fastest methods to import products in bulk.

Magento Product Importing User Guide:

The bulk product importing tools and methods we will be describing are covered in the following steps:

1. Fast Magento Product Imports with Magmi
2. Magento Raw Product CSV Creation & Download
3. Configurable Product Imports
4. Multiple Product Images, Attributes and Sub-/Category Imports
5. Custom Options, Tier Pricing, Related Products & other Product Types
6. Tips for Creating Products in Bulk via Spreadsheet (Pending)

Magmi, the Free Extension for Fast Magento Importing

For those who haven't heard of Magmi before, it is a free Fast Product Importer extension for Magento, that is free and usable on any of your Magento Data Entry projects. It offers very fast Product Imports, averaging less than 5 minutes per 500 products (which is less time than what Magento requires to index them). You can Download Magmi at SourceForge, where the main extension development occurs, or at Magmi's Github Repository.

In addition to the main Magmi download, you will require the Extra Plugins, which carries the image importing and other useful features. You can find the Magmi Extra Plugins repository here.

Installing Magmi

After downloading the newest Magmi files you will require access to your Magento websites root folder, typically using FTP or SSH.

1. Unzip the downloaded Magmi.zip folder and upload the unzipped magmi folder to the Magento root install folder.
2. Once successfully uploaded, you will find its dashboard at youdomain.com/magmi/web/magmi.php.
3. Next, click on the choose file button (see image) to upload the entire plugin .zip file, and press Upload Plugins. The same can be done with the Utility Plugins, although those are often needed in rare cases.
4. Now, you only have to setup your database information to match the target Magento site's database, and press Save global parameters. You can get this data quickly from your local.xml file, in your {root}/app/etc folder.

Importing Products with Magmi

Magmi is much more tolerant than Magento's Dataflow tool and will therefore create the products even if it fails to find the image or oftentimes even with empty fields that are normally required for Dataflow. The logs during the import process also provide sufficient data to make the debugging much smoother.

Read the Original Post at Magento: Import Products Fast via Magmi, a Free Product Import Tool by Internet Marketing Blog

Importance of Site Speed in SEO by Matt Cutts

There are over a dozen methods that one can use to increase Magento performance and other PHP based CMS systems, that range from settings within Magento, all the way to optimization of server or hosting settings. Yet, the most commonly missed methods to speed up Magento, are those that are also relatively the easiest ones, and those that increase the Magento page-load speed significantly. The right Magento hosting company may have the correct server settings, but the settings that need to happen within your Magento settings are often not documented. Here I will cover the top 5 of these methods for better Magento performance:

1. Enable Flat Data Products & Categories
2. Merge CSS and JS Files
3. Magento Htaccess Performance Settings
4. Compiling Magento
5. Caching Magento via Cache Management

Enable Flat Data Products & Categories

Whether or not you should enable the Flat Data of Products and/or Categories varies depending on your Magento website structure.

First, it may be important to understand the concept of 'Flattening'. Similar to when creating graphics in Photoshop, .PSD files, you will have several layers, such as the layer for the background, the layer for the text, a layer for each graphic object you create and would like move around individually. If you were to save the .PSD file, it's size would be rather large, because it contains all the layers, settings of each layer and so on. If you were to now 'Flatten' the layers, or export its content as a .jpg file, the resulting file size would be much smaller, yet it would look the same. The feature that is lost, is that you can no longer make changes to it 'quickly' because all the options and layers would be lost.

In the Magento Flat Product/Category concept, the .PSD layers correspond to the Database tables of each object, product or category. A database table is required for each attribute, such as price, descriptions, name, weight, color and many other attributes that apply to your products/categories. If you have only dozens of products with many attributes, or have a few hundred products with only a few attributes/attribute variations, then flattening the products/categories may not impact the site speed significantly. On the other hand, if your website contained almost 1,000, or possibly several thousands of products, then it is almost always recommended to flatten your products. If these products are spread across multiple dozens of categories (and products aren't duplicated across these categories), then flattening these categories would be suggested as well.

After completion of the Magento data entry and prior to launching, consider whether or not to enable the flattening of product/category data. Find the options in System->Configuration->Catalog.

Merge CSS and JS Files

The merging of CSS and JS files is a common practice done to increase site speed, not only on Magento but on all websites in general. The idea is simple, that a website only has to load one CSS and JS file, not several, thus making the page load faster.

Of course this can be done manually with help of an experienced web developer, but to save time, Magento has its own settings for this in System->Configuration->Developer.

