How to | PHP, MySQL, Mambo, Zen-Cart, Templates, Contracts and Applications

Seattle Skincare Services - Botox in Seattle

Abby Ross — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:15:03 +0000

Madison Skincare and Laser Center provides skin health services, laser rejuvenation and dermatology services. They offer diagnosis and treatment of skin diseases and skin cancers as well as Seattle skin cancer surgery. They offer state of the art cosmetic services, including a full range of laser services, the Thermage non-surgical skin tightening, peels, Botox, Restylane, the new Aramis laser for acne treatment and prevention and Seattle aesthetician services.

Their cosmetic dermatology sessions provide cosmetic procedures to patients in a caring and professional environment. Services include several types of cosmetic procedures including Laser Services, Thermage for Skin Tightening, SilkPeel Microdermabrasion, Sculptra, removal of moles, Seattle Botox Injections, and Seattle Aesthetician Services.
You may also be interested in this skin care information and skin care resource website they provide to help you discover skincare treatment options and information available for different skin types. Of particular interest is their Guide to common Cosmetic Treatments.

Seattle Joomla Development

Abby Ross — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:07:30 +0000

We’ve been doing a large number of custom Joomla development projects this year. Most of which seem to have a custom component that “normal” developers just do not know how to develop for them. In our Company, since we use all local, on-staff developers and designers - we have multiple people to work on our clients needs. There is rarely something our staff cannot solve when working together as a team. Here are a few recent project and how we worked with Joomla to bring about their solutions.

Skin Tour - Skin Health Tips & Care - We built a series of Flash Quizzes, each with a rather large system of branching paths that sorted users into one of ten different profiles and suggested treatments to the user. We also built an Interactive AntiAging Guide in Adobe Flex and tied its results into the User Profile system. Finally, a Joomla Video Blogging system was created with a tag cloud module and feeders.

The Quick Path - The Quick Path is a membership-based business website that offers wealth-creating and asset protection products. We built it around a core Joomla build with a custom, 4-tier affiliate program, virtuemart shopping cart and linked the affiliate program (JAM / JROX) to Joomla in a way that it creates a replicated website for each affiliate upon sign-up. Other features included: ACH integration, bulk pay for Affiliates via a Web Service and custom virtuemart reporting.

Fantagraphics, Inc -Fantagraphics is a custom Joomla build with a virtuemart shopping cart system. We created a special series of shipping tables, a destination-based sales tax system for virtuemart and a special “club discount” system for customers who want to purchase a discount club as a prduct.

If you want some local help from our Seattle Joomla Developers or even if you are located out of our area and want to talk via phone or email - contact us today!

Zen Cart POS System

Abby Ross — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:53:08 +0000

The Zen Cart & OSCommerce AJAX POS System is getting close to having a release ready. For more information on the OSCommerce POS or the Zen Cart POS - click here.

It works as an add-on module that hooks your OSC or Zen Database and still allows you to control attributes and information from inside OSC and Zen cart respectively. The fact that it is AJAX means you can do speedy real time lookups of customer information and orders. We have several brick and mortor stores who do millions in sales using the BETA of our system.

Destination Based Sales Tax - Zen Cart & OSCommerce

Abby Ross — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:37:51 +0000

After a very long development cycle, we now have custom modules for Zen-cart and Oscommerce that can calculate destination-based sales tax. Using a combination of address verification and data made available by your State you can become compliant in no time flat.

The modules calculate based on Zip +4 to break down the sales tax by zip code and the 4 digit code as well. If you tax rates change quarterly like our state, you can upload and parse the CSV file they make available to you in order to update the rates in bulk. For more information, contact us here.

Zen Cart & Oscommerce calculate sales tax by destination module.

Abby Ross — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 02:15:41 +0000

Don’t Know Dino

Abby Ross — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:07:01 +0000

Don’t Know Dino is where you should really look for information about Dino Rossi; the facts about his record and other information you need to make an educated vote.

