Zen Cart

Recently I decided to change the way categories are displayed on my gifts website and, with an FTP client, removed the files that run BetterCategories.

Unfortunately Zen Cart would only display a white blank page and return a 500 error. I knew the server was working as this blog and my images were being served correctly so it was obviously a problem with a file I had removed by mistake.

But which file?

Fortunately I discovered a handy troubleshooting file on the Zen Cart website. Following the instructions I discovered a missing file from Image Handler that prevented the website from working. I uploaded the file and now its back again. Phew!

Handy tip: When you use a Zen-cart mod save a copy of the mod in a directory on your PC. I have a folder called zencartmods so I know which modules I am using and can easily find any missing files.

Back to designing my christmas look.

Do you need to add more pages to Zen-cart to customise for your own use?
E-Z pages are useful but take up space in your database so instead I prefer to simply add new pages that would have the url as page_4, page_5 etc. Using this method it is also easy to create titles and descriptions for them.

I am using page_6 as an example but you can use any name you wish, this may be wiser to do so for SEO purposes.

It is easy using the Define Pages Generator mod for Zen Cart.
Unlike most mods this is not a php script that you upload to the server. Instead it is a simple programme that creates all the pages you need which you then upload. If you supply your template name it even creates the correct directory structure to drag and drop the files in to an ftp client.

At the moment I wish to create an additional links page that will be page_6. All it takes is 3 simple steps:

1. Create a temporary directory to store the new the files in (I just use c:/temp on my computer).
2. Run the define pages programme and tell it to create page_6, give a template name and put the files in c:/temp.
3. Look in C:/temp you will see an includes folder. Simply upload these to your host’s includes folder.

Using Define Pages Generator for Zen Cart

Your zen-cart will now have an additional page for you to customize. Now all you need do is give it a title and description.

Simply edit the file on your server:
/includes/languages/english/YOUR TEMPLATE/page_6.php and fill in whatever text you wish for both the navbar (which appears  on the top bar of your web browser and the navigation crumb on Zen Cart) and the header (the title of the new page).

The actual page content is found at /includes/languages/english/html_includes/YOUR TEMPLATE/define_page_6.php where you can either edit the page directly using html and upload a new file or make the define_page_6.php file writeable and use the zencart editor from admin.tools.define pages editor.

Don’t forget to link to it so people and search engines will know the new page exists. Easy

There is a known problem with some Nintendo Wii’s reading the Super Smash Bros Brawl disc. There is probably nothing wrong with the the disc - the problem lies with the console. It has only come to light now as this is the first dual layer DVD game which means the DVD drive in the Wii has to work harder to read all the information. Unfortunately some consoles, mine included, do not have the DVD lens set up to be exact enough for reading so much information, instead they struggle then give up.

It appears a strange error as some of the game will play. The intro, first game and all the menu systems worked but the game did not load past a certain point. This makes it seem like a disc error, but fortunately, before returning the disc to the shop, I checked the internet for known problems and this is one of them.

For those in the UK, Nintendo will repair the problem free of charge, this includes collection and delivery. Simply log a repair at the Nintendo UK service centre and they will do all the rest.

After logging a problem by entering all your details (don’t forget to register and send the game also as they will check the disc too) all you need to is pack up the console and disc and wait for a letter with a parcelforce pre-paid label. Mine took about 3 days to arrive. Take the parcel to the post office, obtain proof of posting and Nintendo will analyse, repair and return it to you free of charge. You will also receive a number and PIN when logging the information so you can keep track of how your Wii is doing.

My Wii was returned in about 16 days, half of that time included waiting for the pre-paid label and delivery/despatch with a bank holiday also included. Not particularly quick yet straightforward and did not cost me anything.

All things considered, a good service from Nintendo.

One point to note: when playing Super Smash Bros Brawl for the first time the Wii screen remained black for about 20 seconds then an error message appeared telling me to eject the disc and turn off the power. I did this and restarted it - it worked fine and I have been enjoying the game since.

While waiting why not play the classic game Defend Your Castle. Online for free.

Play Defend Your Castle

It’s easy with our free date reminder service. Simply:

• create an account
• enter your special date
• enter a note to remind you what the date means

10 days before that date arrives we will email you a reminder. Our date reminder service is great for any occasion and completely free of charge.

