Not taking all the necessary steps to keep your eCommerce website as secure as possible can have very serious consequences on your business.

As a general rule, there are 3 main elements to eCommerce website security. You should make sure you’re on top of them:

1. All sensitive pages are SSL secured (checkout pages, account pages, etc)
2. *** Your store’s platform is up to date ***
3. Your payment gateway is reliable

Use SSL (Secure Socket Layer)

In a nutshell, SSL ensures that the sensitive data transferred to and from your site’s pages is encrypted so that if some third party sees it they won’t be able to do anything with it. Pretty much all shopping cart systems out there supports SSL for checkout and account pages and it should be easy to get that setup.

All you need to do is purchase an SSL certificate and that’s also something that’ quite easy today as most hosting companies offer SSL certificates at all kind of prices (usually yearly).

Keep your eCommerce site up to date!

This is by far the most important aspect of eCommerce security, yet also the most commonly ignored. If you don’t invest in keeping your online store up to date, it’s only a matter of time before it gets hacked. It’s not if – it’s when.

If you’re using Magento for your shopping cart system, it’s important that you always upgrade your store to the latest stable release of your Magento edition. If you’re using another platform, either commercial or open source, make sure that platform is being regularly updated and keep your copy up to date.

Not maintaining and updating an Ecommerce website can be very serious. Your customers’ sensitive information, such as credit card information, can be vulnerable and be intercepted by hackers. And if you are not taking the necessary measures to ensure the security of your site, you WILL be found responsible for the consequences and damage that will occur to your site’s users. This is serious – if you are running an Ecommerce site, you should make sure to take adequate measures to protect the information of your site’s users. Especially sensitive information such as credit card info.

Of course properly maintaining your Ecommerce site will cost you money, time, and energy. And it’s one of these things that get easily put off because it doesn’t feel like something you really have to do right now.

For example, with each new Magento release, upgrading your installation will generally require a significant amount of work, patience, and risks. And at the end of the day, when you’re done with upgrading your store, debugging, and testing, you don’t feel like you’ve done anything productive.

Use a reliable payment gateway

That’s usually not an issue as most stores are setup to work with widely used payment and credit card processors such as one of Paypal’s business solutions, Google Checkout, or authorize.net just to cite a few.

In short…

In short, besides the cost and work required to get an eCommerce website up and the expected costs of running it, you’ll also have ongoing costs for regularly maintaining and updating it to keep it secure.

If your online business is not profitable enough to afford regular website maintenance and updates, well in that case maybe your online business isn’t successful enough to justify an eCommerce website! You’d be better off with a simple website which is much less likely to get hacked – and if it does get hacked it’s not that much of a big deal.

I hope this helps you make informed decisions regarding your eCommerce website!

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• How to choose a good hosting company?
• Which is the best Magento optimized hosting company?

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We’re using technology to communicate, collaborate, and achieve a lot! In particular, we use a bunch of web applications to do what we need to do and share what we want to share – some of them we’ve developed ourselves, some we’ve bought, and some are free. Project management, task management, time tracking, file sharing, chat, are just a few examples of what we handle through web apps.

But sometimes all these tools and technology just defeat the purpose. It kinda gets in the way. When you have a bunch of things you need done, but you don’t necessarily need to cooperate on these things, or track the time you spend on them, or be particularly organized, then there’s nothing better than a good old quick text document you use temporarily and discard when you’re done. As an example, here’s my to-do list from last Sunday (08/07):

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• Working while traveling – and vice versa

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Magentist is cleaning its closet!

From now until Tuesday, August 24, 2010, you can get $100 off the purchase of any one Magento template! Find yours now at magentist.com

Or buy the Magento Template All-Star Pack for 50% off! That’s all 15 of our top-selling Magento templates for only $240!!

To continue providing our customers with the best Magento templates with cutting-edge design and up-to-the-minute coding standards, we’re cleaning out our closet and making way for a new line of premium Magento templates.

This sale is no-holds barred. All of our premium Magento templates are eligible for this sale, but only until Tuesday, August 24, 2010! This is your last chance to buy our current themes, so if you’ve been meaning to buy some of our templates, act now!

Find your Magento templates now!

But then I ask myself – wouldn’t you also become angry, frustrated and bitter if you had a crappy job at a crappy organization? The work environment and the context you create within your company plays a major role in your staff’s happiness and professional satisfaction, which in turn is crucial to make your customers happy.

