Page Turn – Page Peel – Adobe Flash Effects

Posted on October 22, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio | 8 Comments

This is now a Plug-in and component for OpenX Ad Management

I’ve updated this little snippet to work with OpenX. Its freeware which are welcome to request.

Variable Flash Elements Positions

A short blurb about the positioning elements like the Adobe Page Turn and Adobe Page Flip items on your site will save you a bit of headache others have experienced.

I published some time ago how to add variable code to control when a particular items shows up on a site based on its URL and this technique can be applied to the display of elements like the Adobe Flash Page Peel and Adobe Flash Page Flipping Book Effects. With the Page Flip or Flash Book as its sometimes called. I’ve applied variable code using PHP to display the book only one time per visit which used session cookies to work properly. With the variable code post I made, its easy to apply a feature in dynamic sites where an element like a flash item displays only on a particular page. Albeit easy in CMS Applications like Joomla, products like Open Realty and or WordPress (depending on the template) can be a bit difficult. You can read the post here.

FREE OsCommerce Templates

Posted on October 22, 2007
Filed Under Portfolio, Products | 5 Comments

Free standard osCommerce Templates easy to modify

Cleaning out my old project directory I discovered that I did in fact have about a half dozen good quality foundation templates for osCommerce MS2 and what I’ve done is install the latest MS2 version over on the LiveDemoSite.com to test them and I’m going to release them FREE.

These templates are NOT super beautiful, a bit heavy, and quite honestly won’t work if you have modified your osCommerce Core. This is one of the biggest reasons I admire the STS and BTS template features in some versions of osCommerce like oscMax, CRE Loaded and so on. Modification to templates in osCommerce requires so much time and energy that it frustrates nearly every designer I’ve ever worked with or been hired to product templates for. People usually if not always modify or extend the capabilities of their osCommerce sites with contributions that modify individual files many of which are template related. This poses a problem.

So, since I rarely suggest osCommerce templates to existing sites anymore I’m going to publish these as FREE providing you register and select “I Agree” that you understand that these are not intended to be added to existing live production sites as they will most certainly break any site with contributions having been added. These templates are for brand spanking new sites using osCommerce MS2+ and beyond that I can promise nothing.

osCommerce vs osCMax vs CRE Loaded vs Shopping Carts – FREE!

I’m a big fan of osCommerce and suggest it to people almost weekly but my latest passion has been in the area of integration as more and more people are realizing the absolute necessary requirement of SEF and SEO friendly commerce solutions. I absolutely love the iJoomla cart although some things about its functionality with OpenSEF is a bit of a mystery it along with CRE Loaded are likely my two favorites to date. A close second is the cart I use on this very site with WordPress along with XCart and of course osCMax. I’ve never been a big fan of ZenCart only because they seek to achieve way to much in the application.

CRE Loaded Templates vs osCommerce Templates

For speed and ease of templating I always suggest people spend the $10 and get a copy of CRE Loaded. The ease in which a template can be applied makes it worth the investment. Options like those for integration I tend to favor are certainly top on my list, but of the osCommerce flavors available, CRE Loaded and osCMax are by far the easiest to create and maintain various template features for. Integration is achievable as in osCommerce but require a bit more work.

osCommerce templates require substantial modifications to individual files to change the look and or feel of a site on a per page basis. Using some PHP in a BTS template for instance makes this relatively simple providing the site owner also invests in the CRE SEF plugin because some template changes are based on the URL.

All CRE Loaded and osCommerce Templates look alike – Beautiful Designs Not Possible?

Have you ever wondered why these templates all look and behave the same? Take any 50 osCommerce, CRE Loaded and Zen Cart templates, stack them on top of one another, and transparently look through them all. You will discover they are all essentially the same. Same features, same general structure, same general look and certainly the same bulky fat and heavy code. I’ve yet to see one of these actually available in XHTML and CSS compliant formats. The silly thing is that XHTML and CSS compliant is actually possible with some core modifications that neither CRE Loaded or others seem at all interested in. Why then are they so expensive?

The number one motive for me not releasing commercial grade CRE Loaded designs has been as I’ve elated to so many times in forums across the web. Simply “proprietary code” which sets all my commercial designs for clients above and beyond standard turnkey designs. I’ve been very tempted to make available commercial grade CRE Loaded templates with the kinds of features professional online stores deserve but have been unable to really package in a meaningful way a turnkey template solution that would be easy to install for novice users. The simple fact is that most of my CRE Loaded templates require some degree of time consuming modification to work per domain and has kept me from a turnkey release option.

Luckily times change, and I’ve been able to have some new code written that should make configuration relatively easy. I’m not going to promise anything, but will simply say keep your eyes on this blog in the next few weeks as I’m cleaning up and repackaging my CRE Loaded inventory for distribution. What you can expect is anything but carbon copy designs for the hundreds of dollars you normally expect.

