ChaseSagum.com » ecommerce

2 Free Magento User Guide Ebooks!

Chase — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:00:25 +0000

Learning to use the open source Magento shopping cart can be quite the task. Because Magento has so many cool features and functions, it naturally has quite the long learning curve.Ã‚Â Here are two user guide ebooks in PDF format free to download that will help you save a ton of time. The first is a user guide for the entire shopping cart and the second is a designer’s guide for all of you who want to customize the look of your Magento run ecommerce site.

big thanks to BanZZai for getting this user guide together.

an even bigger thanks to Tomislav Bilic over at inchoo.net for putting this together for everyone to enjoy.

Create a Trendy & Hip Online Store with Magento

Chase — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:00:09 +0000

Want to create a trendy and hip online store? Let me explain to you how you can and save you a ton of time and money at the same time. First off we want to use the Open Source Ecommerce platform Magento. Doing this gives you all the features you need for a shopping cart, and at no cost to you obviously because it’s open source.

Let’s Look at the Benefits of Magento

There are so many features of the Magento ecommerce platform it’s hard to count. Right out of the box your open source cart can easily be connected to a Paypal or Authorize.net merchant account to handle your orders. You have access to dozens of community extensions to extend the functionality of your shopping cart. It’s Open Source so you can change the code to your needs all you want. And last but not least you have access to all the ecommerce options in your administration backend that most Ã¢â‚¬Å“big dawgÃ¢â‚¬Â ecommerce sites have.

Using the Sigyn Pro Magento Theme

To give us that Ã¢â‚¬Å“Trendy & HipÃ¢â‚¬Â look that we are after we can use the Sigyn Pro Magento Theme from SilverThemes. Demo here. As you can see this theme sports a really cool dark grunge style background. Perfect for the trendy style online stores. It’s only $150 for the theme and another $49 for what’s called the SimpleBoard widget which is that cool splash image on the homepage.

As you can see with the screenshot above, this look and feel could sport many different types of online stores. These could include:

clothing/fashion store
music or video store (media)
cosmetics
web design products
and many more…

Some of the Features of This Theme

Let’s take a look at some of the cool things about this theme.

Slick dropdown navigation

Easily accessible search bar at the top left so your customers can search for products

Sidebars on both left and right sides for the different Magento side blocks

Easy to browse catalog pages for each category

Nice solid presentation of product on the individual product pages. One of my favorite things about Magento

My Recommendation To You

If you have the skills, time, and or cash to create a trendy & hip online store with Magento on your own than this would of course be my first recommendation. If this is not the case which very well could be for many of you, then I would recommend going this route. You pay only $150 for the Sigyn theme and another $49 for the SimpleBoard widget. Add that to your free open source Magento shopping cart and you are all finished with your online store after spending only $199.

I would then spend your extra time loading in all your products and getting yourself accustomed to the Magento admin interface. It takes a little bit to get used too. But once you understand it you will be able to harness all the features that Magento offers.

I Will Be Doing 30 Free WordPress, Drupal, & Magento Setups This Month!!!

Chase — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 02:19:00 +0000

From today through the end of the month (October 2009) I will be giving away 30 WordPress, Drupal, and Magento setups for FREE! A task that is sure to eat up my time. But I am excited to work with my readers and get to know you guys better. These Ã¢â‚¬Å“setupsÃ¢â‚¬Â will involve installing and configuring the three CMS applications to ensure that they are up and running and working properly. And most importantly ready for you to take them and run with them.

Why Would You Want A Free Setup?

There are 3 particular reasons why you may want a free WordPress, Drupal, or Magento CMS setup for you.

1. You don’t have the time Ã¢â‚¬â€œ like many of us in the world these days you are busy as heck. You need one of these apps setup but probably should spend your time working on something else.

2. You’re not sure how Ã¢â‚¬â€œ you might not be sure how to install and configure these applications properly yourself. This is a perfect opportunity to learn from someone who has installed these apps literally hundreds of times.

3. You just want it done right Ã¢â‚¬â€œ you may or may not have time. You may or may not know how. But either way you just want it done and you want it done right. I can take care of this for you.

Why Am I Really Willing To Do This For Free?

I wanted to take the opportunity to prove to my readers and my peers in the blogosphere that I really do know what i’m doing. After just finishing my ebook ‘WordPress Insider Secrets’, this will help me solidify my expertise as the author of the ebook. And 30 people to verify my expertise won’t hurt me at all.

I thought this would be a cool way for us to help each other out. I need to strengthen my reputation and you need someone to get some web work done for you. A perfect match!

Here’s How You Get Your Free Setup

1. Send me an email with some details. Let me know which CMS you want me to setup. Also let me know if there is a free theme that you want me to setup as well with the app. Here are a few links to help you find a good theme for your CMS.

