SEO tools…so many, so little time

I had no idea there were so many search engine optmization tools around.

(Article from my brother’s boss–his newsletter and blog are regularly packed with good info).

Sitepoint CSS book giveaway

Sitepoint can be a little too pushy at times but they often have some good material. At the moment they are giving away their CSS book The Art and Science of CSS if you follow them on twitter. Details here

Interesting shopping cart ideas

Smashing Magazine is a great resource for design ideas. Here is a collection on shopping cart examples and good practices

Focus released into the wild!

Our new search module for Merchant 5.x (and eventually for 4.x if the market is there) is finally completed and available for sale.  You’ll find it in our store here:

Focus

Focus has been in the works for quite a while.  I started on it shortly after the last conference and since then I have had to re-write it a few times to change the overall approach.   I like very well how it turned out and I’m really looking forward to seeing what people can make it do.  The layout and functionality is “Template and Token” based (like most of our modules, and Search Manager before it)  and provides for a great deal of customization.   Being able to modify the search form any way you see fit provides for an amazing degree of flexibility.

You can find a partial list of the module’s features  here.   The documentation is “mostly done” and we’re updating it every day (and hope to have it completed early next week).  The documentation on the admin interface itself is done.  You can find the documentation here.

I love to talk about Focus (well, modules in general) so if you have any particular questions ask here and I’ll get a good detailed response into the mix.

Pulse: Updates and Direction

Unfortunately I haven’t had the time to dedicate to Pulse that I wanted, thus the prolonged beta release. However, I’m now back in the groove with it and am releasing an update with a few tweaks and bug fixes:

| Revision 5.010 2008/09/10
|    - fix live stats date range search defaulting to week
|    - whois opens in new window
|    - changed wording to “Excluded” for IPs and Referers
|
| Revision 5.009 2008/08/01
|    - add new module UI
|    - fix issue with zero orders
|    - fix blocked ip

I’ve gone back and forth on some pending issues, e.g. the referer field–should it only show the initial referer or should it show the referer for each subsequent screen? The initial referral is obviously the most important, as you want to know where your customers are coming from. However seeing how they navigate through your site is also informative so for now, I’ve left the referal trail active and may make it optional in a later update. Note that the referer reports will always be based only on the initial clickthrough to your site.

My primary focus will now be on purging. Although not the issue it was with the old DBASE backend, it’s understandable that some users will want to cleanout data. The challenge will be doing that without losing too much valuable information.

Other items on the to do list:

• hits/visits
• category reports
• individual product reports
• date range queries on all the existing reports that can allow for it, e.g. the basic products reports (viewed, added, removed, ordered)  should allow for date range restrictions
• a current baskets report

If there are other features, you’d like to see, please let us know.

Bret.

A new module release and, finally, a post from Brock!

It started out as a module for Merchant 5.x to display randomly selected products on the storefront page but it turned into quite  bit more than that.

The new Features (yes, that’s the name) module provides additional Features for your Merchant 5.x store. With the placement of the module’s item tokens you can display, anywhere in your store, products randomly selected from your store, products randomly selected from particular categories, your store’s best sellers, and more! The module accomplishes this by tying particular tokens to templates configured from within the module’s admin. You can specify the exact layout of the template and display it anywhere in your store with a single item token. Particular details about the items are configured with separate tokens in the templates (for example, you can separately arrange where to display a product’s thumbnail and name).

The module comes with the follow templates but you can add as many as you want:

• Random Products
• Random Products from Category
• Best Sellers
• Images from List
• Random Images from List
• Products from List
• Random Products from List

You can find the details on what each of these templates does in the module’s documentation here and you’ll find it in our store here.

Those among you familiar with our Storefront Template module will recognize some of the functionality in the new module as it uses the same sorts of tokens (many are identical) and functionality. But instead of focusing only on the storefront page this module will let you display the templates just about anywhere.

The module went through the development process pretty quickly but has a few major features, such as the ability to preview templates in your store before making them live, that will be showing up very soon in a number of other new modules.

Speaking of new modules, the Focus module (it’s been a long time but I vaguely recall having posted here about it before), our uber-search module for Merchant has undergone a re-working to provide for the hosting of the search indexes on our own server rather than locally on the store’s servers. This has greatly improved the installation process and has moved us quite close to a final release. Don’t hold me to it but I’m hoping to have it in the store within the next two weeks.

-Brock

As an interesting aside, when we formed VikingCoders we each searched around for monikers from Norse mythology to “add to the mystique” so to speak. I stumbled upon “Brok”, one of two dwarves that worked together to create Thor’s hammer. Seemed like quite a remarkable coincidence so it stuck….perhaps too well. It wasn’t long before I was the only one with a “Norse moniker” and “Brok” is close enough to “Brock” the line is often blurred as to which is correct.

Flyout and Reveal - First of the 5.x AJAX modules

We are officially releasing two new Miva Merchant 5.x AJAX modules today.

The first is Flyout 5. You may have already seen the 4.x version we released that a couple months ago. Flyout adds Netflix type pop-ups to your Miva Merchant store. Any place that you can display a product in your store, you can display a pop-up. You can display pop-ups on your category pages, product list page, storefront - or anywhere else. View a demo of Flyout here.

The second module is Reveal 5, for Inventory Manager 5. This module addresses the oft answered question when dealing with attribute combinations - how can I hide inventory options that are out of stock?