Moving to Missouri – The Brokers Edge

Posted on September 4, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News | 3 Comments

Joomla / OpenRealty / WordPress Websites are all ranking high

I’m excited about some of my the discoveries I have so passionately invested energies into. Its one thing for a person to draw conclusion and theories about search engine optimization having little or no experience as I so often see today being played out in forums on the subject. But its an entirely different thing to test, harbor, covet and experiment with techniques first hand that lends so much to a collection of winning formulas giving someone the ability to say that what they do isn’t just half wit theory, but something that actually works.

For nearly a year now I’ve planned on moving to Missouri where the offices of The Brokers Edge are located and have held off mainly because the UltimateIDX was in its third beta nearly ready for production release. Well with a renewed teaching contract and the UltimateIDX in production status, a brick and mortar office with a desk with my name on it calls to me.

Being an instructor, writer and freelance designer, my office gets to follow me around most the time as I pack my laptop to and from the college as well as meetings related to what I do. Teaching Photoshop or writing course ware is a fond passion as is design in general but The Brokers Edge presents an opportunity for me to do all three and never skip a beat. But this really fits in when I considered much of the information myself and Mark has been tabulating so it makes logical sense.

Today after confirming that better than 80% of my serious clients (those that take the internet serious) all rank in the top 10 for their search terms, I built a portfolio I had in standby ready to present these gems. Sometimes I wonder if It’s by luck or the grace of god that I’ve never had two clients in the same market for the same industry. I am just not sure how I would represent two competing sites with search engine optimization effectively. Thankfully The Brokers Edge has a formula that apparently works doing just that. Looking down my list I found that client websites I’ve built and or migrated from Advanced Access or Agent Image for example now rank #1 – #10 consistently and the tools we used were Joomla, OpenRealty, and WordPress. Granted severe hacks to OpenRealty were required to achieve this but they none the less work.

So why do I say “serious clients” other than the obvious? In the time I’ve been doing this business it still surprises me that a person would either not take the internet serious for Real Estate or when they do, they simply pay so much money to have me develop a site only to sit on it and let it do nothing but age. Aging a site is a good thing, sitting on it untouched is a bad thing. Serious Realtors, those that know, understand that according to the national averages, nearly ALL (80% – 90%) home purchases begin with searches online. Why then let a site sit stagnant?

Last Thursday I got a phone call from such a client that owns a site in Utah that I developed with the triplicate solution (Joomla – WordPress – OpenRealty) more than 18 months ago. Today I still see that the site has never received a PR and never indexed for a single term because the 9 agent blogs I built were simply NEVER used and the content is as old, cut-n-paste stagnant as can be. Tragic really because the energy that went into the site to provide the Turn Page Flash Real Estate Gallery, Real Estate Document Management, Online RTF document generator (custom mind you), an Integrated Innova Studio WYSIWYG editor with a half dozen content layout templates that should have made publishing a snap. Features is what the site was all about yet inactivity again demonstrates what we have long known. More on that later.

So, moving, I think that The Brokers Edge will give a nice central place to display the technologies in real world demos that articulate the finer points of good seo readied sites. Guided navigation, Title Tags, URL’s, relevant content, and the list goes on. When a Realtor considers that the cost of developing a triplicate solution like I so frequently write about using all these tools for well below a $1,000; it makes it a real hard argument to justify proprietary solutions that so many often jump right into. Had it not been for the up sell on established length and name recognition, more people, not just Realtors, would jump on this because it works and it GIVES YOU CONTROL. Besides, when you couple this with The UltimateIDX which was designed and developed to work with ANY real estate site on a LAMP server and provide CRM (client resource management) features along with Multiple Listing Service data directly into the Realtors site, this IS a total solution. It WORKS with Joomla – Open Realty – Word Press and nearly a dozen other open source CMS solutions and sites. I’ll keep you posted.

CRE Thumbnail Generator

Posted on August 20, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News | 3 Comments

Frustrating to see templates I design break because end users upload an image that just blows the sides out of a design. With all CRE Loaded templates I deliver I always include the user guide on standards and formats to administer the site with efficiency. The problem with the CRE Loaded feature for managing image sizes is that it can distort the clarity and quality of your image while doing NOTHING to optimize the images.

One thing that always frustrates end users and store owners is the inconsistent sizes of image that they use in CRE Loaded makes their store look cheap and un professional. CRE Loaded does have an automatic sizing feature but most store owners that maintain commercial sites do editing of images offline. Why, because people gravitate and expect patterns they can gain comfort in. Nothing says crappy site more than one with many things in disarray that it confuses users.