The Ultimate Free WordPress Themes Collection

24 Stunning Free Drupal Themes

The 6 Best Free Magento Themes

2. Get a web hosting account setup. In order for me to financially find the time to do these installs for free I need you to purchase a hosting account either through Dreamhost or Bluehost. Both are the best of the best for hosting WordPress, Drupal, and Magento. Since you need hosting anyway, this is a way for you to help me out in the process. Both Dreamhost and Bluehost pay me $90 when you setup an account with them. Bluehost is only $6.95/month and Dreamhost only $8.95/month. Click on one of these ads to purchase your hosting account.

3. Send me your login info. Once you hear back from me, your next step is to get me your login info so that I can get your new WordPress, Drupal, or Magento CMS installed and configured on your new server.

4. Subscribe to my Free Open Source Insider Newsletter. While I am working on your CMS, take a second and subscribe to my free newsletter so that I can drop you some valuable info every now and again. That way I can help keep you informed on any new open source stuff that could benefit your business efforts. Subscribe by filling out the form at the top of the sidebar on this site.

Looking forward to working with you and getting to know you! Thanks. – Chase Sagum

The 6 Best Free Magento Themes

Chase — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:11:19 +0000

Here are the best of the best Magento Themes up to this point. The Magento Ecommerce Open Source Platform has been around for quite a while now and community theme development is slow. Thankfully there are 6 themes that have been contributed by 6 fantastic developers.Ã‚Â Hopefully we will see some more in the near future. But for now here are the very best open source themes you can find for the Magento shopping cart:

1. Magento Classic Theme

Compatible with Magento 1.3.2+

demo | download

2. Free Magento Theme from MageSupport

Compatible with Magento 1.3 and higher

demo | download

3. Magento Absolute Theme

beta version of theme

demo | download

4. Magento Mobile Theme Ã¢â‚¬â€œ beta

beta version of theme

demo | download

5. Yoast Blank SEO Theme

Compatible with Magento 1.3.1.1

6. Pet store theme

Compatible with Magento 1.1

demo | download

Please note: I installed and tested all 6 of these free themes on the most recent version of Magento which at the time of writing this post is Magento 1.3.2.4.Ã‚Â All worked perfectly fine. There were a few other good looking/promising free themes that I wanted to include in this post but they did not work properly after installing them. If you know of any other FREE (not commercial) themes that I should be including here please let me know in the comment thread below. Thanks.

How To: Get Drupal & Ubercart Up & Running

Chase — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:09:02 +0000

I wrote a post quite a while back about Drupal & Ubercart and got an overwhelming response. So apparently my audience loves Ubercart! Which is a good thing considering Ubercart is “da bomb.com” if you know what I mean. So I wanted to take some time and put together a tutorial on how to Install Drupal & Ubercart and get it up and running. In this case I am using a Dreamhost server which works perfectly with Drupal and Ubercart.

Step 1: Download Drupal version 5 and Ubercart 1.7

At the time I am writing this tutorial, this is the most recent production version of Ubercart. And it requires version 5 of Drupal.

Let’s Install Drupal!

Step 2: Upload the Drupal contents into your directory of choice via FTP.

In this case I created a new directory called “Ubercart” and uploaded all files located in the “drupal” folder into it.

Step 3: Go to your Dreamhost Control Panel and login

Step 4: Go to Goodies >> MySQL Databases

Step 5: Create Database, Add database to a Hostname and MySQL User

In this step, we are creating a MySQL database. Then connecting that database to a hostname and MySQL user. Then jot this information down as you will need it when running the Drupal installation wizard.

Step 6: Run The Drupal Installation Wizard

To run the Drupal installation wizard, go to your directory via your web browser. Drupal will now direct you to a screen which asks you for your database details that you just setup in Dreamhost. Fill those out and hit the “save configuration” button. With Dreamhost, remember that “Localhost” will not work and that you need to click the “Advanced Options” link below and fill out your specific host name.

Step 7: Create The First Drupal Account To Finish Drupal Installation

The image below highlights the link that you are then directed to to create the first main user for your new Drupal installation. This is an important step to finishing your Drupal install. Once you do this a password will be auto generated for you. Be sure to change this password to your password of choice.

Now Let’s Install Ubercart!

Step 8: Upload the required Drupal modules for Ubercart to work properly

Next you need to install a few modules. Create a directory called “modules” inside the sites/all directory. Download, extract, and upload the following modules into your new “modules” directory.

Step 9: Active these new modules in your module administration

Go back to your new Drupal installation and go to the Module administration page. Now you want to activate the modules exactly how you see the image below.

Step 10: Upload image modules for image capability

Next we probably want to show images with our products. To do this we need to install a few more modules to allow Ubercart to do this. Download, extract, and upload the following modules into your sites/all/modules directory.

