We came across a new set of libraries (API - application programming interface) called www.Elgg.org - which help you to create a social networking application. The components seem very comprensenvie, offer many different services including: Activities, Notificiations, Groups, Blogs, Files, and so on.

Elgg, started in 2004, is an open source social engine which powers all kinds of social environments - from education and business to martial arts and rugby. If you are looking for a professional social intranet or want to run a site for your organisation, Elgg is a great choice.

We came across a nice collection of RSS Web Icons perfect for your website!

Here is Feedsessive, a free, simple and elegant RSS icon pack for you to use however you wish, in either personal or professional projects, with no restriction

An excellent collection of nice and professional icons in many different colours including some black and white high contrast versions. They are available in key professional formats including EPF, PDF, and PNG image file formats.

http://blogsessive.com/blogging-tools/feedsessive-free-rss-icon-pack/

If you use Google docs quite a bit then it can often become frustrating having to login and upload files.

However, Google has put together a very useful desktop application (built with .net) that allows you to drag and drop files straight into you Google docs account; useful huh?

As a sample application it also gives you full access to the source code so that you can modify it and rebuild the application.

You read more about this application as well as download the sourcecode and application from here:

 http://code.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=86805&topic=12022

We always like it when a large news organisation such as the New York Times utilise new technology and release free media players (especially those that use RIA technologies such as Adobe Air or Flex).

This desktop application is a fairly unique concept of streaming newspaper services into a PDF on the desktop (eg Adobe Air). Its from the New York Times and its called, obviously,  the Times Reader.

“It reads like a newspaper. Updates like a Web site. And delivers like The New York Times. The new Times Reader 2.0 delivers the entire day’s Times in seconds, so you can carry it wherever you go.”

Adobe Air Installation

In order to use this application you are going to have to install Adobe Air - which is basically the desktop version of Adobe Flex - both of which are very useful as more and more key players are developing media (RIA) applications; Just work through the dialog boxes installing everything as default.

As you can see it really it really is the NYT (USA edition, you could say), very useful for non-US residence for viewing on how ‘they are being represented in foreign news outlets’.

You can download the NYTimes Reader Software for free.

When we first started to lean technology it was always an uphill struggle; Employees expected us to know tools such as Rational Rose, Oracle and say Visual Studio Enterprise - however with the cost of these tools running into the tens of thousands of pounds clearly this was never going to be a realistic option.

Now Microsoft has done somthing about this (rather than letting people download cracked versions) and has setup the Start up Zone - for students and other people that need access to Enterprise level tools.

At present the software they have on offers is as follows:

• Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition
• Visual Studio 2008
• Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition
• SQL Server Express Edition
• SQL Server Compact Edition
• SQL Server 2008
• Windows Server 2003 R2
• Windows Small Business Server
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• Microsoft Dynamics GP
• Office Live Basic Edition
• Windows Embedded CE
• Windows XP Embedded
• Windows Embedded for Point of Service
• Microsoft Popfly
• ASP.net Downloads
• Microsoft Search Server Express
• XNA Game Studio Express 1.0
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

By the way, if you dont know what most of these are, then you probably wont need them! However if you are currently or about to start, a Computer Science degree or Microsoft Certification then you probably will.

You can access the Microsoft Startup Zone  and its unique setup of downloadable software here: http://www.microsoftstartupzone.com/Software/Pages/Try_a_Product.aspx

We came across an excellent barcode system for the E-Commerce application OSCommerce a few months.

This OSCommerce module basically creates a barcode based on the order_id and prints it onto the invoice or packaging slip. You will of course also need a barcode reader but these can be picked up fairly cheaply nowadays from most computer hardware outlets.

Please note that this OSCommerce module has been developed OSC v2.2MS1 and CVS.

You can read more about this module, as well as download it from here: http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1218

Wordpress offers owners key requirements for SEO, however like all websites, SEO shouldn’t be something that you bolt-on, but instead should be something that build into the design from day one. In terms of Wordpress this equates to not only turning on various modules, but also deciding on your page and article structure in order to enhance your SEO.

Clearly if your pages, categories, and tags are not relevant to you main keywords then clearly this would pollute the SEO you are trying to achieve. Often before starting your website, be it Wordpress or otherwise, you should think clearly about what you want to achieve and even, perhaps, take a good long look at your competitors. What have do done well, how effective has it been; what have they done badly, and what has been the results of this.

