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Shopping Cart Advanced Features

Shopping Cart Advanced Features

Advanced features is what sets apart the basic, simple shopping carts from those that offer merchants the chance to gather information from customers that can be used in marketing decisions, or allow merchants to gather and keep track of customer’s names and addresses to a shopping cart that has the ability to email the customer a purchase confirmation or notify past customers of a sale that is happening on the site. Advanced features can also help the customer to make buying decisions such as recommending product selection based on buyer preferences based on past order history.

A customer may be able to look at their past order history, check the status of recent orders or track a package that is in transit to them. Cookies on the shopping cart can identify a customer as a past customer and provide data on that customer that will enhance and improve the present shopping experience of that customer.

Advanced features may vary from one shopping cart to the next but some common advanced features include: Order management, which is the ability to view new orders, or to view past orders, to print invoices and packing slips for each order. Product Management, which is the ability to add and edit products quickly or to view statistics in the product database. Web Page Management, which is the creation and updating of the entire Website. Advanced shipping would include custom shipping methods or the ability to utilize real-time shipping calculation from major carriers such as USPS, UPS and FedEx.

Tracking of Inventory, which would include managing and updating items for sale, and pricing of items. Featured Items in which select items appear on a special section of the home page or all pages in areas that would be eye-catching to site viewers. Sales Reports that might include a printout of all sales in a given time period, and the ability to view and compare weekly, monthly or yearly sales comparisons, sales trends, and to evaluate these trends. Order Status is the ability to update the order and the shipping status available to the customer in the customer login area.

Multiple Currencies and exchange rates for all product categories. Customer Management, which would include the ability to find, updates, and view archived information on all customers. Email list management is the ability to email a customer after a purchase to confirm the purchase and to thank them for their business, or to email out notices of an impending sale or special discount, or to announce new products.

Ad tracking ability that can track all click-through advertising and resulting sales. Affiliate Manager to allow the Website owner to run an effective affiliate program to promote the site Wholesale Manager, which would allow the site owner to offer a wholesale membership option. Other advanced features include volume discounts, customer discounts, minimum purchase, promotional codes, coupons, and gift certificates, digital download manager, Bill Me Later capabilities, Traffic and Hit Counter, Ticket manager to care for problems with orders, a Will Call capability and an online manual and documentation to help get the shopping cart up and running.

 

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5 Must Have WordPress Plugins – Are You Missing One

5 Must Have WordPress Plugins – Are You Missing One? WordPress is arguably the most used CMS (Content Management System) online. It is partly due to its flexibility as a blog platform, and partly due to the large number of plugins and themes made by its large community of users. However, this huge choice of plugins can easily confuse a new user. Therefore, for those of you who are unsure which plugins to use, here’s a list of the top 5 must use WordPress plugins: 1. Akismet – Akismet is pre-bundled when you install WordPress. It is made by the same company that makes WordPress. Akismet is a spam blocking plugin that works very efficiently to block out spam comments. If you run a large blog, you really need this plugin. The amount of spam doing the rounds online is tremendous. If you were to moderate these comments one by one, you would have to spend hours maintaining your blog. Akismet makes the whole process automatic and saves you countless hours of effort. 2. All in One SEO – What good is a blog if no one reads it? With All in One SEO plugin, all your in-site SEO needs will be taken care of automatically. It will create meta tags, meta descriptions, etc. on its own. If you want your blog to be found by Google or other search engines, this is a must-have plugin. 3. Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin automatically creates a sitemap of your blog to aid Google’s spiders in indexing it. Sitemaps are just what you think they mean: a map of your site. They can make it much easier for Google to find and index your site, so this plugin is a must have, regardless of the size of your blog. 4. One Click Plugin Updater – If you’re like me, you probably hate to update your plugins one-by-one. Most plugins have several updates a month, and updating them can be a real pain. One Click Plugin Updater simplifies the whole process by giving you the option to update all your plugins with a single click. A huge timesaver if you find yourself using too many plugins. 5. WordPress Database Backup – You never know when some unfortunate accident may befall your blog. Once, one very large blog of mine got hacked and consequently, I lost my entire database. I didn’t have a backup database, so I had to create everything from scratch (something that took me over 100 hours). With WordPress Database Backup, you can get it to make automatic backups and mail it to you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. So there you have it: 5 plugins that are essential to any WordPress installation!

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Making Links WordPress Tutorial

Making Links WordPress Tutorial

To start off, you should first confirm that you’re using the best Permalinks setting for WordPress. Go to Settings > Permalinks, then click the Custom button and add the following code: /%postname%/ This will make nice URLs that are named after your documents instead of the default URL structure ""?p=123"" which is ugly and bad for search engines. The next concept to grasp is the parent-child relationship with pages.

A parent is a top-level page; it’s children, everything else below. Children are also known as sub-pages and they’re a handy way of organizing the content in your site, especially if your template has a drop down menu. Now, let’s say you’re linking from the homepage to a page several sub-pages deep.