Magento Htaccess Gzip, Mod_deflate, Performance Settings

A quite noticeable impact on Page Speed occurred after the correct settings were applied in the .htaccess file of Magento's Root install folder. The Magento .htaccess file comes with pre-described settings that one must simply 'uncomment' to enable, which depends on your hosting company's capabilities, or your servers VPS setting's.

Start by opening your Magento root .htaccess file, and finding the settings that apply to your hosting/VPS features. Despite the deterring of using unoptimized Hosting companies for performance based platforms, you will still find those 'specific' settings if hosting on those platforms - which would then likely be the only settings you could apply. In the below lines of your .htaccess file, you would need to 'uncomment' line 12 for GoDaddy or lines 21 and 22 if hosting on 1and1.

############################################
## GoDaddy specific options

#   Options -MultiViews

## you might also need to add this line to php.ini
##     cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1
## if it still doesn't work, rename php.ini to php5.ini

############################################
## this line is specific for 1and1 hosting

    #AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
    #AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

############################################

If your site is hosted on a Magento / PHP optimized hosting or you're VPS is setup for the features, then you can go ahead and uncomment these features in your .htaccess file, which should be:

    #php_flag zlib.output_compression on

    # Insert filter on all content
    ###SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
    # Insert filter on selected content types only
    #AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript

Also uncomment all the BrowserMatch, SetEnvIfNoCase and Header settings, which are set right after the above Filter rules on line 86, 89, 92, 95 and 98.

Assuming your Magento website is still in development, you shouldn't require the clearing of your Magento cache in the admin (since this would be set to No-Caching'), but it may still be suggested empty your Magento var/cache and /session folders probable page speed difference.

Compiling Magento

Magento Compilation is an important step to take after development completion of a Magento website. What compiling will do is take all the active scripts in your Magento's core structure and bring them to the 'front' for faster website speed. To better imagine the process: Similar to the above description of flattening products/categories, compiling would be the equivalent to flattening of Magento's file-system in your project.

It is important to know that after compilation, you can't upgrade your Magento store, install or change core/extension settings, nor change core files or features within Magento's core folders or those present within template files. Doing so may result in errors or problems in functions. To avoid that, simply de-compile before making any of the above changes, and simply compile again after. Both the compiling and decompiling can found in the same settings page at System->Tools->Compilation.

Caching Magento via Cache Management

Of course, when all the settings are in place and your site is ready to launch production, cache your Magento site via System->Cache Management

For most Magento sites, caching only the first 4 cache types will be recommended, which, on the Magento version 1.7 and up, are Configuration, Layouts, Blocks HTML output and Translations.

Whether to cache the remaining 4, which are Collections Data, EAV types and attributes and 2 for Web Services Configuration depend on your sites data and structure as well as possible features used that interact with those data types. Caching them when not needed may have negative impact on your website speed overall or in certain sections. To determine whether to cache or disable caching for EAV Types and Attributes, you could test the duration of adding a product to cart, or the page load time of visiting your shopping cart with a few products added. The Collections Data could be tested similarly, while logging into or creating an account on the Magento store front-end, and doing the same test with the shopping cart or page load speed during checkout.

Other Magento Performance Settings

The above settings will help increase the performance for the average Magento websites, but for those who are more familiar with servers can take several extra steps to increase the speed and performance even more. Server caching extensions, such as APC and eAccelerator do have a place within Magento's configuration file, as well as other server tricks that can be used to increase the performance. Feel free to subscribe to know when these features, as well as tutorials to test and optimize performance for Magento and WordPress are posted.

Read the Original Post at Increase Magento Speed and Performance by Internet Marketing Blog

For example, let's say you have a category that contains 20 sub-categories, each with an average of 20 products:

www.domain.com/category/subcategory-1
www.domain.com/category/subcategory-2
www.domain.com/category/subcategory-3
...

301 Redirect Tips by Matt Cutts

Easy 301 Redirection with Magento's URL Rewrite Management

When fixing unique 404 errors, the URL Rewrite Management module does come quite handy.

Custom URL Rewrite Fields
1. Start by choosing Catalog > URL Rewrite Management > Add New URL Rewrite
2. Choose Custom from the drop-down.
3. Fill out the 4 provided fields to complete the 301 Redirect.
   • ID Path: A unique ID for this rewrite so you can easily find it for future changes.
   • Request Path: Type in the broken URL you intend to redirect.
   • Target Path: The URL you wish to redirect the requested path to.
   • Redirect: This should be set to Permanent (301).
4. Done. Test if the request URL goes to the target URL correctly.