Seattle Web Design

Abby Ross — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:18:45 +0000

One of the markets we obviously target is Seattle Web Design & people looking for Seattle Web Designers & Seattle Web Developers.

We love working for Seattle clients on development or design projects. It is an easy hop down the highway, preferably made at off-peak times since Washington State does not believe in building roads or non-Boondoggle mass transit projects (Hear that “Big Dig” we’re coming for you!).

Seattle is a funny area for Web Design & Development. Take us as an example. We are a company. We have an office. We have all local designers and developers. You will probably talk to the same people year after year because we have had less than 5% turn-over since we started back in 2000.

We tend to get a lot of work from a certain breed of company. This breed basically has very nice offices, slick salespeople and puts a lot of time into fancy proposals and “the process”.

What they do not do, is the actual work apparently .. but you wouldn’t know that from talking to them. They in turn, sub out your projects to people like us. Want to confused this breed of salesperson? Just ask them who specifically will be working on their project and watch them either

1) Tell you the name of someone who will probably NOT be working on your project.

2) Make up a name.

3) Tell you that will be decided later.

The last time we competed against a firm like this, after seeing this firm in the waiting room, I challenged the client to ask them this question. Apparently they did and they fumbled it bad. Sorry folks, no points for second place. Honestly rules.
In our area there also seems to be a large number of single individuals “faking” being a larger firm than they really are. Now I know this is common in other industries, especially whenever the ambiguous word “consultant” is invoked, however with Web Firms it seem to be more prevalent. Selecting a vendor is an important decision. It can make or break a project or even a business if you are building your business around a new application, portal or website.

A lot of people in our industry have full-time jobs doing something else, but still act like a 9-5 firm. This is a huge disservice to their clients.

Here are some examples and patterns to watch out for:

Any firm that uses the words: Studios, We, Our, Staff, Employees, etc.. - yet doesn’t have a page devoted to Staff Bios or Resume. (To be fair - here’s our Seattle Web Developers bio page and I need to add recent hires.)
Any firm or individual that lists portfolio pieces or clients by name, but does not link to the website or describe in detail what they did. This usually indicates that they were either employed at that Company or we not 100% responsible for the project.
Any firm that does not list a mailing or office address.
Any firm that seems to have a half dozen email address yet they are answered by the same person.
Any firm that cannot tell you “who” will be working on your project - this means they take all jobs and then scramble to find people to do the work. These are called unnecessary middlemen in the real world.
Any website that uses a non-professional email like AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, etc.
Any firm that talks about their multiple locations or offices, yet doesn’t list addresses. These are probably apartments.
Any firm with a poor looking website; a website or portfolio that consists mainly of web templates or that can sell you pretty much the same solution no matter what you tell them you want. When all you know how to use is a hammer, everything is a nail.

Well, I am out of time for now. What do you think?

Tom

Plyboo Bamboo Flooring & Bamboo Floors - Client Project

Abby Ross — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:24:11 +0000

Plyboo is in the business of Bamboo Flooring & Bamboo Floors, along with Bamboo Plywood and sustainable green flooring and other “Green Building” materials. We were called in to aide in correcting certain Joomla navigation and site structure requirements. We also added SugarCRM and worked on some lead generation & sample request forms that piped data directly into SugarCRM to integrate their website workflow and process with their back office systems. Our Everett, WA Office is currently covered in SugarCRM manuals and print outs.
Their products are fantastic. They have nearly every possible bamboo flooring product or derivative you could possibly want, including Bamboo Veneer & Durapalm Woven Paneling

Check out the Joomla build and product portfolio to see a content rich website using Joomla, custom components and SEO rich content.

Custom Zen Cart Build - Each Catagory has its own Specials & Featured Module.

Abby Ross — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:33:47 +0000

We’ve recently completed a new modification to a West-Coast Satellite Radio retailer - JJIElectronics.com that is working really well for them. We’ve added the ability to define the specials and featured products on a per-category basis.