The Post Office doesn’t have a good context that would allow its employees and agents to thrive and be happy. And the atmosphere of bitterness spreads to the customers who don’t receive friendly customer service. If only you could be nice to people, they would put up with long waiting lines, complicated rules, and even expensive service! If the clerk apologizes for the wait and take the time to provide good customer service, that would make all the difference.

It’s so important to create a great company context where the members of your organization can strive and be happy.

A few quick tips

Create the right setup

You can setup your company to give more flexibility and independence to your employees because people perform better and are happier if they feel more empowered.

Hire the right guys

Make sure you hire the right guys. Some people can never be professionally happy and fulfilled, no matter what great context you create – so don’t hire them. Also not everyone will strive under the same circumstances so make sure whoever you bring on board is a good fit. Read why you should keep your team small if you’re interested in reading more on this subject.

Be happy yourself

Most of all, make sure you enjoy what you do – whether you’re part of a team or leading one, it’s only worth it if you have a good time doing what you’re doing.

Related posts:

• It’s not just about the food
• Looking for a way to make your life at work more enjoyable? Be nice to your customers!
• Why good customer service will go a long way
• Understand your customers – don’t listen to them!

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To display more than 5 new products without modifying any core files, you can use the following method (here I display 8 new products):

{{block type="catalog/product_new" name="home.catalog.product.new" alias="product_homepage" template="catalog/product/new.phtml" _productsCount="8"}}

Where the “productsCount” number will determine how many new products will be displayed.

Related posts:

• Magento: display new products on any CMS page
• Magento: display new products – by categories

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Tasty food and good wine will surely help. But the food is not enough to create great customer experience and to build a successful restaurant. The design of the place, the decoration, the tables and chairs, the music, the wait (or lack thereof), and in general all the elements that create a special atmosphere will have a significant impact.

Most of all, the restaurant’s staff will affect the success of the business more than any other factor. But for whatever reason this is the one thing so many restaurants don’t pay enough attention to. And that’s too bad. Often staff hiring and training is done too quickly in the restaurant industry.

The food tastes that much better when the staff is friendly, knowledgeable, and personal. What you want from your waiters is to be passionate and proud about the food they serve.
The same goes for most products and services. It’s not enough to have the best product in the world – you have to provide a great experience for your customers. Awesome customer service, flexible return/refund policy, and easy shopping experience is as important as the product itself.

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• Understand your customers – don’t listen to them
• Use your own products

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He also writes that “E-commerce sites lose almost half of their potential sales because users cannot use the site. In other words, with better usability, the average site could increase its current sales by 79% (calculated as the 44% of potential sales relative to the 56% of cases in which users currently succeed).”

Related Post:

Good web design is all about achieving your goals

The thing is that the link to it is hidden very deep inside the Magento official website and it’s almost impossible to find it! If you search for it on Google you’ll only get links to the (paid) Magento User Guide ebook or some other pdf, or to some random wiki pages that belong to the online user guide but from which you will not be able to navigate to the other pages of the online user guide.

I don’t know if this was made on purpose to push people to buy the ebook, or if this is just some sort of navigation and SEO mess, but here is the link to the official (and free) online Magento user guide for you to enjoy:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/welcome_to_the_magento_user_s_guide/welcome_to_the_magento_user_s_guide

I recently stumbled upon one of the recent articles I’ve written here posted on one of your sites. There was no mention whatsoever of the original author. My content was posted on your site as if it was your own. Like if you had written it yourself.

At first I felt pretty angry – couldn’t you at the very least link back to the source?

I started thinking… how much of our content are you guys stealing and publishing as if it was your own? So I searched on Google for short extracts from some of our latest posts. The results were pretty astonishing! There are tons of content thieves like you out there! Much more than I’d expected.

Now it’s one thing if you quote someone and link back to the original source. That’s totally fine with me. But steal my content and publish it like if it was your own? That’s ugly, ain’t it?

If you think about it though, you’ll realize that being a content thief doesn’t really benefit you. When you steal content, or in general when you use someone else’s work like if it was your own (content, design, code, etc), you position yourself one step behind your competition.

By always copying and looking for other people’s stuff, you’re constantly trying to catch up with your competition. You’ll always stay a step behind.

If you want to make someone else’s content available on your site – just include a link to the source! Your readers will appreciate you more for it. You’ll gain credibility and your audience will widen. People like transparency and appreciate being exposed to new sources. They’ll come back to you for more, hoping they’ll discover some new sites and authors.

It just pays more to be honest.

Cheers!
Noam.