So why not just have an image thumbnail generator that simply takes your image file, and generates the three sizes necessary for product listings? Well this generator does just that; the user can define the width or height variables, the prefix for the file, ie “small_”, “medium_” “large_” and maintain consistency in image sizes for all product listings.

The nice thing about using this method for custom prefixes is that when a person has a product image for say, a Dell Laptop Computer — dell_laptop.jpg the prefixes will generate sized images that are easily identified for size format. The images become small_dell_laptop.jpg, medium_dell_laptop.jpg, large_dell_laptop.jpg or any prefix user defined of course. I mean you could easily make your prefix im_a_tumble_weed_ resulting in an image with the name im_a_tumble_weed_dell_laptop.jpg

This script is NOT a contribution that goes into CRE Loaded primarily because I wanted to keep it external for use with ZendCart, osCommerce and other applications that require such things. Specifically for store and cart systems that do not have sizing options like CRE Loaded does.

FREE for use on my site and a mere $5 to have the feature on yours creates a valuable time saver.

CRE Loaded Template Design Dreamweaver Extension

Posted on August 20, 2007
Filed Under Portfolio, Products | 4 Comments

One of the more ambitious products I design for is also one of the most frustrating for new or inexperienced designers. CRE Loaded is a forked variant of osCommerce that was modified to feature some pre installed contributions and then made commercial.

CRE Loaded shares with its parent a rather standard old school early PHP 3 method of templating for presentation. osCommerce as many will note, has been the most downloaded and widely used shopping cart on the internet second to none. As template options like BTS and STS came available, forked versions started to popup beginning with Zen Cart then others that have come and gone. BTS and STS adds a degree of design control that is easier understood and quicker to implement template changes lending a great deal to the continuing growth of each solution.

Why on earth then would a person need to create a Dreamweaver Extension for CRE Loaded? A few minor but relative routine reasons; template design for CRE Loaded is anything but exciting and most if not all the designs people take notice of are as indifferent as the next. Take any 100 or 200 designs you like, stack them on top of one another and peer down into them and you will see that almost all of the stock inventory available are essentially the same. The same features, the same menus, the same navigation types, the same everything but design elements and graphics.

The Dreamweaver Extension includes a few pre defined features that will hopefully change all that. Of all the designs I get contracted to do for osCommerce or CRE Loaded, most if not all of them request the same old run of the mills look and layout that they could easily go to Template Monster and purchase. 90% of all templates I design for either solution are for template houses and template resellers. In recent months I’ve spent a great deal of $$$ redoing my code base and snippet inventory to make some rather proprietary, detailed and fully unique features for future templates. This extension is the result of that.

If a person truly wants to be able to design a template for CRE Loaded or osCommerce and has only basic entry level skills than this extension is the answer. I had planned to release it free of charge and just charge for the tutorials and support elements but after looking more at my design inventory I realized I could be cutting my own thought. When the extension is released it will feature some additional packaged elements along with a few dozen unique feature sets that will likely sell for $40.

I’ll present more details later on some of the elements of the extension.

Flash Page Turn Corner Effect

Posted on August 19, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News | 11 Comments

Flash Page Peel / Page Flip Effect Script:

Our advertising script is the most effective type of page peel or page flip flash effect on the market. Modified to work with a select few open source applications, the page peel advertising rotator is effective in bringing to life advertising options on your domain.

Dont settle for out dated and greatly annoying popup ads and why settle for banner advertising on your site taking up precious real estate that could be used for more productive site features when you can randomize multiple client advertising campaigns with a system that puts the rest to shame.

80% of your ads success depends on one thing.

Its been said by advertising experts that the 80 / 20 rule applies to advertising in a clearly difinitive way that articulates the effectiveness of an advertisement. For each dollar spent, 80% of that dollar is in the headline and 20% in the content body of an ad. Headlines serve one purpose, to draw attention. That being said; can you honestly think of a more effective headline than this Page Peel Flash Effect Script? The answer should be obvious.

Affordable isn’t even the best way to articulate this. How about Dirt cheap pound for pound more effective than solutions costing hundreds of dollars. If $80.00 out of every $100.00 is spent trying to CATCH YOUR PROSPECTS ATTENTION RIGHT NOW with effective CALLS TO ACTION then this tool is as cost effective any can be. My 80% would be to bet on a sure thing rather than throwing darts at a dart board in hopes someone would click my banner.

CRE Loaded Catalog Images

Posted on August 7, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News, Template Design Kit | 1 Comment

CRE Loaded Thumbnail Generator

Nothing is more annoying than seeing or hearing about the frustration end users and site owners have with their site after spending a lofty chunk on its development. Although some things are certain to surface almost routinely, many things can be avoided by taking the time to draft well written and clear documentation.

In CRE Loaded projects I almost always provide site owners with a style guide if I have the slightest idea that he / she intend on using the content page features in the cart. Now, all though CRE Loaded comes with a WYSIWYG editor for product listings, it does not come with a logical explanation on how to use it effectively and therein lies the problem I face quite frequently with end users.