Example #1 -XM Satellite Radios

For the admin, it really is as easy as assigning special or featured products with a few selection boxes and both the design styling and information shows up within the design template. Your clients do not have to mess with the description box or define_mainpage - it is that easy.

Zen Cart Feature - Displaying Zen-Cart Sub-categories in the Main Menu.

We’ve also built a dynamic menu system that displays all the the categories & sub-categories on the same menu - this is great for providing customers the ability to see all of the types of products you offer rather than force them to search. You can see the Zen Cart Dynamic Menu examples here. This helps your main page get spidered for all top-level keywords (which for an ecommerce site should start with your categories of products that you sell at the very least.

Zen Cart Feature - Multiple Shopping Feeds and “Referral Network” Integration.

Feedburner, Yahoo Shopping, Google Base / Froogle and Bizrate. We set up this Zen Cart build so it would detect the inbound referral and pop the correct survey box based on whether they came from BizRate, Shopping.com, etc. Most of these services give you their code to integrate and it really does nothing except pop the survey after you have successfully checked out. If you are a business as large as this client - and make use of several networks - then you either have to dynamically detect the referral and trigger the appropriate code - or you are stuck with popping all of the various surveys and letting the user fill out whichever one is relevant. Since JJIElectronics.com cares about their user’s experiences - they went with the auto-detect.

Additional Zen-Cart Modules

In addition to the stock build, we also added:

Custom Shipping Tables & Rules
Google Checkout & PayPal Express (that conforms to the above - just try that… we dare you.)
An AJAX Sidebar Manager - to allow the various advertising, banners, buttons and tables they display throughout their site (ala DeepDiscountDVD.com & TigerDirect)
A Zen-Cart to QuickBooks Exporter
An advanced order manager that allowed batching of functions and printing.
An advanced reporting module that allowed for reports to be generated on keywords and stock control.
A total Zen Cart SEO overhaul.
and Special Holiday Headers for a nice friendly touch!

All in all - a very effective website and relationship. For more information on our custom Zen Cart Developers & Zen Cart Development Services - just visit our website. Whether you need a Seattle Zen Cart Developer
or just want to outsource your problems to us - we are ready to help you. [We do not outsource ourselves, the buck stop here.]

Government Grant Proposal Templates

Abby Ross — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 19:29:27 +0000

After several years worth of work and hundreds of hours spent with a consultant who does nothing but write Government Grants and Grant Proposals - The Government Proposal Pack of Templates is available for purchase.

Increase your odds of winning a Government Grant or Proposal using a proposal structures based on actual winning proposal writing “Best Practices” and formats.

50 sample proposals - over 770 pages of government proposal template material included. ($300.00 value.)
Proposals range from a 1 page government proposal quotes to 10 to 15 page average RFP answers to complete 270+ page proposals.
Over 270 pre-designed editable proposal chapters & proposal chapter templates.
Government Proposal & Grant Templates are Self-guiding templates and walk you through the process of assembling and writing your proposal.
Immediately Downloadable - start immediately!
Create unlimited Government proposal and RFQ answers - at no extra cost
Completely customizable with your branding, logos and information
Save thousands of dollars and days or weeks of time
Includes government grant work order contracts, non-disclosure forms, an extensive business proposal writing guide as well as a government grant proposal writing guide.
Includes how to develop your proposals and analysis worksheets and spreadsheets to keep you on track
Over 900 hundred pages of material and you can easily create new documents based on our templates to suit any government grant writing situation you may encounter.
Includes Windows, Mac and Linux downloads for a single price!
Includes templates for:

Business Proposals
Federal Govt. Grants
Educational Proposals
Technical Proposals
Non-Technical Proposals
Non-Profit Grant Proposals
Business Plans
Quotes and Contracts
Buying or Selling a Business

Project Proposals
Local Govt. Grants
Book Proposals
Resumes
Letter Proposals
Product Sales
Service Sales
Sales Letters
RFP Responses

Get Government Grant Templates here.