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To add Magento’s layered navigation to a CMS page where you’re showing items simply edit your CMS page in the admin – under the “Design” tab put this code:

<reference name="left">
<block type="catalog/layer_view" name="catalog.leftnav" before="-" template="catalog/layer/view.phtml"/>
</reference>

That will show the layered navigation at the very top of the left column on your CMS page. Of course make sure your CMS page layout is “2column with left bar” (under “layout” in the “Design” tab).

Related posts:

• Magento: list products on a CMS page
  The best way to show products in a CMS page with Magento
• Magento: how to handle using code in the content of a CMS page
  The best way to handle content in CMS pages with Magento

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While building Noam Design and helping other businesses take off, I’ve learned a thing or two about entrepreneurship and about developing a business. Here are 6 mistakes I find particularly hard for entrepreneurs to avoid:

1. Working long hours

You want to get more done. You have a lot to accomplish and you’re passionate about your goals. So you work a lot thinking that this will help you achieve more. It seems to make sense but in reality you’ll actually achieve much better results if you work less! This seems counter intuitive at first but you’ll soon realize that by working less you’ll not only be more productive when you work, but you’ll also focus on finding elegant and quick solutions to your problems rather than using a hammer to open a door. You’ll make the effort to use the right tools and end up happier. Over time, that’s the only sustainable way.

2. Not delegating

Yes I know – it’s hard to let go. Sure there’s plenty of reasons not to delegate. Nobody can do it as well as you, it would take so much time to find and train the right person – you may as well do it yourself, etc… It was so hard for me to delegate that I even ended up using multiple personalities!

3. Scaling up for the sake of scaling up

For many business owners, the ultimate goal is to grow. To become really big. Too often size is considered a measure for success. What about happiness? Freedom? Flexibility? Schedule? Some people are so focused on growth they even forget about profitability.

4. Micromanaging

Micromanaging is a by-product of not being able to delegate or of hiring the wrong people. Make sure to hire “managers of one”, keep your team small, and let people work! Focus on your own tasks.

5. Taking on all comers

Many businesses want to offer their customers everything they need. With time, the business loses focus and quality as it spreads across fields and try to be one of these “full-service solutions provider”. Focus on providing a unique product instead. And make sure your language reflects that.

6. Seeking investment from VC

Too many entrepreneurs start businesses without a vision. Why start a business if you plan on giving out its control to someone else? Also why go through all the work and energy required to start a business if you’re just looking for an exit? Besides, when you’re raising funds, you’re not working on developing your business.

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You can use the editor if all you use is text and images with minor formatting. But if you have a more complex content with custom code, then it is much better to create a phtml file with your code in it (name it “page.phtml” for example) and put it here:

app/design/frontend/default/yourtheme/template/page/page.phtml

Then use this code in the CMS admin to call your content:

{{block type="core/template" template="page/page.phtml"}}

This method is the best way to use custom code in Magento CMS pages (such as the home page).

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“I teach the way that I wish I was taught. The lectures are coming from me, an actual human being who is fascinated by the world around him. The concepts are conveyed as they are understood by me, not as they are written in a textbook developed by an educational bureaucracy. Viewers know that it is the labor of love of one somewhat quirky and determined man who has a passion for learning and teaching. I don’t think any corporate or governmental effort–regardless of how much money is thrown at the problem–can reproduce this.”

From The Khan Academy FAQ page

One man can achieve a lot and have a significant and positive impact on many people.

Note that the “email to a friend” form won’t return any error – it just won’t send the email and won’t redirect to the product page like it’s supposed to.

So here’s what you’ll need to do to update your Magento template in order to quickly fix this error:

Open this file:

app/design/frontend/default/themename/template/sendfriend/send.phtml

Find this line:

<form action="<?php echo $this->getUrl('*/*/sendmail', array('id'=>$this->getProductId(), 'cat_id'=>$this->getCategoryId())) ?>" method="post" id="product_sendtofriend_form">

And add the following code below:

<?php echo $this->getBlockHtml('formkey')?>

That’s it!

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• Magento contact form doesn’t work – quick fix
• Magento 1.4 – how to include toolbar and pagination when listing products

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Every interruption cuts your work day into a series of work moments. 45 minutes here, then a meeting. A hour there, then a conference call. 20 minutes until someone taps you on the shoulder or calls your name across the office. These events kill productivity.

Most of these interruptions are experienced at a micro level. They’re experienced during a day. But I’ve found the same thing holds true on a macro level. If you stretch your time scale out to weeks or months, a day trip here or a couple days away there has the same effect: It kills productivity. A couple days away a week is like a few meetings a day — it makes it hard to get anything meaningful done. An interruption is an interruption.

