Have you ever wondered how to determine the location of your visitors via a webpage or browser?
This bit of code will look at a users IP address and range and output the information.
Usefull for making your site feel tailored to local business needs, even if you are not based in the area.
copy and paste the code below, note the part Search Engine Specialists
change this to required message, so if you lived in Doncaster, it would read – “Search Engine Specialists Doncaster”.
Enjoy!

<script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[
  if (typeof(google.loader.ClientLocation.address.city) != null) {
     document.write("Search Engine Specialists "
	 + google.loader.ClientLocation.address.city + ", "
	 + google.loader.ClientLocation.address.region);
  }
// ]]></script>

Guest Checkout $15
Guest Checkout

Payment Surcharge Module $7
Payment Surcharge Module

Shipping by product $15
Shipping by product

Zone plus shipping $15
Zone plus shipping

Offline CC module
Offline CC module

Batch Edit $7
Batch Edit

HSBC cpi $35
HSBC cpi

Nochex $5
Nochex Module

CMS system $15
CMS system

Discount order total $5
Discount order total

Stock Levels for Product Options $20
Stock Levels for Product Options

JQuery Carousel $5
JQuery Carousel

JQuery Zoom $5
JQuery Zoom

RSS-GoogleBase feed $7
RSS-GoogleBase feed

Featured Sidebox Module $10
Featured Sidebox Module

Specials Sidebox module $free
Specials Sidebox module

Skype Chat $5
Skype Chat

Next and Previous product links $free
Next and Previous product links

Order Value unlimited discounts $7.95
Order Value unlimited discounts

Dynamic Category Menu $1
Dynamic Category Menu

Global attributes and options $15
Global attributes and options

A new digital campus is at the heart of Sheffield’s plans to become the e-learning capital of Europe.
The digital campus, located in front of Sheffield’s train station, will be home to more than 3,000 creative and digital industries sector workers. Phase one – Electric Works – is already attracting companies to its 50,000 sq ft of flexible workspace and the second building is well underway. Proposals of the design of the third building have now been submitted.
Investment manager at Creative Sheffield, James Wilson says the South Yorkshire city is already seen as the home of e-learning in the UK and plans to attract more companies within the sector with the Sheffield Digital Campus. “Sheffield already has a larger number of e-learning companies than anywhere in the UK and more are being drawn to the city because of the depth of the talent pool as well as the lifestyle offered by a city on the edge of a National Park.

PrestaShop is an Open Source ecommerce web application. v1.0 was released on July 31, 2008. It was founded in Paris, France, by Igor Schlumberger and Bruno Lévêque.

As you would expect with such a young project,  documentation is sketchy with only an installation wiki on the official site , developer/designer/architecture and administrator guides “comming soon”

We have set out to provide you a comprehensive list of all available modules, themes and guides.

Themes.

Spring Day Bambino theme

DDLX cream

DDLX business

DDLX blue

ET-Black -Free!

Iris 2 column -Free!

Atchworks

A selection of free themes are also available here at prestathemes.com

User Documentation.

Some excellent guides have been written up by Dave Egerton. check them out here… He also uses MODx the prestashop guide!

Modules.

Off Line Credit Card Module

HSBC  CPI Payments Gateway

MoneyBookers Payment Gateway

Home page Carousel

Home featured slider

Product Image Magnify

Horizontal Navigation CCS drop down

Live Support

Google Base feed

Shop Mania Feed

Add Stuff

Keep posted for more Modules and themes (including our own) to be added soon.

The pros and cons of using 2 of our favourite web based publishing systems to create websites.

Both systems are extremely flexible and both have a huge community following but which is right for your project?

Lets start from the begining…

Plan your website. What type of website are building? a simple brochure site, e-commerce site blog etc.

While both systems can handle all of these tasks it really depends on how much hacking or tweaking you are prepared to do

The Installation..

Both systems are straight forward to install manually, create a MySQL database >> create a database user >> install files to web server and navigate to /install if using MODx or just navigate to files if using Wordpress. Even better, due to the sheer popularity of Wordpress it has been included in Fantastico Delux for some time now (1 click install)

The Template Engine…

This is where the systems go a seperate way, MODx is in our opinion is more geared up to the xhtml/css developer. here you can define your file paths and create your own templates from scratch. MODx uses a set of placeholders to populate the template, you can also create your own “placeholders” called CHUNKS .  For example we could copy and paste all of the code from the bottom of the template and call it {{footer}}, likewise with {{header}} and {{sidebar}}.