If you run Zen cart why not offer it to your customers also? You can download it from Zen Cart’s website and use it fairly easily as long as your web host supports cron jobs.

If you need free, both cost free and royalty free, quality colour photos for your blog or web page then look no further. I use 123rf.com who supply both free and low cost images.

For free images simply go to 123rf.com website and click free images on the right hand side. Change the number to display to browse quicker. Their stock is always changing so if you can’t see anything you like then why not try again a week or so later.

Customers could not find a shipping option when returning from PayPal to AllGiftsDirect.co.uk so they abandoned their carts. Credit card payments were fine, it was only PayPal Express that had a problem.

After looking at the previous post ( by the way, using a blog to track Zen Cart changes is extremely helpful, there is no way I would have remembered which pieces of code were altered) I changed line 1825 in paypalwpp.php back to the original suggestion:

’ship_country_name’ => urldecode($response['SHIPTOCOUNTRY']));

This was mentioned on the Zen Cart forum post number 57. PayPal express is working fine again.

It was working fine, nothing changed but it then stopped functioning correctly, so I made a small change and now it is back working again.

Aren’t computers so annoying sometimes? Apologies to any customers who found it as frustrating as I did

You need to be top of the search engine result and you understand about on-page optimization and have done the basics.

Now what? How do you take your site from the middle of the pile and push and pull it slowly to the promised land of the top 5 positions?

And slowly here is the key. I’m talking about long term investment into the future of your website and business.

I’m also not talking about ranking number 1 in Google for your business name or a 10 word phrase that absolutely no-one else would want to rank for. If you haven’t done that yet, you need get some very basic SEO grounding.

What I want to discuss is out-performing your competitors on the absolutely top-notch make-you-a-fortune keywords that bring laser-targeted traffic. In other words, the ones you’re only dreaming about ranking for!

How do we do it?

Simple, really – we stand on the shoulders of giants. In other words, we look at what successful websites do and have done – and we use that information. No, we’re not going to re-invent the wheel and copy others’ business models, we’re going to take the cream from their hard work and pour it onto our sites!

Ranking in Google is about two things – it’s about relevance and it’s about popularity. We’ll assume that our sites are relevant to the traffic we’re seeking – no point attracting shoe shoppers if we’re selling ice cream! So it’s about popularity. And in Google’s case, that means backlinks. Put simply, the better the links to your site, the more they’ll see you as being popular, and the more they’ll pull your site to the top of the results.

Notice I said ‘better’, not ‘more’. In this case, quality is far more important than quantity. I can give you examples of sites with 300,000 inbound links that are far outranked by sites with 2000.

SEO experts talk about ranking number 1 in Google rather than Yahoo or MSN simply because Google is the search engine that most searchers use. Ironically, though, we need to use Yahoo to get to number one in Google. This is because Google is really bad at showing inbound links.

Yahoo Site Explorer (siteexplorer dot search dot yahoo dot com) is far better at this. YSE will show you which sites link to your competitors. And better still, they’ll rank them in terms of importance, so all the hard work’s done for you!

You just need to type in the URL of the site into the SEARCH box at the top of the screen, click on ‘Explore URL’, then click on ‘Inlinks’ and select ‘Except from this domain’ in the drop-down box. Lo-and-behold – a list of your competitor’s most important links. Not bad, eh?

So here’s your strategy:

• draw up your list of must-have, top-drawer keywords and keyword phrases.
• search Google for them and take a note of the top 10 websites for each.
• examine each of the top 10 in YSE and see where the important links are coming from.
• filter these links into three categories: 1, the sites you won’t get links from; 2, the sites you’ll get links from with some hard work; 3, the sites you can get links from straight away (these can include blogs that allow comments, directories, article sites etc.
• get to work on acquiring links from the third category, then move on to the second.

This takes time, obviously, but not as much time as randomly searching for links that you’ll ultimately discover have no importance whatsoever.

If you follow this procedure diligently and methodically, you’ll soon begin to see your sites slowly but surely marching up to the top of the rankings. I’m going to start straight away.