[...] knowing I have a clear schedule for many months has shifted me into a pleasantly productive mindset. I’ve gotten a ton done so far this week. There have been some projects I’ve been meaning to start for a while, but with future travel hanging over my head I couldn’t get into a groove. I’m back in a groove.

It’s a good reminder of the power of an open schedule. Just knowing you have the time helps you make the time.

From The pleasure of an open schedule By Jason Fried of 37signals.

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• Working while traveling – and vice versa
• 4 ways to get inspired
• When you deliver the news makes all the difference

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We’re proud to announce the launch of our latest project: Magento Expert!

Magento Expert is a platform where Magento experts answer Magento questions from the community. We get tons of these questions so we created Magento Expert as a platform where people can easily ask their Magento questions and get expert answers that will benefit the entire commmunity.

Experts promote their business by being in direct contact with Magento users who need their help, and by adding quality inbound links to their own website.

Users get quick answers to their Magento questions and help their store’s SEO at the same time if they decide to add links to their Magento site.

The service is 100% free and most questions are answered very quickly so why not post your Magento question?

If you consider yourself a Magento expert, why not answer some questions and promote yourself?

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“Unable to submit your request. Please, try again later.” If you’re running Magento 1.4 and get this error when submitting the contact form that’s because your template (theme) is not fully compatible with 1.4. Here’s what you’ll need to do to quickly fix this error:

Open this file:

app/design/frontend/default/yourthemename/template/contacts/form.phtml

And add the following hidden field somewhere before the submit button:

<input type="text" name="hideit" id="hideit" value="" style="display:none !important;" />

That’s it!

On the other hand, we know that businesses who charge their clients based on scope restrict themselves to working within stiff boundaries – which doesn’t work in a creative industry.

So is there another way? The solution we found here at Noam Design is to stop taking on client work and focus on our products instead.

So we’re not charging by the hour: it doesn’t matter how long it takes us to develop a Magento template or a CMS template! Time isn’t a factor when determining a product’s price. Quality, usefulness, and market demand are more important.

We’re not charging based on the scope of work either. Sometimes a product requires a huge amount of work, revisions, adjustments, etc while other products are developed in a breeze. All that is quite irrelevant though – only the end result matters. Is the product useful for our customers? Will someone get a good value by buying it? Do people need it? These are the questions that matter more.

Related Posts:

• The best approach in a creative business is based on flexibility
• Time doesn’t matter [part 1]
• Why would a great team work for cheap?

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How to show the toolbar and pagination when listing products on pages other than category pages is actually quite simple. In fact it’s very simple!

The problem:

You may be using something like the code below to insert new products on your home page:

{{block type="catalog/product_new" name="home.catalog.product.new" alias="product_homepage" template="catalog/product/new.phtml"}}

Source: Magento: display new products on the home page

Or you may use this method (something like the code below) to display new products from a specific category:

{{block type=”catalog/product_list” category_id=”3″ name=”home.catalog.product.new” alias=”product_homepage” template=”catalog/product/featured.phtml”}}

Source: Magento: display new products on home page – by category!

But now you also want to include the toolbar and pagination. In Magento versions prior to 1.4, you could have used something like this:

{{block type="catalog/product_list" category_id="3" template="catalog/product/list.phtml"}}

Where the “category_id” is your category id.

In Magento 1.4, this method no longer works. The pagination and toolbar will NOT display because it is now handled in a different way.

The solution:

So here’s a simple way to display products on any CMS page and include the toolbar and pagination:

1. Go to CMS > Manage Pages and click on the page where you want to display your products.

2. Under the “Design” tab, insert the following code in the “Update Layout XML” field:

<reference name="content">
<block type="catalog/product_list" name="product_list" template="catalog/product/list.phtml">
<action method="setCategoryId"><category_id>3</category_id></action>
<block type="catalog/product_list_toolbar" name="product_list_toolbar" template="catalog/product/list/toolbar.phtml">
<block type="page/html_pager" name="product_list_toolbar_pager"/>
</block>
<action method="setToolbarBlockName"><name>product_list_toolbar</name></action>
</block>
</reference>

Make sure to change the category id to your own id. That’s it!

Related Posts:

• Magento: Pagination Disappears On The Search Result Pages After Upgrading to 1.4
• Upgrading To Magento 1.4

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The thing is that bad ideas are great for unleashing your creative juice! When people are not afraid to look stupid and just bring everything that comes to mind it opens up new channels and helps you think in new and creative ways.