Wordpress, on the other hand has a well established theme community with hundreds of premium themes and hundreds of thousands of free themes which can be modified to suite your needs. Many themes which are well built include theme functions and widget ready sections.

Day to Day Use…

Both systems fair well for day to day use and ease of use for non technical users. MODx has a tree navigational system and once the user has “got there head round  this” its easy to use. Wordpress has been redesigned a number of times over the years and has evolved into a super friendly publishing platform with  an intuitive interface.

Bespoke Web Development…

This is one area where MODx beats wordpress. MODx supplies you with a set of snippets/ functions/handles/extenders or rules whatever you wish to call them.

Ditto: Taxononmy or aggregation of information, this snippet can be tweaked and modified to do pretty much anything.

others include; Ajaxsearch, Wayfinder.

If you wanted to build a bespoke site for a specific function this would be the way to go.

Wordpress is quite different in that most add-ons or modules/widgets have already been developed for pretty much any need or function you may ever want! its a case of building up your WP install with numerous widgets and flexable theme with custom functions.

SEO & Blogging.

Both systems feature friendly URLs but Wordpress has many flexible options here using date, time and many other bits of meta information so you can really rewrite your urls into some great long tail keywords with a good folder structure.  some examples would be

archives/08/author

category/tags/pagetitle

MODx lacks slightly in our opinion, although you can define the url rewrite its best not to use the folder structure in your urls, especially if you have already built the site. you may find some image files that cant work out the paths. However MODx is a truly SEO CMS with the flexability of using per page or site-wide meta tagging. If you incorporate all the MODx placeholders into your template you can achieve some great results for chosen keywords in your pages.  We have found it is best to use the standard freindly urls configuration for MODx . example…

www.sitename.com/great-long-tail-keyword.html

Blogging..

While it is possible to spend a day creating template-variables, ditto templates,  and tinkering with webuserlogin snippet for a blogging platform in MODx most users would agree, why bother? use Wordpress.

This is not to say MODx is no good for blogging, and that Wordpress is no good for basic CMS brochure sites.

There are many Wordpress sites which have been stripped down and de-featured in order to be used as a simple 3 page website or business brochure.

KiweeCommerce  the once dead project has been resurrected by the MODx community.

A big thank you to Mike from Eternity in Vermont for getting this project going again.

Keep an eye out for this in the coming months.

When we last looked at KiweeCommerce it was very promising, a full MODx module with multiple payment gateways and stock control.

For more information check out the Google group

KiweeCommerce is busy in development and more information can be found at:

We now also have a SVN at Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/kiweecommerce/source/browse/#svn

http://groups.google.com/group/kiweecommerce

and

http://code.google.com/p/kiweecommerce

and

http://www.kiweecommerce.org (the .COM is currently under maintenance)

The Think Visability event to be held at Leeds – West Yorkshire on the 7th March 2009 has un-supprisingly sold out.

Tickets were on sale at £30.00 per head and the day promises to be talks and  discussion on SEO, PPC, Monetisation, Blogging, Accessibility and Usability.

The only way to get a ticket now is to either sponsor the event or to get on there waiting list

Go to Think Visibility for more information

It is a very difficult decision to make when choosing an SEO company.
A quick scout on the internet and good research always pays and I have come across a number of horror stories. Here are some things that you should look out for.

1) No company can Guarantee page 1 on Google, unless they ARE Google!

2) Any good SEO company will be found on page one of Google in the natural listings for more than one term related to the business it is in. For example search on Google for the following terms:- Optimisation, advertising company, advertising on Google. See who is listed.

4) A legitimate company will sometimes have contact details posted on its clients testimonials so that you can confirm they are real and ask them about the level of service they got. If they don’t ask them for 2 references.

3) SEO is a number of factors combined to gain higher positions on Google. The two main factors are on-site optimisation and off site optimisation. A company offering just links or blogs to promote your website isn’t optimising your website, but is using off site techniques.

4) Buying bulk links in now classed as a black hat technique(not good)and can result in your website being penalised by Google.

5) Cost is the most important factor. If you have ever done a sponsored link then you know the value of visitors to your website. SEO has a large set up cost but is more beneficial in the long run. A good SEO company should give you the option to pay a percentage up front and the outstanding balance when you are on page one.

6) Choose the keywords that YOU want. If the SEO company choose the keywords, ask them why.

7) Always go with a local, or within travelling distance SEO company. you REALLY need to meet these companies face-to-face as they will be a big factor in the success of your business.