For example, say you are tracking two attributes: size (small, large) and color (red, blue). A customer selects small, however it is only available in blue. Given the way Miva Merchant and Inventory Manager 5 are designed, a customer would have no idea that red is out of stock. With Reveal, an AJAX request is sent when someone selects an option and checks what remaining attributes are in and out of stock. In this case, red is out of stock, so it is removed from the attribute drop down list. Additionally, when your product page is initially loaded, an AJAX request is sent and any completely out of stock options are removed. So, if red is out of stock in both small and large - that option is removed from the drop down list.

Since the module is currently in beta, there are currently a couple shortcomings and known issues. The first is that it is only compatible with drop down list attributes. It is not compatible with checkboxes or radio buttons. Support for all appropriate attribute types is planned. Another shortcoming is that if you have multiple attributes but are not tracking all of them, the module will incorrectly remove non-tracked attributes. So, if a product has three attributes displaying (e.g. size, color and style) and you are tracking two (size and color) the module will not work. A fix is currently in the works. The last limitation is that the module will only work (correctly) on Product Pages. In its final version, it will be compatible on any Miva Merchant Page that can display attributes.

Reveal, being in beta, is selling at a discount right now. All future updates and bug fixes (as with all our modules) are free. Get it while it’s at a discount!

Flyout Updates

We have just released Flyout 4.055 today. It is now out of Beta.

It is compatible with all of our template modules including Storefront Template (it was not in the beta release). I have completely re-worked the token processing in the module. All tokens in all template modules are now supported. For example, consider a case where you are using Storefront template to display a random image. You can now using the following:

%module|LC_FLYOUT| %random|thumbL|01|% |%
%module|LC_FLYOUT| %random|thumbL|02|% |%
…

You can do even more complex things with the tokens supported in other template modules. Consider the case where you want to display a the first 100 characters of a product’s description in your category template, then have a customer mouse over the description to see the entire description with Flyout. You can do the following:

%module|LC_FLYOUT| %var1|substring(Products.d.desc, 1, 100)|% |%

Any token supported by the template module should now work in any Product template for Storefront Template, Category Page Templates, Product Page Templates (you’d probably only want to use it in the Related products template), Other Page Templates and Search Manager.

Also, Merchant 5 store owners - do not fear. We will be releasing a 5.x version of this module over the coming weeks!

Affiliate Manager 5 and Other Development Campaigns

I’m always surprises me at how quickly time passes (Thursday already!?). By now you’d think I would have adjusted my expectations. I had intended to post every few days but that didn’t last long.

The update of Affiliate Manager to compatibility with Merchant 5.x (although it’s a bit of a stretch to call it an upgrade given how much re-writing had to be done) has been done for a number of weeks now but the development of the module is still on going. It was my intent to add the ability to permit “product specific” payout configuration (i.e. the ability to, on an affiliate-by-affiliate basis, set different payouts for different products) to the initial release. However, I ran into some indecision on how best to implement it which slowed it down enough to get left out. I am still working on it but the indecision remains on how best to go about it. I polled a few developers who were looking for the features for their opinion on how they saw it as working but I never got a reply. So, I’ll lay out some possibilities and see if any one out there has an opinion (more specifically an opinion on how best to go about it….we all have opinions but not all are particularly relevant to this particular question).

In earlier versions of the module, “product specific” payouts were sort of a hack (and that hack still works in 5.x). The merchant would set each product’s “cost” to a particular value, then configure each affiliate’s payout to be based on a % of the product’s cost and thereby achieving a variable payout for each affiliate. Of course that kept you from using the cost field for anything else, but it was a nice representative of that “bang a square peg into a round hole” mentality that typified the glory days of Merchant (ahhh, the memories).

In the 5.x version of the module I’d like to add this as a more particular option configurable on each product’s page in admin. The question is how far to take it; how many options are really going to be used? Currently, each affiliate can have their payouts configured as a percentage (of the price paid, product cost, list price, or “profit”), a “per purchase” payout, and/or a “per product” payout. And each of these can be configured separately depending on what “level” the a referral was. Do we need that many configurable options for the prdouct-specific payouts? Would it be safe to assume that product-specific configurations would be necessary only for “primary” affiliates (i.e. those directly responsible for the referral)?

I’m currently in the process of upgrading/re-writing the Affiliate Login module and hope to have that ready next week. After that will be a new module, Affiliate Design which will replace the “Affiiate store-settings” feature of Affiliate Manager 4.x. I’m not entirely certain how best to go about changing the Merchant 5.x templates but I’m sure I’ll get it worked out.

Hyper Development Mode!

Hyper development..maybe not, but it does save a few clicks. Here’s how I use Miva Merchant with MySQL for local development:

I use Instant Rails (Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL all bundled together–there are similar suites for php). What’s nice about this, and the php versions, is the inclusion of phpmyadmin, so you get an environment very much like a web server.

I also use a batch file to fire everything up at once, launching myself into a hyper-productive development mode…in theory. Here’s the batch file:

@echo off
start /d “C:\Program Files\EditPlus 2\” editplus.exe
start /d “C:\MIVAMia\BIN\” Mia.exe
start /d “C:\InstantRails” InstantRails.exe
start /d “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\” firefox.exe “http://vc3/merchant.mvc|http://127.0.0.1:8000/mysql/|http://vc3/admin.mvc?username=x&password=y”

That Firefox command opens three tabs–store, admin and phpmyadmin. There is an about:config setting you need to change in Firefox if you want those tabs to not overwrite your existing window. Don’t recall it offhand but it may resurface in my memory at some point.

Bret.