Project Spotlight - JJIElectronics.com - Zen Cart

Abby Ross — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:30:34 +0000

We’ve recently launched JJIElectronics.com new ecommerce website.

About the client.

JJIElectronics is the #1 independent Internet retailer in the USA for sales of XM Satellite Radio, Sirius Satellite Radio & Garmin GPS.

About the project.

The project involved moving JJIElectronics.com off of a hosted ecommerce application and creating a new custom store. The client had grown large enough that they wanted more control over the features their ecommerce storefront would offer.

They also wanted a dynamic template-swapping feature which would allow the entire store to re-sort and re-filter all results by clicking on a tab. This would allow them to present an “XM-only” or “Garmin-only” storefront to their customers as well as aide them in any manufacturer-sponsored promotions or offers where they didn’t want competitive products to show up as well.

We deployed Zen Cart with a number of custom features we built. The template can an AJAX back-end that allows the client to edit each of the sidebars and place in advertising and special offers. A multiple offer-related shipping module takes the default Zen Cart build to a whole new level. We also create an advanced reporting and export feature to tie Zen Cart to Quickbooks better as well as manage sale tax.

The Zen Cart - “Specials by Category” module we designed allows for category-specific specials, featured and “what’s new” in each product channel.

If you would like to know more about our Zen Cart Developers or our custom services - contact us today.

Real Estate Flier / Flyer Templates - Publisher

Abby Ross — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 13:38:06 +0000

Real Estate Flier Templates - a new product from the TemplateKit.com development team.

IMPROVE YOUR IMAGE & Close the deal with our Real Estate Fliers

Now you can download and customize more than a dozen, ready to use, ready to deploy sales sheets for real estate marketing, home sales, specifications sheets, info sheets and more. Click on an image to see greater detail.

Just replace with your own photos and you are ready to save and print. Includes Both MS Publisher 95 - 2003 and the New MS Publisher 2007. Click on an image to replace the default with your own.

Unlimited Combinations. Click here to view all Real Estate Flyers.

HTML Email - Images will not display in Gmail when sending email newsletter

Abby Ross — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 23:21:13 +0000

Here we are, in our HTML Email Laboratory again with another Gmail-specific problem.

Symptom:

Gmail does not display images in an HTML Email.

Culprit: Border Styles.

Example: style= “border:none;

Because Gmail and other web-based email systems tend to strip out styles - it looks like using a style reference in your IMG tag will cause Gmail not to render the entire image.

What you should just do is use border=”0″ to accomplish the same thing, namely you want to avoid that little blue border that surrounds an image when an anchor link is placed around it. Our tests rendered just fine in Hotmail, Horde, Yahoo and a few other web-based clients.

Zencart Google Checkout and freeoptions shipping module issue and solution

kevin — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:03:06 +0000

Symptom:
My client is using the new Google Checkout Module with Carrier Calculated Shipping, et al. (v1.4.5)

You can see the Google Checkout module for ZenCart here.

His freeoptions shipping module allows free shipping for orders greater than $50.00.
This is what his freeoptions shipping method options are:
Shipping Cost: 0.00
Handling Fee: 0
Total >= 50.00
Total <=
Weight >=
Weight <=
Item Count >=
Item Count <=

When you navigate to google checkout as a customer, it would not follow the pricing rules-- it would allow free shipping for any order regardless of price.

Here’s the Zen Cart Google Checkout Solution:

In the googlecheckout/gcheckout.php file, find these two lines: (line numbers 533 & 534)

$price = $quote[’methods’][0][’cost’];
$shipping_price = $currencies->get_value(DEFAULT_CURRENCY) * ($price>=0?$price:0);

replace them with:

if ($quote) {
$price = $quote[’methods’][0][’cost’];
$shipping_price = $currencies->get_value(DEFAULT_CURRENCY) * ($price>=0?$price:0);
}else{
unset($googlepayment->mc_shipping_methods[$key]) ;
continue ;
}

This should fix the other options in freeshipper as well - items, and weight, since it performs the same way (though I haven’t fully tested it in every possible combination or onfiguration). It should also fix any other shipping methods that just don’t show up based on some sort of option configuration.