In our opinion Wordpress offers some of the most effective SEO add-on’s available for any CMS or Blog, with many other being developed independently as we speak now. It also offers you the tools that you need in order to plan and implement effective SEO for your website (tags, categories, fancy-URLs, etc).

 If you have a website and need to know how many people are visiting, where they are coming from, and what areas they are viewing (etc) then you need Google Analytics. There are some other metrics available but with Google being the world’s number search engine it makes sense to use Google metrics, especially if you use or intend to use Google AdWords.

Screenshot of Google Analytics

 In order to setup Google analytics on your website, just follow this guide for full details.

• The first thing you need to do is sign-up for a Google Account at: https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount
• Once you have an account setup, log into it and find the section called ‘My Products’.
• In the ’My Products’ section, Click the link called Analytics.
• Once in the ‘Google analytics’ area, look for (and click) and link called ‘Add Website Profile’
• In the ‘Add website profile’ area, fill out the ‘Website Address’ and ‘Time Zone’, then click Finished.
• In the next page you will see a lot of text very similar to this below:

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(”%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(”UA-1110811-25″);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script>
 

• This code will then need to be added to every page in your website; If you are a programmer then this will offer no problems and would probably be placed in footer.php or some similar type of included file.
• If you are using a Blog, CMS, or other ‘prebuilt’ application, then you will need to find out where the footers are, or perhaps look out for a module, component, etc which adds Google analytics to your website; You will need to put the code above into this.
• If you’re website has been created from scratch the you will need to look for the following tag: </body>, and place the code above it, on every page that needs to be monitored.
• Once you have done one of these, then check the Tracking Status (on the same Google page as the analytical code, at the top of the page).

Once the Tracking Status shows that Google is receiving Data then you can be confident that Analytics is fully setup and ready for you to view your metrics (after around 24 hours of setting it up).

I first came across Magic SEO for OS Commerce around 8 months ago whilst looking for an add-on S.E.O module for OS-Commerce. After doing a bit of research it seemed as if this module not only did more but also had less conflicts with other modules; Not that we actually use other modules but that’s not the point. Additionally this module offered a free dynamic site-map which is obviously key for search engine optimisation (s.e.o) into the major search engines.

So what has been the result? If I were to tell you that we have now purchased 5 modules then you should get an idea of how effective we feel that this has been! Additionally, if you were to know that I myself have created bespoke PHP5 code to handle search engine friendly URLs (SEF URLs) and yet have still have advised purchasing this module (mainly because we are using OS Commerce) then the answer should be beginning to take shape.

Magic SEO (for OS Commerce) is clearly not only effective but well written, and I guess, more importantly well supported. If you contact the owner and author, Jiri, within a very small space of time you will confirm the excellent level of support and help given to get this module up and running.

Jiri, was not only helpful and advised on un-related matters, such as Zend Optimiser (or Optimizer, for you Americans!) but also on support to get the module installed on your hosting setup. Indeed, the initial hosting that we were using was causing problems; the solution, Jiri fully supported and helped us to get this module successfully installed and setup on our e-shop.

Now after installing and setting up this module a number of times, I am pleased to say that in 99.9999% of all cases in takes just around a couple of minutes to get going. So, I personally would recommend this module, and have, and would definitely rate this as ESSENTIAL!

For years we used nothing but shared servers, not through choice but rather cost and lack of technical (inter-networking eg Linux) abilities. On some providers they were issues, such as security; we once wrote a script which managed to display ALL username cpanel logins for the server we were on, not on purpose but by complete accident whilst playing about with new PHP functions.

On other hosting providers, we found other problems such as when we did a lookup on the amount of domains on our shared server - some had over 1,000 cpanel accounts running! This is fine, unless alot of sites require access to some core services such as MySQL etc. For instance, most providers that over-quota (as above) will not allow the same amount of DB accesses - which basically means at some point some of the DB connections will fail for some accounts.

For a client that I worked for this was clearly unacceptable as they had over 25 E-Commerce websites, and one lost connection could lose the customer and potentially hundreds or thousands of pounds.

Another factor for this client was using very modern applications such as Magento, which basically crawled to a halt under a shared server. Both of these problems were solved by a dedicated server, managed and setup by DataFlame, who are clearly the best hosting providers in the UK, in our opinion.

There are of course other reasons why a Dedicated Server is very useful, including SEO - such as setting up similar content websites under different IP addresses - although with google recognising links from the same Class-C, this is become less so.

But the greatest benefit, of course, is the fact that you get complete control over the whole server as well as the software that it is running - from my point of view, think Zend Framework!