I had the occasion this weekend to tell this tale twice – once to a dear friend 10 years younger and once to my husband of 21 years. It’s part of my history but I realized that it’s a tale needing telling because of the absurdity. I graduated college at the end of 1972 so we are talking nearly 40 years ago and, of course, it seems like yesterday! It may be ancient history to you young’uns… more
The Importance of Zen Cart’s Template Override System
February 22nd, 2011The first thing I always do when working with a new Zen Cart site is to check to see how well the override system was followed by the last person who worked on the site. Nine times of ten it has not been done properly. This prolongs the job and complicates work for me and anyone who gets hired after customization work has started. It definitely leads to loss of these files if you upgrade… more
SEO with no Content? #Fail
February 14th, 2011No one has ever accused me of being a conservative, yet I find myself becoming more conservative in my chosen career! One of those acts of moderation for me happens in the middle of SEO (search engine optimization). I recently got a new client whose site was well-positioned in the search engines for his chosen keywords. He had hired an SEO expert to put him there and it worked like a charm…. more
Sustainable Web Design for Zen Cart
February 9th, 2011The opening speaker at the 2010 EDUI Conference was David Berman. His passionate and informative presentation got me thinking about web design in a totally new way. I’ve been ecology aware since the 1960′s/70′s but have been very frustrated at how long it’s taken to get much ecology-friendly, green, sustainable, etc, etc, processes in place for the average person. I’ve always done my… more
My Top Ten Web Design Rules
February 7th, 2011I am web designer – someone who designs for the web but who spends more time implementing the designs of others. The biggest bane of my working existence is having to implement designs from designers who are out to make websites “pop” with design, make the site “stand out” with design and who don’t follow some important rules. Websites tend to be standardized in many ways due to the… more
How Zen Cart Rates for SEO
February 5th, 2011Practical Ecommerce’s article about how to rate a shopping cart’s SEO effectiveness automatically started me thinking about how Zen Cart rates. Nowadays it’s a rare cart owner who doesn’t worry about this and I’m constantly explaining how Zen Cart works. So I’ll take Practical Ecommerce’s points and score each of them in Zen Cart as ready, some tweaking, and needs work. The good news is that… more
10 Questions to Ask Your Potential Zen Cart Help
February 5th, 2011Just because someone says he / she knows Zen Cart does not mean they are an expert! I’m a Zen Cart Expert and I get to clean up the messes made by those who say they can work on Zen Cart. But first, what is Zen Cart? It is an open-source (free) shopping cart for your website. It’s one of the ones you will find in your hosting control panel for an easy install. And there lies the… more
Health Insurance, Medicare & Self-Employment, Oh My!
January 26th, 2011When I awoke at 5 am this morning, I found myself unable to go back to sleep. When I got up, I realized I was on the verge of crying. It took a while before I realized why. Today is the day I pay full price for my most expensive medication. The path to my state of no health insurance is a bit bizarre but does highlight some of what’s wrong with health insurance in America today. Couple that… more
Zen Cart Attributes – the Key is Planning part 1
January 17th, 2011My clients always want a quick tutorial for attribute use and, unfortunately, it takes more than a few lines in a email to impart even the basic information. So I’m skipping over the basic stuff and going straight to – wait for it – planning! Before you even start entering attributes, you just have to plan your attribute use and entry. For example, one shopping cart has a category for… more
Quick Zen Cart CSS Hint – Attribute Label Alignment
January 7th, 2011Ever looked at a product page that has attributes and think, “Man, that looks screwy!”? One of the default CSS rules is at fault and should always be changed in your stylesheet.css. For example, you have a download file with a radio button. So it says: Download (button) zip file. The default CSS has the button and the zip file higher in some browsers (maybe all) than the Download… more