In addition, a lot of people have really good critical thinking – they think best when they hear something stupid. So having lots of bad ideas around will trigger the critical part of your brain and that will help you come up with awesome ideas and new ways to solve a problem.

If you’re hosting a brainstorming session, try to create a context where people feel free to say whatever comes to mind. Make people feel that any input is valuable. Unleash creativity and out-of-the-box thinking by removing social barriers and creating an atmosphere where participants will feel involved and valuable.  Make them feel like their input will make a difference.

One of the ways to achieve that is to separate the decision making process with the brainstorming process. Brainstorming should only be brainstorming – no decision will be taken and thus nobody will judge your input. Nobody will say your idea is good or bad at this stage. And that will help unleash creativity.

You want creativity? Make the jump! Express all your bad ideas.

Related posts:

• The evil of multiple choice – As we are presented with options all day long, we forget that we can create our own choices and exert our will more freely… keep reading
• Simplicity rules – Simple rules allow for beautiful and complex behavior while complicated rules lead to stupid behavior… read on

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Many business starters try so hard to differentiate their product or service from the competition that they end up believing they have no competition. In fact, maybe it’s better that way!

The thing is that focusing on the competition too much will not help you create a great product. Don’t concentrate your efforts on how you can beat the competition by doing better, more, less, or different. That’s a waist of time. Worse than that, it interferes with your ability to create a great business.

It’s best to ignore the competition and focus on what matters: your product and customers. Which audience are you targeting? What problem are you solving? What’s the best way to solve that problem for your target audience? What is necessary and what is not?

So ignore the competition. Create your own thing instead.

Related Posts:

• Don’t worry too much about being first
• Underdo your competition

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There is also an option to hide the editor in case you want to use external code and paste it there or if you want to edit the HTML directly.

If you know HTML, you’ll probably want to use your favorite editor and only paste the code in the admin when you’re done (with the editor hidden). The problem is that the editor gets very buggy if you do that and then try to make a small edit directly in the admin – or even if you load the edit page in the admin and save again! That’s because the editor is not hidden by default and when loaded it adds <p> tags everywhere and removes empty divs. Depending on the code you have this will either destroy your content’s formatting on the front-end or make it disappear altogether.

Keep reading for a simple way to solve this annoying issue with the Magento editor!

3 simple steps to fix this problem:

1. Adding <div></div> tags around the entire HTML prevents the <p> tags from automatically being added

2. Putting the image path inside brackets like this: src="{{skin url="images/d5-splash.png"}}" will prevent images from disappearing

3. Adding   inside empty divs will prevent them for disappearing (for example if you use an empty div with a "clear" class)

That’s it! Do you have a Magento questions? Feel free to submit it in the comments below.

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• How to setup Google Adwords Conversion Tracking on your Magento site
• Which is the best Magento hosting company?

It’s not the quantity of experience that matters – it’s the quality. In fact experience will interfere – people often get stiffer with experience. When you have a lot of experience in a field, you’re prone to continue doing things the way you’ve been doing them so far. It’s harder to adapt and to change.

No matter what your line of business is – adaptability and flexibility is an asset of the utmost importance. Especially if you’re a small business. Because speed and agility is an advantage you can leverage over the big guys.

Can you think of any field where the amount of time and experience one has actually matters? I’d love to hear about it.

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Related Posts:

• Reasons don’t matter
• Don’t worry too much about being first

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=noam+design&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=CTyO163X8S5iMIpTuzASs6pieBQAAAKoEBU_Qv5Gd&fp=754b7f73eb24aff

That’s pretty ugly. Of course the anchor to the link can be anything you want. Like “Noam Design on Google”. But the link itself will look like the example above: a long URL which contains many parameters you don’t necessarily want to include.

So what’s the URL structure to link to a Google Search page?

All you need is this…

http://www.google.com/search?q=noam+design

As simple as it is, it’s something that most people don’t know.

This URL structure comes in handy every time you want to share a link to a Google Search Result page without sharing all the other data that’s usually included in the URL.

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Large pool of talented people.
If you work with widely used technologies, you’re aiming at a large pool when looking for talented people to work with. That’s really important. When working with technologies that are more rare, you are tying yourself to the companies or individuals you’re working with. By using more popular technologies, you’ll have a choice if for whatever reason you need to find other people to work with. And all the past work done will not be in vain because other people will know how to work with it.