Switch is now known as Maestro yet banks issue cards in both the old format (long number and issue number) and the new format (credit card style 16 digits and start date) that can lead to confusion when processing payments.

One fix supplied on the Zen Cart forums was to combine the processing of Switch and Maestro together. Unfortunately it only allows customers to enter the old format as the valid from form is greyed out. If customers with a new maestro card pay without providing a start date the payment will fail. I have modified the paypaldp.php (located in /includes/modules/payment) as suggested in the forums above and made a small change which provides both start date and issue number field for the customer to fill out.

Line 249-260 now reads:

‘var value = document.checkout_payment.paypalwpp_cc_type.value;’ .
‘if (value == “Solo”) {’ .
‘ document.checkout_payment.paypalwpp_cc_issue_month.disabled = false;’ .
‘ document.checkout_payment.paypalwpp_cc_issue_year.disabled = false;’ .
‘ document.checkout_payment.paypalwpp_cc_checkcode.disabled = true;’ .
‘ if (document.checkout_payment.paypalwpp_cc_issuenumber) document.checkout_payment.paypalwpp_cc_issuenumber.disabled = true;’ .
‘} else if (value == “Switch” || value == “Maestro”) {’ .
‘ document.checkout_payment.paypalwpp_cc_issuenumber.disabled = false;’ .
‘ if (document.checkout_payment.paypalwpp_cc_issue_month) document.checkout_payment.paypalwpp_cc_issue_month.disabled = false;’ .
‘ if (document.checkout_payment.paypalwpp_cc_issue_year) document.checkout_payment.paypalwpp_cc_issue_year.disabled = false;’ .
‘ document.checkout_payment.paypalwpp_cc_checkcode.disabled = false;’ .
‘} else {’ .

My changes from those suggesting in the forum are in red - this turns on the card issue date. Please don’t miss the second change in this file as mentioned in the forum. I copied the same code as described.

I also modified the languages file to provide a short explanation for the customer.

Includes/languages/english/modules/payment/paypaldp.php I changed the definition (around line 30) to:

define(’MODULE_PAYMENT_PAYPALDP_TEXT_CREDIT_CARD_MAESTRO_ISSUENUMBER’, ‘Maestro/Switch Issue No.:<br/>NB: If your Switch/Maestro card does not have an issue number please provide a card issue date.’);

I have tested it with a 16 digit Maestro card using a start date and it works fine.

There are thousands of web pages dedicated to web design and SEO, here are some worth looking at:

For choosing colour palates I use this scheme chooser and colour scheme generator. They make it easy to select complementing colours.

You can also check your colour scheme used in CSS with this free and easy to use colour contrast tool.

iWebtool have a page dedicated to free on-line tools to analyse your website.

CopyBlogger offer some useful tips on copy writing for SEO success.

If you are unfamiliar with the jargon of web page components there is a a good basic guide to SEO web essentials at webconfs.com

My favourite page is Web Pages That Suck. It’s a humorous and attention grabbing title yet packed with loads of information. By showing you how NOT to design a website you can learn how to do things the right way. It was this site that provoked me to get rid of my red and green theme. They offer a detailed check list to apply to your own web-site design and then suggestions for further action.

And finally if you need some new buttons for your Zen or OS Commerce cart then Advance Software have a free on-line tool where you can create and download an entire button set with correct labels for simple uploading to your site.

I wanted to adjust the Zen Cart customer sign up to make it more straightforward and not to collect information that would not be used. After all, potential customers can be wary of giving out personal information are are suspicious when fields are asked for that are not strictly required for an on-line transaction for example, you don’t need someone’s date of birth and so it is pointless to ask for it.

To turn these off use a blank, not zero, value in admin, configuration, minimum value. Just use the backspace key to delete whatever value is present. Don’t use zero as an error will come up and require a customer entry. I have DOB, telephone and company as blank entries. You can also turn off the DOB and fax fields in admin, configuration, customer details.

If you wish to get rid of the * required text on the customer sign in form then you will need to edit includes/languages/english/.php around line 240 ENTRY_TELEPHONE_NUMBER_TEXT just delete the * and it will no longer appear on the customer sign up form. Please save the english.php file in the appropriate includes/languages/your_template_name folder/english.php rather than overwriting the original file.