First, go to the new page you’ve made and copy the URL which appears right under the page title. For example: WordPress-training/editing-content/adding-images/ Notice that I don’t have the domain name. It’s not necessary. Now, if I’m on the home page and I’m making a link to the Adding Images page, I just select my text, click the link icon and paste the link in. But what if I want to make a link from one page to another, in this case a link from this page: WordPress-training/editing-content/adding-images/ to this page:

WordPress-training/editing-content/adding-videos/ The correct link on the Adding Images page would look like this: ../adding-videos/ Notice the extra periods and forward slash? This is the bit of code that tells the system to go ""up"" one level to editing-content, then come back ""down"" to the page that exists at the same level. If this is at all confusing, you can find a video version of this tutorial at the link below, where it’s explained visually, inside the WP interface.

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WordPress Wizard 2

WordPress Wizard 2.0

A Complete Review Have you ever considered the idea of being able to make money online? Chances are if you have, you have probably thought about the idea of making money with a blog. Many people do make money with blogs, and good money too. The problem is, is if you are new to Internet marketing and blogging, you do not stand a chance at earning an income from your blog. This is because there are professional marketers out there who understand what it takes and are way ahead of you.

So, while you are trying to catch up with them, they are eating up all of your potential traffic and sales. This is where WordPress Wizard 2.0 can help you. To be able to make money online with your blog, it is essential that you are equipped with all the knowledge you need from the basics to the more advanced education. WordPress Wizard 2.0 has all this for you. It contains more than 50 training video tutorials on how to blog using WordPress.

It’s exactly what newbies to blogging need to get started and get profiting with their blogs. You are taught everything from setting up your own WordPress blog, monetizing it to earn money from it, to driving targeted massive traffic to it. You are giving access to 6 modules which include: * Internet Marketing Basics – This includes video tutorials on how to register your own domain name with places such as GoDaddy, how to change DNS names, how to get hosting, how to install and use FireZilla FTP program and how to use cPanel. * WordPress Basics – You will be giving access to video tutorials on installing WordPress, installing themes and plug ins and more.

* Advanced Tutorials on WordPress – Learn how to upgrade WordPress, use Windows live writer, create back ups, edit CSS style sheets and how to use RSS. * Make Money Online with Blogs – This tutorial is all about making money with AdSense, monetizing your blog with affiliate products through ClickBank and how to publish free articles to drive traffic to your blog. * Link Building and SEO tutorial – You will learn all about SEO and ways to build links. * Email Marketing and RSS – You will learn how to build a list using your blog and marketing your products through email marketing using Aweber.

Not only will you have access to these training tutorials, but you will also be giving special bonuses such as The Keyword Warrior, Forum Warrior, Blog Warrior, Forum Warrior and Directory Warrior. These are important tools that every successful Internet Marketer needs to help them make money online with their blogs. WordPress Wizard 2.0 is a great program for people getting started in the Internet marketing and blogging world. It will get you up and running fast with your WordPress blog and get you into profit mode right along side all the other successful marketers.

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Learning How to Use a WordPress Blog For Your Business

Learning How to Use a WordPress Blog For Your Business People blog everyday. Internet marketers blog for money almost 60% of their time online. It is pretty obvious that blogging has become a part of everyday life and people are seeing the opportunity to use this leisure activity for money. But blogging for profit requires knowledge and skills on how to use the blog of your choice. For example, if we are to look at WordPress, many bloggers do not know how to make money out of their WordPress blogs or WordPress web sites because they do not have the knowledge of all features that are available to them. In order to be able to succeed in earning profits through blogging, the first thing you need to do is to learn how to use it to its full potential.

Why is this important? Should not learning about your niche, product, and other internet marketing lessons come first? Well, no matter how much you have gained in terms of knowledge on internet marketing and blogging, you will never succeed if you do not know how to use your blog properly. Many people make this mistake when using WordPress and/or other web platforms, which is why it is important to download a WordPress home study course or watch a WordPress video tutorial before anything else.

The money will just come flowing into your account once people see that your blog is one of the most interesting reads on the World Wide Web. Bloggers want millions of readers from all over the world to read their blog, so if you want to be a part of this and actually make that dream come true, start developing a strategic internet marketing plan that will help you earn money through WordPress. But with so many WordPress tutorial products being sold in the market, how will a blogger or a web designer with no experience and no knowledge on blogging for profit be able to succeed?

Though you will find more useful information from the chosen product you have decided to buy online, here are some tips to help you get started: Research and make a list of the top WordPress tutorial products that you think will help you understand perfectly how to use WordPress and most importantly how to make money out of it. The search engines are there at a click of a button so start searching now! Look for the product that uses the simplest language in explaining what WordPress is all about and how to use it.

This is very important because these products care about how difficult learning WordPress can be, so if you are a beginner, this tip is going to come really handy for you. Do not just settle for the WordPress guide. See if the author offers updates on video or print and subscribe to those updates either through e-mail or RSS feeds. Blogging, though a virtual activity, changes with the times so it is important that you know the latest techniques before other bloggers do.