Cost effective.
It is usually more expensive to work with technologies that are more rare. Of course it’s not the rule but it’s often the case. Again the pool of competitors is smaller so that usually means higher prices.

Access to resources.
In addition, it is much harder to find resources, frameworks, platforms, and in general open source software when you use technologies that are less popular – so you miss out on a lot of shortcuts and powerful options. Basically everything has to be coded custom – again that’s much more expensive and is not sustainable.

Prepared for growth.
Working with the wrong technologies will interfere with your company’s growth. Any web application needs to be regularly updated, maintained, and carefully secured (especially when it comes to Ecommerce for example). By not choosing a route where you can use popular software and platforms that are themselves regularly updated by the community, you are signing up for a long relationship with your developer and will end up being too dependent. It’s not a smart choice.

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• Web Design Explained
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Any guess for what Ultimento is? Share it in the comments!

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1. Open up catalogsearch.xml located under app/design/frontend/default/yourthemename/layout/ and find the code below under <catalogsearch_result_index>:

<reference name="content">
<block type="catalogsearch/result" name="search.result" template="catalogsearch/result.phtml">
<block type="catalog/product_list" name="search_result_list" template="catalog/product/list.phtml">
<action method="setColumnCount"><count>4</count></action>
</block>
<action method="setListOrders"/>
<action method="setListModes"/>
<action method="setListCollection"/>
</block>
</reference>

2. Then just above <action method="setColumnCount"><count>4</count></action> paste this code:

<block type="catalog/product_list_toolbar" name="product_list_toolbar" template="catalog/product/list/toolbar.phtml">
<block type="page/html_pager" name="product_list_toolbar_pager"/>
</block>
<action method="setToolbarBlockName"><name>product_list_toolbar</name></action>

3. Then go down to <catalogsearch_advanced_result> and paste the same code above the column count.

4. Of course don’t forget to refresh Magento cache.

Any questions feel free to post them in the comments below!

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Related Posts:

• Upgrading to Magento 1.4
• Magento 1.4 – wrong reference to JavaScript files

Quick and dirty:
Delete everything under var/cache/ and var/sessions/. Please note that by doing so, all current sessions will be deleted – so if anyone is logged in on your site they will be logged out.

Alternatively, if you can access the admin then follow the steps below.

To reindex Magento data
From the admin follow these quick steps:

1. Go to System>Index Management
2. Click on “select all” in the upper left corner
3. Under “Action” select “Reindex Data” and click submit

To refresh all Magento cache
Ffrom the admin following these quick steps:

1. Go to System>Configuration and
2. Click on “select all” in the upper left corner
3. Under “action” click on “refresh” and click submit
4. Then click on these buttons:
   1. Flush Magento Cache
   2. Flush Cache Storage
   3. Fluch Catalog Images Cache
   4. Flush JavaScript/CSS Cache

Any questions feel free to post them in the comments below!

Don’t forget! Subscribe and follow

Be sure to subscribe to the feed and follow us on Twitter for more tips, resources, and giveaways!

But as time goes by and your company grows stronger, you’ll want to focus on what you do best and enjoy the most while delegating the other tasks to people who are a better fit for them.

For entrepreneurs and business starters, it’s often very difficult to ‘let go’ and train other people to take care of these aspects of the business. You feel like nobody will ever be able to do it the right way. Also you’re afraid that the training process is going to be an additional burden on your already overly busy schedule.

It was particularly hard for me to let go. And I found myself using different names for different positions at my own company! Here is how it all started: in the beginning I used to spend a lot of time meeting with clients or talking on the phone (doing sales). And many people had trouble understanding my name and pronouncing it. For some reason, I felt that it interfered in the conversations, especially when I was dealing with bigger companies. So I started telling people to call me ‘Mike’. This strategy worked great! People started asking me about the company I worked for rather than my own company. And as I signed bigger and bigger clients, it seemed like people felt much more comfortable dealing with me that way.

So there I was – Mike and Noam. Later on, when the company grew to more than 15 employees, many concurrent projects, beautiful offices in midtown Manhattan, and a top ranking on Google, I found myself dealing with project management as “Dave”, client relation as “Mike”, company management as “Noam”, and billing and accounting as “Anna” (via email only). It was hilarious! And it was an ongoing joke in the office.

Whatever the excuse may be, it was hard for me to delegate. So for years I took on the jobs of 4 or 5 people. Sure I’ve learned a great deal along the way on how to produce tons of work and be very efficient but it was not a sustainable method of work.