In some cases, the URL Rewrite Management method will be sufficient, but for those dealing with multiple URL's that need to go to the same target URL, this method may be less efficient.

Multiple 301 Redirects with .htaccess Regex

In a scenario where multiple URL subtrees need to be redirected, this method may prove most efficient. Make a backup of your .htaccess and consider looking into further references regarding .htaccess and its URL rewrites before attempting this method:

1. Download and open your .htaccess file from the Magento root folder install.
2. Place the rewrite rules (see some redirect examples below) after RewriteEngine on, around line 117
3. Refresh your Magento Cache after saving and uploading the updated HTACCESS file.

Here are some Regex Redirect Rules that may be useful.

Redirect Multiple URL's to One

category/sub1 redirect to category/
category/sub2 redirect to category/
category/sub3 redirect to category/

To redirect all URL's that start with '/category/' to the same URL target, just a one-line Rule is needed:

RewriteRule ^category/ http://www.yourwebsite.com/category [R=301, L]

Redirecting Subcategory URL with New Parent URL

category/sub1 redirect to cat/sub1
category/sub2 redirect to cat/sub2
category/sub3 redirect to cat/sub3

This may be needed if you changed a parent Category URL or even if you want to remove the parent URL completely:

RewriteRule ^category/(.*) http://www.yourwebsite.com/cat/$1 [R=301, L]

OR to remove '/category/' completely from yourwebsite.com/category/sub and end up with yourwebsite.com/sub ('sub' can be any url):

RewriteRule ^category/(.*) http://www.yourwebsite.com/$1/ [R=301, L]

Resources

There are many more 301 Rewrite Rules to be aware of when fixing Magento 404 errors. Htaccess URL rewriting is independent of Magento, therefore consider a google search for specific rewrites.

When to use Custom URL Rewrites for Magento

I personally recommend to only consider using HTACCESS rewrites or even 'custom rewrites' when listed in Google Webmaster Tools.

Feel free to comment questions, fixes or other resources.

Read the Original Post at Magento URL Rewriting, Regex and 301 Redirects Tips by Internet Marketing Blog

This is How A/B Testing Works

The procedure involves the creation of two distinct versions of a website which will be the subject for evaluation of the audiences. These variations will be displayed in simultaneously from unsuspecting website visitors to check which will garner the most traffic, click outs, and conversion rates.

At the end of the experiment, results will be analyzed to pinpoint the design which can be implemented to potentially give boost to your site a boost.

How to Get Started in A/B Testing

Homepages are typically placed in a chopping block. After all, this is the very first thing that your audience will see. At the same time, homepages house all the opportunities to catch the interest of visitors and lure them into navigating the site.

There’s a lot of design elements embedded in a homepage. As such, it is not too easy to decide on what component will be assessed in split tests. If you are at lost on where you can start, here are some of the facets that you can focus on:

Components at the upper fold

Note that when you open a page, you can see only a portion of the homepage. The part that is displayed before you can scroll down is cold the upper fold.

This particular segment of the website carries a vital role in ensnaring the attention of the visitors. It should therefore carry a succinct rendering of the brand, products, and services.

Call to Action

After the presentation of products from the catalogue, you are bound to leave a call for action. This is the snippet of text usually located at the end of product descriptions, blogs, and other information that convince the visitors to buy or sign up for subscription.

Main Photo or Hero Shot

Most online shopping website display a winning snapshot that best represents the products sold. Fashion boutiques choose to embed a picture with the most chic ensemble; restaurant sites flashes the most scrumptious-looking dish from their menu; florists showcase their most darling arrangements.

It is imperative to choose the finest among your shots to attract buyers. Everything that’s enveloped in the frame should radiate high quality, value for money, beauty, elegance and all things positive for the buyers. If you are torn between two photographs, run a split test and see which choice can give higher volume of sales.

Layout

Various studies suggest that web visitors follow a certain pattern in perusing a page. Observations point to the movement of the eye from left to right down, from top to bottom. But this doesn’t mean your web design will be bottled in the norm.

Internet usage now is now more dynamic. Most users may start looking at the right side of the page if links to the information they need appear to be at the border. It is best to experiment with different page appearances without risking your current traffic. A/B testing is the safest and most effective way to do it.

Don't overlook this process of A/B testing because although the high traffic is a great sign that you're more than halfway through to success with your online business, you still need to track to see if your traffic is converting to sales. Thanfully, an A/B testing method helps you compare and kill two birds with one stone and although you'll need to make more than one adjust to your website, it' still a lot faster than before this method ever existed.

