Wordpress template excerpt

I needed to add excerpt functionality to a custom WordPress theme and found the following article to be just the ticket.

Replacing Wordpress content with an excerpt without editing the theme files

Magento multi store granular permissions

Magento eCommerce allows granular permissions in there community edition. Granular permissions are accessed by creating a role and assigning users to roles. However the community editions granular permissions apply to all stores multi-store install. For granular permissions per store instance on a single install you need to purchase Enterprise which costs $8,900+ per year.

PHP and type casting

I was going through some of my notes and found an issue that gave me some trouble. About a year ago I was working on a custom shopping cart, and ran into trouble with PHP's type casting. I was multiplying a float (price) by an int (quantity) and PHP was converting the float to an int by dropping the decimal part of the number before doing the multiplication. Obviously this was causing trouble with the total price charged. The fix was to force the int to a float before the multiplication.
$lineTotal = (float) $price * $quantity;

Magento eCommerce

One of my clients is setting up a multi-store instance of Magento - and wanted to change each stores home page. I have not used Magento in a multi-store instance before so I had to look up the details.

Ok - here is what you want to know - I updated one of the stores - the required steps as follows
1) create a new page in the cms (named something like store-home)
2) If you have not already, create the new store
3) in admin open menu System->configuration
4) select box at top left - choose the entry 'english' under 'Maria's Botique'
5) left menu - choose 'web'
6) on right choose 'default pages'
7) modify the 'cms home page' by choosing the custom page we created in step 1
8) done

My reference material can be found here
http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/overview-how-multiple-websites-stores-work

SugarCRM

One of my clients is implementing an instance of SugarCRM - the recently setup several webToLead forms and wanted to require a set of fields other than the default. After poking around a little (on the documentation) I took a look at the page source. The solution proved quite simple.

<input id="req_id" name="req_id" value="first_name; last_name;webtolead_email1;" type="hidden">

As you can see - adding new id entries to the value of this field makes those fields required.
P.S. name and id appear to be set the same on every field - but the javascript appears to be using the id for verification.

Facebook advertising

One of my clients has decided to run a simple advertisement on facebook - the stats so far are interesting. We choose to go with pay per impressions to start with. The ad links through to a page on facebook, so there is a 'fan' link at the bottom of each ad.

Currently we are seeing
a) 1000 impressions per actions
b) 1.8 actions per fan
c) 8 fans per person who follows one of the links on the facebook page through to our website
d) 2 people on our website per 1 who fills out the form for the free promotional item.

This will bear watching to see how things develop as we attempt to tweak the settings

(UPDATE) We tried an ad the directed people to the website form directly instead of going through a facebook page - all that seemed to do was drop us straight down to step c - which means fewer fans but the same number of website visits per advertising $.

Development challange

I have recently been working on Joomla - running among other things an instance of Mosets tree 2.1. I have been working on a custom import from an external database. While you can get Mosets to rebuild its hierarchy using
http://www.yourdomain.com/administrator/index.php?option=com_mtree&task=rebuild_tree
this will not always manipulate your data into a form that Mosets can use.
I ran into trouble until I found that the root element must have an id of 0 and it must have a parent of -1. Any id other than 0 will not fail catastrophically, however it will not work properly either (I was seeing around 5% of the elements in the table showing up).

Desktop utility

I don't find myself using many windows add-ons - but this one is actually proving useful.
Stardock Fences

Business counsel

Radical Career success in a down economy - just finished listening and found many interesting points. In my opinion just about any employee or entrepreneur can benefit from many of the concepts presented.

Time to teach

I have been teaching a programming class recently. Learning a lot about the process of learning how to program - it is a lot harder to teach than it looks

Library

I just finished entering my library on LibraryThing. I still need to do my digital library but progress is good.

Scripture Designs 2.0

Scripture Designs 2.0 rolled out today! There are a lot of changes and a lot of new features.

New code almost complete

Scripture Designs 2.0 is nearing completion. It has been a lot of work but the whole look has been updated and I think that it is greatly improved.
Jeremiah

Update

So, no new posts for a while. In my second business I paid for a mentor, and the preparation took a lot of time. Now that is past, and I have made a lot of progress. I have also completed my taxes for 2007 so now I am back to a regimented schedule which means more time for my internet business.

SEO / SEM

It looks like I am making a little progress, my contact form on one of my sites had its first submission today. I am optimized for somewhat long tail keywords (common keyword + state + town) and I have not found a way to test the specific search frequency. I am not sure if I should focus on improving content on the site, or searching for ways to drive in traffic.

Video intro

I put together a quick video intro to dtAlpha - I have started a couple more sessions, hope to post them soon.

http://www.jeremiahstover.com/spierce/

Status - update

Well folks, as you can tell, I fell in love with dtAlpha's talkback as soon as I saw it. I must admit I am addicted to information. The talkback format is great, imagine being able to get an actionable thought from a master marketer, and then be able to ask him questions and get responses, and see other peoples questions and answers. I look forward to using this resource more as my business expands to include for-sale products.

Do You Fumble Your Sales By Doing This?

I don't have product selection yet, but I like the idea. Marketing to your existing customers has so many advantages. Stephen provides an insight into maximizing your customers purchasing experience, providing them with as much as they want. I had never considered the implications of droping a customer before they were done but I can see the importance.

Read More...

3 Ways To Whack Your Business Into Profitable Shape

Back with another issue, this time not so challenging to existing thought processes. Stephen provides a framework for building a successful product. The core concept is to find an existing successful product and add value to it. He provides three different ways that value can be added. This has given me several ideas and I am off to work on them.

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Here’s How To REALLY Win In Business and Life

what is the real strategic goal of your business. Every person has a different response, but we do need to have an answer to this so we can focus our resources properly.

This is an awesome message by Stephen. I believe his purpose is to hone our focus so we can concentrate on the single most important thing to succeed. How do you deal with opportunity, what impact will your response have on your future? Listen to this 30 min audio and prepare to be challenged

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