Content Construction Kit (CCK) Only the Content module is needed.
Image Field
Imagecache
Thickbox

Step 11: Active these modules in your Module Administration page

Now we want to go back to the Module Administration page and activate these modules. For the CCK, all we need to activate is the module called “Content” to make Ubercart work properly.

Step 12: Upload and Activate the Ubercart Module

Now it’s time to finally upload and activate the Ubercart module. Take your Ubercart folder and upload it just like you have been uploading your other modules. Go back to your module administration page and activate the REQUIRED ubercart modules as shown below.

Step 13: Activate other useful Ubercart Modules and customize your theme

You will notice that there are dozens of other modules that you can activate that are optional with Ubercart. These modules extend Ubercart’s functionality. Go through these and start activating the ones you are going to need. Then start customizing your Drupal theme and start making your site look more like an online store!

That’s it! You now have Drupal and Ubercart working perfectly on a Dreamhost web hosting server. I picked Dreamhost because their control panel is very user friendly, and their servers come with all the necessary requirements to make Drupal and Ubercart run correctly. If you have any more specific questions about Ubercart feel free to contact me or leave a comment in the thread.

Make $100k This Next Year With Open Source Web Apps

Chase — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:53:24 +0000

This past year has been filled with huge advancements in the open source web application world. Big content management systems such as WordPress & Drupal have added big technologies to their arsenal that have made them a no brainer choice over proprietary content management systems. But there have also been improvements in other areas of open source web applications which makes you wonder… how much $ could one make online using these applications?

With the open source technologies that are on hand and ready to use, there is no excuse why more people cannot find success making $ online anymore. Below is a quick breakdown of a few ways to make money online and the open source web applications to help get you there.

1. Start A Blog – WordPress

Blogging has very much become a popular source for making money online. But people are still using online apps like Blogspot and paid services such as Squarespace. If you haven’t already received the memo, here it is. Use WordPress for your blogging platform. All the major bloggers on the web are using it and you would be wise to as well. Blogs such as Problogger.net by Darren Rowse will help you learn how exactly to blog for an income.

2. Start A ‘Review’ Site – Drupal

Review based article websites have forever made affiliate marketers tons of cash. The problem many webmasters have is trying to keep up with writing tons of articles and having an intuitive system to help them manage the whole thing. Using a complex open source content management system such as Drupal (which is the best in my opinion) will help you create an affiliate marketing review site that is second to none!

3. Start An Online Store – Magento

This is one of the more obvious ways for you to make money online. I’m shocked to hear how many people out there are still using paid services for their online store such as Yahoo! Stores. Why? Open source apps like Magento will give you everything and more than what Yahoo! Stores does and with the flexibility to change and grow as you please. If I were selling a product online I would definitely be using Magento.

I’m just realizing as i’m writing this post how simple it actually is to make tons of money online with open source web applications! I knew it was easy, but as soon as I had finished writing this it dawned on me how easy it actually is. Can anybody disagree with me on this? How can 3 technologies such as WordPress, Drupal, and Magento not make you $100,000 over the next year?

Placing NextGEN in Your WordPress Theme with PHP

Chase — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:04:51 +0000

Many of you are probably familiar with the popular WordPress plugin NextGEN Photo Gallery. It’s one of the most highly downloaded and highly used plugins for WordPress. With it you can create Albums and Galleries and place those Albums and Galleries inside your blog posts or blog pages. A widget also comes with the plugin that allows you to easily add a sidebar widget that displays your most recent photos/images from your galleries. But what if you need more control over where and how your photos are displayed within your WordPress theme? I found 3 very useful customizations that I have used consistently on many blogs I haveÃ‚Â worked on and the PHP code to make it happen.

I Want To Display The 6 or So Most Recent Images On a Page

Let’s say you want to display a certain amount of your most recent images on a page, and not in your sidebar using the widget that comes with the plugin. Here’s some PHP that you can place in your template, and then just use some CSS skills to style it how you please!

As you can see with the code, the first number parameter in this case “3″ specifies the exact amount of recent images you want to display. While the following two numbers represent the height and the width of the images. Play around with it and get the desired look you are after!

I Want To Show Images From a Specific Gallery Or Album On a Page

This code will be a little bit different, since you are wanting to pull images from a specific Gallery or Album form NextGEN. Here is really the most simplest way of accomplishing this. Inside the template file where you wish to place your code use this…

As you can see in the code, “Gallery” specifies that you want to pull images from a Gallery. You can swith this to “Album” and it will put an entire album rather than just a Gallery. The number “1″ is the ID for the Gallery or Album. You can find this by hovering over your Gallery or Album links in the backend of WordPress.