Hopefully this guide has provided you with enough details on the most important key points of A/B Testing. If you have any questions, be sure to ask away in the comments below. It’s understandable that it’s not a concept not everyone will grasp, but Maxymiser have a nice A/B testing guide, that can help you better understand the basics of this method.

Read the Original Post at The Important Features to Test A/B Testing by Internet Marketing Blog

• Restricting Review Publishing to Members
• Integrate Member name and E-mail (BuddyPress)

Both features we will be integrating above will be done through the wp-customer-reviews.php file from the plugin or even the extended version you can download from the previous post.

Hiding Customer Review Form from Non-Members

If you intend to display the review form only to members, using the WordPress function is_user_logged_in() would be the way to go. Although there may be an easier way to do this, I chose to integrate this in the output section of the plugin incase you wanted to add some of your own features.

Open up your wp-customer-reviews.php file and find the function show_reviews_form(), which should be around line 934 in our extended file. Start by adding get_currentuserinfo(); on the first line of the function to retrieve the current user information, which we will also use to import the users member data. Then, at the end of the function, you should find the following:

return $out . $out2 . $out3 . $out4;

That line returns the whole review form - which we will modify to only display when the user is logged in. Simply replace the above line with the following:

if (is_user_logged_in()) {
	return $out . $out2 . $out3 . $out4;
}

The above will remove the form and button, but for those who want to trigger a call-for-action event would probably want to keep the button in place. To do this, you'd have to recombine the output in an else statement as follows:

if (is_user_logged_in()) {
	return $out . $out2 . $out3 . $out4;
} else {
	$register_user = '
In order to avoid duplicate reviews, please Login Your Account or Register.
';
	return $button_html . '
' . $req_js . $register_user . $out4;
}

You can replace $register_user with whatever you see fit, but the other variables remain in order to display the button and drop down from the wpcr's original function correctly.

Using and Displaying Member Information in Reviews

Like the comment form, WPCR requires an e-mail and username to post a review, but unfortunately seizes to recognize an already logged in member. With the first tutorial above, we were able to hide or replace the output if the user is logged out, so now we only have to consider the transferring the user data when logged in.

Here we have the choice to either grab the users data in WordPress or that from the BuddyPress profile. I noticed that the BP userdata is a bit more of a problem, so will be basing this example on BP, but you can easily make the same work for WordPress information or both. Here is a reference for the WordPress currentuserinfo function.

Integrating the BuddyPress User Data

Returning to the wp-customer-reviews.php file, go to the show_reviews_form() function, where we already placed the get_currentuserinfo() function and add the following to make it look like this:

function show_reviews_form() {
                get_currentuserinfo();
                global $post, $current_user,$bp, $user_login, $user_email, $ID, $xprofile_get_field_data;
		$userid = $bp->loggedin_user->userdata->ID; // BuddyPress ID
		$username = xprofile_get_field_data('First Name', $userid);	// BuddyPress First Name
		$username .= ' '.substr(xprofile_get_field_data('Last Name', $userid), 0, 1).'.'; // BP Last Names First Letter
		$useremail = $bp->loggedin_user->userdata->user_email; // BP User E-mail 
 
		$fields = '';
                $out = '';

Then, a bit further down, I replaced the original fields for name and e-mail with a hidden input field to avoid changing the requirement-verification process. To the that, find the below lines:

$fields .= 'Name: ' . $req . '';

AND

$fields .= 'Name: ' . $req . '';

And replace the above with the hidden fields containing the variables with:

$fields .= '';

$fields .= '';

Once the above changes are implemented, make sure that these fields are also activatet. I did this by removing the if statements that surround them, since those won't be needed. The above only helps bypass the verification process, so we will now do the final change to make sure it also gets submitted to your admin dashboard correctly, which is done in the add_review() function.