Today, Noam Design is a very different company. We’re not taking on custom clients anymore as we’re focusing on our products. Our team has evolved to be a small group of “managers of one”, and given everything we achieve and the products we launch, I’m proud of doing what I do under a single name – Noam.

Thank you for reading! If you have any thoughts on delegating or on using multiple personalities please share them in the comments below!

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Here are the last entries in the feed:

• Simplicity Rules
  Simple rules have the potential for beautiful and complex behavior while complicated rules lead to stupid behavior…
• Is Your Company Unique? Show it!
  If your company’s offering is unique – your language should reflect that uniqueness and be original as well…
• How To Redirect An Entire Web Directory URL
  If you change your site’s URL structure, you’ll probably need to redirect entire directories of your website…
• Don’t Tell Me What Your Product Isn’t
  Promoting a product by focusing on what that product is not is a bad practice…
• Magento: Which Is The Best Hosting Company?
  If you want your Magento Ecommerce site to run smoothly and to load fast, you’ll need to choose the right hosting…
• The Evil Of Muliple Choice
  One of the worst ways to go about getting something done or solving a problem is to look for multiple options…
• Simple Tip To Make Your Life At Work More Enjoyable
  Your approach to customer service can make all the difference in your daily work…

Thanks everyone for the continued support!

Tax rules

Tax rules in most countries are perfect examples of complicated rules creating a context for idiotic behavior. Of course it’s not the tax payers’ fault. But the overly controlling rules and laws naturally lack the clarity and flexibility to allow for simplicity and organically beautiful behavior. In the end, paying taxes could be a noble thing to do. It’s just that the tax system is cluttered and entangled with complicated rules and does not provide clear guidance. The result is just one big non-sense.

Laws of Physics

The laws of physics are somewhat simple. Newton’s three simple rules are responsible for so much beautiful behavior. These simple rules have infinite applications in the form of movements, forces, interactions… it’s all so harmonious. And when Albert Einstein introduced the theory of relativity, and then the theory of general relativity, he didn’t introduce more rules or more laws. To the contrary, his vision enhanced the simplicity of the laws and integrated them into a broader system with clear and simple principles.

Albert Einstein says it so beautifully:

“nature is the realization of the simplest that is mathematically conceivable”

Related posts:

• It’s that simple!

In fact that could be a great way to check if your business (or business idea if it’s still just an idea) is solid. Just read what you write about it – if it sounds banal, there’s a good chance you should consider readjusting the business concept altogether.

Language can be used in a better way than mere filler bloated with buzzwords and empty slogans such as “full-service solutions provider”, “cost effective” or other boring and meaningless expressions.

This is very important for SEO and to not loose any incoming links to your site. So here’s how it’s done:

For example, we’ve changed the URL structure of this blog from “www.noamdesign.com/Web-Design-Blog/” to “www.noamdesign.com/blog/” this was part of our efforts to simplify our website. Also shorter URLs are easier to promote, remember, and link to.

Now you don’t want to lose any links! So all inside links such as “/Web-Design-Blog/post-permalink/” should redirect permanently to “/blog/post-permalink/”.

To redirect all the links in a web directory to a new directory all you have to do is add the following line to your .htaccess file:

redirect 301 /old-directory http://www.yourwebsite.com/new-directory

Where of course “www.yourwebsite.com” is your site’s domain name. That’s it.

Related Post:

• How to setup a permanent URL redirect

Changin the URL structure on your blog is a painful process but we decided it was a necessary change for the greater good! Unfortunately there is no work around the fact that you’ll lose your tweet counts displayed by the Tweetmeme button since the script counts the tweets based on the permalink URLs. Once the permalink structure changes, it’s basically like if you had completely new posts and pages all together, even if you have permanent re-directions setup properly.

Thanks  to all of you who retweeted our awesome posts, we had nice counts on our buttons and I felt like that was adding something positive to our blog. So at first I was bummed and even started considering reverting to the old URL structure…

But then I realized that after all it doesn’t really matter to us to display (or brag about) how many people tweeted an article. We just want to give people the option to share our content on major social networks. So why do we even need a Tweetmeme button? It’s actually pretty intrusive on the page and it also makes the pages load significantly slower.

So I removed this feature from our blog and replaced it with a simple Twitter button. Now our blog pages load fast again and it’s as easy as before to share our content – if not easier! To me that’s another example where less features is much better.

Instead of mentioning “no commitment required” try “you can cancel anytime” or something like that. Of course there are some exceptions but in most cases it’s a better, more open and useful strategy to describe your product in a positive way.