One important thing to note with this PHP call. I have not found anything that allows you to specify how many images you want to pull from a gallery. So what I have done is specify the number of images shown before pagination in the NextGEN plugin options in the backend. A workaround in this area would be helpful and i’ll be sure to post it when I find it.

A Look At OpenCart

Chase — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 21:48:14 +0000

OpenCart is an open source PHP based e-commerce platform for building an online store. It has many of the basic functions that other open source carts have, it’s search engine friendly, and it has a visually appealing backend interface. The community behind it is relatively small still so there are still only around 80 total extended contributions that you can add on too.

You can check out the demo and give it a test run yourself. You will notice that the backend has a really nice simple design and is very very easy to use. I did some research in their forums and looked through some of the site examples that were running OpenCart. I found 3 really good websites that give good examples of the abilities this cart system has.

1. Gorgeous George

2. Beautyspot

3. Lytmed.dk

After looking at these sites it made me even more interested in OpenCart and actually using it on my next shopping cart project. It’s something worth considering for sure! Check out OpenCart and let me know whaty YOU think!

Affiliate Program App for Magento

Chase — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 19:00:54 +0000

Are you looking to setup your own Affiliate Program for something that you are selling online? Well if you are willing to use the new and slick Magento open source shopping cart,Ã‚Â there is a free and open source solution for you for creating your own affiliate program. It’s a component for Magento called Affiliates For All and it’s completely free and open source.

Affiliates for All is highly configurable. You can set:

a fixed commission rate or a percentage,
the affiliate cookie lifetime,
the currency, and
whether commission is paid for the life of a customer or just for the first order.

Some other really cool features to take note of are:

Affiliates for All will (optionally) email affiliates with details of new orders and approved commissions.
Affiliates for All provides your affiliates with many reporting features. They can see graphs of orders and revenue over time. They can view and download lists of orders. If you want to, you can pass customer names and email addresses to the referring affiliates, allowing for further marketing efforts.
Affiliates for All has a user interface similar to Google Mail. Just like Google Mail, this is achieved with AJAX, but you can use Affiliates for All without understanding the details.

This is a really cool open source application, similar to which you will not find anywhere! There just is not really any good open source affiliate applications out there. And this one appears that it could eventually stand head and shoulders above the rest. Check it out.

7 Reasons to Use Ubercart!

Chase — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:52:22 +0000

The author over at Top Notch Themes recently put together a cool blog post where he talked about Ubercart and why you should use it for your ecommerce solution. I personally am using Ubercart for my own ecommerce sites as well as all of my clients. I think it’s a great cart system and because it is made for the Drupal CMS it’s even better. Here are the 7 reasons that Steph listed in the article:

1) Big names are using it

Prominent companies such as AOL and Warner Brothers Records has been using Ubercart for a while. More recently, Lullabot launched an Ubercart site for their conference registration.

2) Stable release for Drupal 5, significant progress on Drupal 6 version

Ubercart for Drupal 5 has been at a stable 1.x branch since the beginning of June. While itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s not yet stable, there is a dev version out for Drupal 6, and I know of at least one brave soul using it on a live site already. This is a testament to the active development community of Ubercart.

3) Ubercart is highly represented at Drupal events

There have been sessions on Ubercart at the last three Drupalcons, numerous local Drupal camps, FrOScon, etc. Ubercart even held their own Ubercamp this summer, for developers and interested parties to get together for a weekend of coding and planning.

4) Very active community

Dozens of new forum posts a day from its 3500 registered users, numerous code commits every week, and several community-contributed modules added or updated each week. The support time for issues and forum posts is very quick.

5) High visibility outside of the Drupalsphere

This is nearly unheard of for Drupal modules, but given UbercartÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s high visibility, itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s actually been a big draw for users coming into Drupal itself for the first time. They also recently had a mention in PC Magazine.

6) Full time developers with commercial backing

While the Drupal project itself has been proof that full time, funded developers arenÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t needed to create a great product, in the world of e-commerce, itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s certainly helped. There are currently two (soon to be three) full time Ubercart developers, and an estimated dozen or so more from other organizations who also do only Ubercart development.

7) Focus on being user friendly

The Ubercart developers donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t want you to have to be a developer to set up an online store. There are a million settings and configuration possibilities for creating an online store, but theyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ve put a strong focus on the UI, simple checkout, and intelligent defaults. This goes a long way in deploying a site right the first time, that looks great.

All these and many more are reasons that you should jump on the Ubercart bandwagon now if you have not already! An important thing to mention, especially for all the Joomla and WordPress fanatics is that Ubercart is not some “plugin” like other CMS projects have for ecommerce. It’s clear that Ubercart is seperating itself as it’s own ecommerce platform entirely that integrates perfectly with the Drupal CMS