Hope this helps someone else!

Kevin

Giving the “new guy” trouble.

Abby Ross — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:25:59 +0000

We’ve hired two new employees here at FDG Web. Jared & Blake.

Jared is a graphic designer fresh out of school (for the most part). You can see some of the great stuff he is working on for JJIElectronics.com (Special Christmas Zen-Cart Overlay). Jared is a designer. Did I happen to mention that? Photoshop, Illustrator, Vector Artwork, print work, etc - that is his area.
So, what you are seeing here is the result of our having put him next to the programmer’s pit here in the office.

[click to enlarge]

FREE Flash / XML 4-Pack of Ads

Jeff Kowalski — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:21:29 +0000

Our easy to use Flash based XML ad pack makes it easy for you to control advertisements on your website without knowledge of html or Flash. All you need to do is modify the included XML file for each of these four ad templates and alter the graphic to reflect your own product/link and upload to your site. Once inserted into your page you can then routinely edit the xml file and graphics to update and reflect new products / specials. Readme included. Download the zip file here.

View all Free Web & Flash Templates here!

FREE Buttons for Applications

Jeff Kowalski — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:22:05 +0000

Free for the Holidays we are happy to offer this collection of buttons for your application needs. This set includes buttons for arrows, pill-style, gel buttons, crystal oval and spherical type buttons. Included in the the zip file are the original PSD Photoshop files for most of the buttons. Use and enjoy!. Download the buttons at this link.

View all Free Web & Flash Templates here!

FREE! Flash / Powerpoint presentation background & gel-style buttons

Jeff Kowalski — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:48:05 +0000

We’ve used these photoshop PSD files for numerous projects and have never been disappointed, and neither will you. Use the presentation background for any Flash, or Powerpoint GUI project you need a head start on. It comes as a layered PSD file you can edit to your liking for color, layout etc. Do your customizations then save the background file for your project. You can Download the Flash / Powerpoint presentation background here.

When your done with your presentation / project background you can utilize these cool gel-style button templates for your user inter-actions and navigation. Again we’re offering you the layered PSD file for our gel-styled Mac buttons. Fully customizable and a perfect companion to the background above. You can download the Mac gel-style buttons here.

View all Free Web & Flash Templates here!

New XHTML Strict 1.0 - SEO Friendly template - FREE!

Jeff Kowalski — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:51:06 +0000

Search Engine friendly template you can use to start off your next project half finished. This template uses the XHTML Strict 1.0 DTD and pure CSS with no inline styles to convey your information with the minimum amount of code and markup. Tested in IE 6 & 7, Opera 8.0+, Netscape 7+, and Firefox 1.5 and up, all with consistent results.

I made this template as an exercise in SEO techniques, wondering if I could meet commonly held best practices for the CSS and still have it be search engine friendly, AND be XHTML Strict 1.0 compliant. It worked after a little tweaking and I invite you to have a look and learn from my example.

Zip file includes the photoshop PSD for the header for customization.

Download Zip file here.

View all Free Web & Flash Templates here!

FREE Photoshop PSD - Background - Virus Maker

Jared — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:39:18 +0000

Use this 800×600, 72 dpi, background for a number of things. The file can be used in Microsoft Powerpoint, Word, Publisher, Myspace, Dreamweaver, or Flash. Use it for a flash project concerning the affects of pollution in our water or a massive zombie outbreak - we do not care - it is up to you. It’s free. It’s Photoshop. Heck, it’s also just a JPG. A friendly, little, non-threatening JPG.

Download this FREE Photoshop Template - here!