I am running some tests with integrating Magento and Post Affiliate Pro.  We are setting this system up for CrimsonHoundstooth.com and this is a test of the affiliate links.  FYI, Post Affiliate Pro does not work with PHP 5.3.x, and this costs me 4 days of work to figure that out (of course, their support department could have led me in that direction instead of claiming it was Zend Encoder which was not installed).

It seems as though on every Magento site we do, it is necessary to do a custom home page layout.  I keep finding myself going back to my notes on this, so I thought this information might be useful to others.

1. Create a new layout file in your themes folder:  app/design/frontend/default/THEME/template/page/homepage.phtml.  For now, just paste the contents from 1column.phtml into this file.  You can customize it later.   Upload this file.
2. Edit the following file:  app/code/local/Mage/Page/etc/config.xml.  If you don’t have this file, copy it from app/code/core/Mage/Page/etc/config.xml.  You don’t want to edit the file inside of core because this will break your site if you ever upgrade.  Edit the site, and add the following right after the tag “</three_columns>”:

   <homepage module="page" translate="label">
   <label>Homepage</label>
   <template>page/homepage.phtml</template>
   <layout_handle>page_homepage</layout_handle>
   </homepage>

   Save and upload this file.

3. In the following file:  app/design/frontend/default/THEME/layout/page.xml, just after the code “</page_three_columns>” add the following:

   
   <page_homepage translate="label">
   <label>Homepage</label>
   <reference name="root">
   <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/homepage.phtml</template></action>
   <!-- Mark root page block that template is applied -->
   <action method="setIsHandle"><applied>1</applied></action>
   </reference>
   </page_homepage>

4. In the following file:  app/etc/modules/Mage_All.xml  find the lines that read:

   
   <Mage_Page>
   <active>true</active>
   <codePool>core</codePool>
   <depends>
   <Mage_Core/>
   </depends>
   </Mage_Page>

   and edit them to read:

   
   <Mage_Page>
   <active>true</active>
   <codePool>local</codePool>
   <depends>
   <Mage_Core/>
   </depends>
   </Mage_Page>

   Save and upload this file.

5. Now login to the admin and choose this layout for the page you want to use it.

Its nothing big, but we launched a small website for Superior Structure Today!   Superior Structure handles Basement Waterproofing and Foundation Repair in Atlanta, Georgia. Take a look at the site and let me know what you think.

I have been using Quickbooks for managing my business finances for years.  I don’t really do anything advanced with it, but I went with the best at the time.  However, I now on a mac and the mac version is not as nice as the PC version from what I hear.  That, plus I am looking for an online system (for many reasons).  A friend recently recommended Freshbooks (http://www.freshbooks.com).  I was a little apprehensive at paying $20 per month for something (I like paying up front and not being charged monthly).  However, I bit the bullet and registered last week.  After almost a week of use, I have to say I love it!  The time entry tool makes all the difference.  Updates that I used to not even worry about (5 minute updates that take 15 minutes to log) are now getting billed and I estimate that I have made over $250 in less than a week that I would have not normally billed for.  It is actually fun to do these small updates and watch the hours pile up!

I say give it a try if you haven’t already!

Ordered a new motorola droid from Verizon today.  They had the buy one get one free sale going on, so I upgraded my wife’s account as well.  It should be in tomorrow, so we’ll see how well it goes.  Everyone I have talked to has loved it.  It should be an upgrade over the Blackberry I am currently using, and it can’t be any less durable.  I’m on my 6th Blackberry in less than two years….     I’ll post some updates once it get’s here.

I really haven’t spent much time on the motorcycle parts website, so don’t be too harsh.  It is just more for fun and education than anything.  Total thus far, I’m in it about 4 hours from start to finish.

One interesting thing of note so far:  After posting a link to the site on a few other websites, Google picked the site up in about 30 minutes although it has assigned no trust to it at all and it shows for no searches except its own domain name.  Yahoo and Bing have yet to index the site to this day.

I’ll keep you posted when Google finally ranks this for my “used motorcycle parts” query and then we will begin tweaking the site to see how Google reacts.

I recently approached a potential client that sold used motorcycle parts. After doing a little market research, I was amazed at how bad this market was being utilized online.  Searching for “used motorcycle parts” on google resulted in a few decent sites, but the bottom of the first page was populated by page rank 2 sites and pages not related to selling parts.

This potential client has several websites, but one was already a page rank 2.  I tried talking him into allowing me to redesign that site and had it happened, I am confident that we could have made the front page of Google with just a little effort.  However, the client decided that they did not want to take a chance on my services and quit returning my emails.

So, taking it as a personal challenge and have a good platform to show what I can do, I decided to build a completely new website from scratch and push it to the front page of Google using proven white hat methods.  Below is a link to the website I built:

Used Motorcycle Parts

I used a motorcycle parts company’s information so that someone would benefit from the leads while I built the site (I contacted them to let them know).  Once the site is generating a significant number of leads, I’ll see what it is worth at that point.  Of course, I probably shouldn’t post it here for several reasons, including the fact that this blog might show up on google’s results before my parts site.