Submitting User Data with Review to Admin

To finalize, we will now just need to make sure the users data transfers correctly. Whether you include the users BuddyPress profile URL, Avatar or other info, the process should be the same, but for this example we will stick to the username and e-mail of the user submitting the review. In the add_review() function, find the following lines:

$date_time = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
        $ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
 
        if (!isset($this->p->fname)) { $this->p->fname = ''; }
        if (!isset($this->p->femail)) { $this->p->femail = ''; }
        if (!isset($this->p->fwebsite)) { $this->p->fwebsite = ''; }

And import the username and e-mail into the corresponding variables:

$date_time = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
        $ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
get_currentuserinfo();
global $post, $current_user,$bp, $user_login, $user_email, $ID, $xprofile_get_field_data;
		$userid = $bp->loggedin_user->userdata->ID;
		$username = xprofile_get_field_data('First Name', $userid);	
		$username .= ' '.substr(xprofile_get_field_data('Last Name', $userid), 0, 1).'.';	
		$useremail = $bp->loggedin_user->userdata->user_email;
        if (!isset($this->p->fname)) { $this->p->fname = $username; }
        if (!isset($this->p->femail)) { $this->p->femail = $useremail; }
        if (!isset($this->p->fwebsite)) { $this->p->fwebsite = ''; }

Latest Plugin File

The above scripts, including that of the previous post are now included in the business-reviews.zip file that members can download below. It's unlikely that any additions or further tutorials will be published soon in relations to the WPCR plugin, but if anyone does want to contribute tutorials, a different plugin or other solutions to this is then free to do so.

Multi Business Member Reviews

()

Read the Original Post at Integrate BuddyPress / WordPress Members in Customer Reviews Plugin by Internet Marketing Blog

Domain and Hosting

Hosting a website is relatively cheap these days. Most hosting plans offer monthly rates that will rank among the company's cheapest expenses, and there are a number of discounts available to reduce this cost. Further, registering a domain only costs between $10 and $15. Companies should spend time to find the best name available; in particular, companies should take time to find a name that ends in a .com instead of one of the other top-level domains.

Install eCommerce Software

In the past, companies had to write their own code for their online storefronts. Today, there are a number of commercial and open source options that give businesses a great development platform to expand on. Businesses can go through and pick the best theme available. Further, it is crucial to have an effective logo, so companies are encouraged to find a graphic designer if they do not have a logo ready. The design of this storefront is crucial for attract customers and keeping their attention. Expert help may be a great option to ensure that the storefront appears professional and impresses visitors.

Payment Processing

Online storefronts must be able to process credit cards; customers will not feel comfortable sending checks. PayPal is the most popular payment portal, and its interface allows customers to pay with credit cards. Some, however, prefer to also set up a dedicated credit card processor to allow their customers to enter their credit card information through the storefront instead of having to go through PayPal's portal. Acceptance by a credit card processor is not guaranteed, but the process of applying takes little time, and it can help make the website seem more professional.

Attract Customers

Businesses of all sizes should start a Facebook page if they do not have one, and a Twitter account can help as well. These platforms are a great place to interact with customers and list promotional offers, and customers may share their experiences with their friends and attract new customers to the storefront. Another tactic that has served businesses well is to use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Companies only pay when users click on an ad, and most online businesses find these platforms to be profitable. Small-scale ads can be tested, so businesses will not have to pay a large up-front fee to try them.

Read the Original Post at The Basics of Opening an Online Storefront by Internet Marketing Blog

Other marketing options include using three of the nation's most popular social networking sites: Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. If you already know the basics of using these sites then good for you—you're on the right path. But to learn how to kick it up a notch and get more "fans" or "followers," you might want to consider using the following techniques.

Mark Your Specialization

Your team may be able to complete a number of various construction projects, but here's the thing about consumers: they don't want just a regular Average Joe building their offices or homes, they want the absolute best—an "expert" if you will. After all, when patients get sick they want the best doctor in the city to operate on them, correct?

Create a Spokesperson

You may be a construction site, but that doesn’t mean you can't have a spokesperson or even a mascot to represent your company as a whole. In fact research shows that companies that have mascots generally perform better simply for the fact that consumers can identify the company and the product being sold. If you want your construction business to stand out amongst the crowds, a spokesperson could be the solution.

Not only that, a spokesperson typically has more success when trying to sell a product on social media than direct companies do. For example, Progessive Auto Insurance created a quirky spokesperson by the name of Flo a few years ago. Flo (not Progressive Auto Insurance) has managed to acquire more than 4 million Facebook fans. She still promotes Progressive products, but it seems less intrusive coming from her.

Offer Special Discounts

Last but not least you need to offer an incentive for consumers to add you/follow you on social media sites to begin with. One of the easiest ways to do this is to offer exclusive/unique coupons to consumers who add you on Facebook for example. But do make the coupon or offer differ on other social media sites that you use. No repeats. Again the key here is exclusive.

Read the Original Post at 3 Online Marketing Tips for Construction Business Owners by Internet Marketing Blog