I see a lot of food chains promoting healthy food by mentioning what the product isn’t -  like “no hormones”, “no animal by products”, or “no dangerous pesticides”. Well that doesn’t tell me a lot about what the product actually is… you may not use hormones and a long list of other “bad” things but you may very well use tons of other stuff I don’t want to eat. Stuff you don’t mention in your list of what your product doesn’t have. And I’ve notice that this is often the case: when a company focuses on what their product isn’t instead of openely describing what the product actually is, there’s often some hidden stuff.

When looking for a chicken, I’d like to see something clear that describes what the product is. Something like “humanely cared for chicken free to feed and pasture around our organic farm”.

There are a lot of choices out there when looking for a hosting company which is optimized for Magento. I didn’t test them all but I did test a few and I’ve had the best experience with Nexcess Magento Hosting so I can definitely recommend them. They have plans starting at $24.95/mth and their most basic plan would fit the bill for most projects.

When you setup categories in Magento and they don’t show up on your site’s front end, most likely your categories aren’t setup properly in the admin.

Here is what you should look for:

1. Make sure that your store is set with the appropriate root category.

This is done in the following way: go to System > Manage Stores and click on your store (not website and not store view – you must click on the store which will show up in the middle column). Then under “Root Category” there is a drop down with all the root categories you have set up – select the correct one.

2. The way Magento works is that all your stores categories must be sub categories under your store’s root category.

So all your top level categories must be created as sub categories of your root category. Then you can also create sub sub categories and more. Does that make sense?

If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below and I will answer them!

3. As always, make sure to delete Magento cache and reindex all data!

Most issues will be resolved once you reindex Magento data and refresh all Magento cache. To reindex Magento data follow these quick steps:

1. Go to System>Index Management
2. Click on “select all” in the upper left corner
3. Under “Action” select “Reindex Data” and click submit

To refresh Magento cache, follow these quick steps:

1. Go to System>Configuration and
2. Click on “select all” in the upper left corner
3. Under “action” click on “refresh” and click submit
4. Then click on these buttons:
   1. Flush Magento Cache
   2. Flush Cache Storage
   3. Fluch Catalog Images Cache
   4. Flush JavaScript/CSS Cache

4. Lastly I highly recommend manually deleting all files under var/cache and var/sessions.

And remember to delete your browser’s cache and cookies to make sure you are viewing the up to date version of your Magento site!

That’s particularly obvious in the design field. When you’re looking to get a design done, don’t ask “can I see a few options of how that can look?” but rather focus on creating the one design that will be right. Any good designer knows that. So much waste and confusion is created when you don’t work that way. Especially because having seen the few options most people request to combine some elements of one option with some elements from the other option and you end up with a Frankenstein type of design made of disparate pieces. The result is simply not coherent.

I think that the core of this issue comes from a culture of multiple choices. It start in school where most tests consist of multiple choice answers. People end up not exercising their brain to look for the right solution to a problem. Instead they are faced with a selection of choices and they focus on the options. This type of approach is deadly to creativity.

When thinking about this, you realize that this “multiple choice” attitude affects many areas of our lives. A lot of people are able to express their will only when they are presented with options. Would it be a chocolate chip cookie or a muffin? Which calling plan will you choose? As we are presented with options all day long, we forget that we can create our own choices and exert our will more freely.

In the business world, instead of looking for options it is much better to work towards creating the one solution that will accomplish your mission. And working in iterations towards that goal is probably the best way to go – fine tuning your work step by step and getting better and better results. You never look for options – instead you continuously foster your creativity and iterate to an awesome result.

More on the topic:

Paul Rand: Good Ideas Rarely Come In Bunches

“One of the more common problems which tends to create doubt and confusion is caused by the inexperienced and anxious executive who innocently expects, or even demands, to see not one but many solutions to a problem. These may include a number of visual and/or verbal concepts, an assortment of layouts, a variety of pictures and color schemes, as well as a choice of type styles. He needs the reassurance of numbers and the opportunity to exercise his personal preferences. He is also most likely to be the one to insist on endless revisions with unrealistic deadlines, adding to an already wasteful and time-consuming ritual. Theoretically, a great number of ideas assures a great number of choices, but such choices are essentially quantitative. This practice is as bewildering as it is wasteful. It discourages spontaneity, encourages indifference, and more often than not produces results which are neither distinguished, interesting, nor effective. In short, good ideas rarely come in bunches.”

Collis Ta-eed: How to Iterate to Awesomeness