I’ve been happy so far in my career keeping it small, not having too much overhead or stress.  I don’t have to work as hard to make a living, and that is always a good thing.

Once upon a time, it was my goal to open a web development shop that catered to the local area market as well and handling clients nationally.  It didn’t work out, and I have been avoiding a serious commitment to making the local market work for me ever since.

I have decided that I want to go all out again.  I have been building websites for over 10 years, and have been piddling around for about 5 or 6 of those not pushing my business forward.  Now is the time.  It is time to have overhead, employees, and all the headaches and responsibilities that come with that. I feel like I have learned my lessons, both professionally and personally, and am ready to give 100%.  I still have to work on my organizational skills, but once I get this down the business end should be easy.

I now have a salesman that is about to start selling my services full-time, not to mention the numerous people that send me regular clients.  This is exciting and scary at the same time.  If he works out, we may have trouble keeping up with his sales.  If he doesn’t, it will kill our excitement and momentum moving forward.  Either way, I’m looking forward to see what he can do.

The first thing to take care of is office space.  I’m looking for something that offers retail-type exposure without having retail pricing.  I believe I have found the right property, but have made some special signage requests that may kill the deal.  We’ll see.

I’ll soon be revamping this site to be less of a personal blog and more of a professional website and I’m excited to see where this new path leads.

Friday night I went to some friends house to eat and had a fantastic meal.  About 8:45 we decided to head to the Kellie Pickler concert that was going on on Campus (starting at 9:30).  We went and picked up some others, headed to campus and was able to park in the parking deck on campus (100 yards from the concert).  The line was extremely long and disorganized as they required you to sign a waiver.  We skipped the line, got tickets, and was about 4 rows back from the front 10 minutes before the concert start.  The concert was great, and Kellie Pickler came down to the crowd on the last song and my son made it to the front row and got to reach out and get a high five.

We had nothing going on, and the kids that were with us wanted to hang out, so we waited around and watched them break everything down.  When they were about done and only about 15 people were left hanging around, Pickler came out and we were able to meet her and the kids got autographs.  She was extremel nice.

Then today my son and I went to Tiger Walk at Auburn University, then got lucky and was in the Student Union eating when the downpour started.  We were able to score some great tickets about 10 rows up.  When the rain quit, we went to the stadium and enjoyed an incredible game where Auburn pulled it out in the end and beat West Virginia.  The game was unbeleiveable and the people we were around were extremely fun to hang out with.

On the walk from the stadium to downtown, we made it to Pita Pit with absolutely no one in line!  The line had about 15 people in it when we left, so we just beat the crowd.

I don’t know what I’ll do if tomorrow is as fun as the last two days, but it’s been a really fun weekend.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that there was an online system where a fair amount of data needed to be entered.  This system, hypothetically speaking, was cumbersome, slow, and just took all the fun out of data entry (and you know you love data entry).  In our mythical world, it would be quite financially rewarding if you could automate the entry of data into said system.

So, I decided to write an Adobe Air application in Flex 3 to tackle this data entry automation.  It has a built-in web browser that made it easy to create a quick app that would visit the site, login, go to the data entry page and fill out the form.  Unfortunately, this form has one file upload entry that uses a little javascript/ajax combined with an old fashion form upload.

In an ideal world, I would just be able to set the value of the <input type=”file”> and submit the form.  However, even though this is a desktop app, the browser’s security setup prohibits this from happening.  In a web-based scenario, the benefits of such a limitation are easy to see.  In my case, it was just frustrating.  I can have my program “click” the browse button on the file upload, but could not find a way to manipulate the dialog that pops ups to select a file.  I’ve tried about a million different methods to get this to work, but after two days of chasing this unicorn I decided to back off, regroup, and take another approach.

Examining the upload page, I noticed that the file upload was in it’s own form (not in the form of the rest of the data entry).  The data entry page contained an iframe, which pointed to another page that contained the file upload information.  This way, the file upload happened as soon as you chose a file and it displayed on the data entry page.  I modified my program to make this iframe point to a php file on my server.  This php file grabbed an image from the server, posted it to the data entry site posing as the form on the original page.  I even passed in cookies and session information so it looked as legit as possible. However, the image is not uploading.  After reviewing the page for several hours, I have come to the conclusion that there is more javascript/ajax involved in this upload than I had previously hoped and expected.  There MUST be something firing on that form once an image is selected that my script is not doing.

I’ll try to spend more time tonight reviewing the data entry’s javascript to see if I can find the culprit.  Unfortunately, it has thousands of lines of ill-formatted javascript with all the spaces and lines removed.  It makes for a fun night of code review!