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5 Easy Steps To Build A WordPress Website

5 Easy Steps To Build A WordPress Website

Are you planning to build your own website and yet you don’t have enough technical knowledge and don’t have enough budget to hire someone to build it for you? Worry no more because building a website is not really difficult as it sounds and it cost only a few bucks. With WordPress, it is now possible for ordinary people to create their own website easily. What is WordPress? WordPress was launched in 2003 as a blogging platform, but it has evolve as a legitimate CMS (content management system) in fact it has numerous awards already, in 2007 WordPress won a Packt Open Source CMS Award, in 2009 WordPress won the best Open Source CMS Award.

And in 2010 WordPress has won the Hall of Fame CMS category in the 2010 Open Source Awards. More than 10% of the top 1 million websites uses WordPress already. Perhaps its growth is phenomenal because it is really easy to use. Here Are the Five Easy Steps in building your own WordPress website starting from scratch:

1. Choose a Domain Name – A domain name is the address that you type in your browser that ends with a.com,.net,.org and etc. You can register in an accredited domain registrar which is accredited by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN. There are hundreds of registrars out there, and the price of each domain is usually lower than $15 per year.

2. Host your Domain – A server that rents you a space so that your site will be visible on the internet. This would cost about less than $10 per month for a shared hosting account which is already reliable.

3. Installing WordPress Software To your Web Host – You can install or upload WordPress software using an ftp client like Filezilla or some hosting companies provide one install click to make it easier.

4. Making a static page – It is important to make a static page so that your site does not look like a blog. You can make a static page easily in your WordPress dashboard.

5. Selecting A Theme – There are thousands of free themes that you can choose, themes are extremely important because the appearance of your site depends on it. There are also premium themes available that are quit expensive but free themes are good enough. The bottom line here is that WordPress is really a great software to start-up your new website.

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5 Gotta Have WordPress Plugins

5 Gotta-Have WordPress Plugins

Right here is my top-five list of must-have WordPress Plugins. All of these are free plugins, helping to make them even better!

1) All-in-One SEO Pack–This plugin helps your Search engine optimization right out of the box, without any configuration. To improve your on-page SEO, the plugin allows you to add title, description and keywords to make your posts more internet search engine friendly, but it is not a requirement.

2) WP-Super Cache–A caching plugin is really a requirement with Google’s new focus on page load speed. WP-Super Cache enables logged in users to disable caching, important if you’re trying to do some editing on your site minus the pages constantly caching. It also allows mobile support and greatly speeds up page load times..

3) StatPress Reloaded–Offers you site statistics instantly. StatPress explains exactly where your traffic is arriving from; it shows you the amount of daily page views, referrers, IP addresses, user agents (bots) and much more. A great addition to AWStats from the hosting company.

4) SEO Smart Links–SEO Smart Links increases your internal linking structure, an essential element of SEO. To configure this plugin, you add a list of keywords, and whenever one of these is brought up in an additional post, SEO Smart Links immediately links to it. You can also specify a URL which is linked to specific keywords, if you decide to want to link to an affiliate offer, this is a fast and simple way to do so.

5) WordPress Database Backup–It’s very vital that you have made an up-to-date backup of your site in the event anything goes very wrong, or your blog is hacked. This plugin will e-mail you backups on a regular schedule, or else you can have them saved to your server. There are lots of additional fantastic plugins for WordPress absolutely do deserve mention, but I’d rather not make your eyes glaze over completely right now.

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Affordable WordPress Websites for Small Businesses

Affordable WordPress Websites for Small Businesses

Many small business owners are at the mercy of website designers and website developers. With high hourly rates, small business owners are held hostage when the website needs content updates or other minor changes. Why does this happen? Website designers and website developers know that if they create a website for their clients that is difficult to use and understand, the business owner will have to keep coming back to them for updates and modifications. Add this insult to the already astronomical price applied to having a new website designed and you can be thousands of dollars in the whole before your website reaches the one year mark.

WordPress offers a simpler, more affordable solution to small business websites.

The Benefits of a WordPress Website to Small Businesses

WordPress is a 100% FREE blogging / content management platform. That’s right, many of you may be surprised to read that it is completely free. Because WordPress is free, it has hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of users. Furthermore, there is an army of web developers all working and contributing to make it more secure and to keep it up to date. As if that all wasn’t enough, there are thousands of free themes available to make your website look different from all of the others, and thousands more premium (usually costing under $100) themes available for purchase. Also due to the large number of users there are thousands of free and premium WordPress plugins available which can extend the functionality of WordPress beyond that of just a normal website. And, believe it or not, I haven’t gotten to the best part yet. WordPress has an admin section with a graphic user interface (GUI) which makes it possible for the web layperson to make updates and additions to their own website. I have numerous clients myself that are using the WordPress platform that login to their own websites and make updates and alterations without having to call me for support or spend a dime.

How Expensive are WordPress Websites

As mentioned previously, WordPress itself is free. However, there are still costs associated with setting up the WordPress website, Domain Registration, and Hosting for the website. If you’re not very good at learning new software you may want to consider having the person who sets up your WordPress website do some training with you. There also may be some need to have the web designer or web developer that is helping you make some modifications that may be too difficult for you, such as adding your business logo. On average, I’m able to get a client’s website online for between $400 and $500. Although, I have provided clients with websites for as little as $200.

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