CRE Loaded unlike osCommerce provides a way for store owners to add content in a more rich and controlled format, thats the good part. But Its been my long held suggestion to end users to do their publishing of content offline in a professional html editor (commercial or not) primarily because online editors fill your drafts with countless inline elements that can break a layout. In every single one of my commercial sites, I draft the content in MS Word so I can port a version of my article to a PDF and MS Reader for downloads and then I copy that article into Dreamweaver, clean up the messy MS Word markup, validating the structure, then pasting it into the WYSIWYG editor in HTML format. As you can guess my blog is NOT one of those places I do this at. Nothing here validates. (proof positive on another experiment I’ll tell you about later)

Pictures and Content Break My Layout!

So, in CRE Loaded projects and templates I’ve always provided the client with a simple one page sheet on the correct image sizes and a small collection of examples among other things for the editor. In the last month alone I’ve seen only 1 person use a CRE Loaded design I’ve built correctly. Thumbnail images are consistent in size, the popup images are all the same size and product images are all the same size. Its when people try to upload these gigantic images in hopes that they will be sized correctly that problems begin.

Because of this I’ve had the php guy build me three little CRE Loaded generators that I’m publishing free of charge for your use. The main one is a simple image generator that takes the product photo and produces three output sizes based on user variables for either width or height. It will add a nice little user defined prefix to the image and provide some other features that will help CRE store owners to quickly generate consistent photo sizes without the lengthy process of producing them in photoshop.

I’ll write more on this generator and the content validation generators later in the week. Until then, blog like a mad man.

Website Application Compliance?

Posted on July 21, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio | 1 Comment

Does XHTML and CSS Compliance Really Matter?

For some reason I seem to just piss people off in forums when I point out ways to improve the compliance of application code. It seems no matter how much patience and professionalism I use to describe ways to reduce the size a site by switching it to CSS or simply cleaning up the hundreds of compliance errors that surface, some people take offense. It’s freaky really.

I recently wrote about creating all css layouts for templates for CRE Loaded and opened up a storm of responses in a particular forum for designers that still has me shaking my head in wonder and amazement. Now I tend to self edit my writings pretty accurately as not to completely offend people but when I say that tables are heavy compared to style sheets, or I talk about cross over block elements as being bad code, I’m speaking truth! Right?

CSS / XHTML compliance is not pure vanity and its not an attempt to show off ones skill in design. Web standards however are alot more than just validation per se. Compliance to web standards has everything to do with the methods of publishing content in ways that screen readers and browsers can understand. It’s also about publishing for consistency, ease of change, control and many things that most compliance browsers should present unanimously in similar form and function. Now validating code doesn’t mean you get to say “I’m better than you are, ha” and it doesn’t mean you will rank better in search engines contrary to popular belief.

Good code standards in my opinion makes a statement about quality and attention to detail not to mention just doing it right. Nothing is harder to deal with then bad code and when code is so bad its noticeable I find myself making it a personal challenge to clean up.

Tables are NOT bad code

The bold and often arrogant pursuit of compliance has led many to adopt this belief that tables are in some way bad code or at least bad coding methods for layouts. Granted tables are not really intended for layout they none the less acceptable methods of site design for popular applications like CRE Loaded or osCommerce as so much of their function relies on tabulated data and data sets that really can’t be displayed effectively any other way.

So, since CRE Loaded was the motive for this post I’ll move to briefly looking at how it can be done using nice clean compliant code.

Open Realty – Joomla – CRE Loaded – Word Press

Of the many applications I work with only three stand out as being in some need of an overhaul. WordPress and Joomla are certainly not on the list as these two applications are very well developed to accommodate good web design.

CRE Loaded is a commercialized enhanced variant of osCommerce which inherits all of its poor layout standards and old inline styling methods. With patience and a little diligence, CRE Loaded as well as osCommerce can be brought up to speed for a lighter and faster product that will at the very least validate providing your content and products descriptions are not messy. Its easy to take an otherwise clean and compliant layout and break it with your content as you can see on my blog I do almost daily as this site produces more non compliant errors than any I’ve worked on. (There is a method to my madness I promise)

I’ve taken CRE Loaded as well as osCommerce on many occasions where custom designs were needed and pretty much went through and cleaned up the code but never did so as a foundation for further templates. Until now! The biggest concern is the frequency of change in these applications and the developers apparent decision to not include the inventory of file changes in the change log (sometimes). This presents a problem as updates and maintenance become a very time consuming endeavor.

An all CSS osCommerce template is possible in Beta 3 and is relatively possible in CRE Loaded 6.2 as I’ve discovered. After spending countless hours building a solid foundation for future design by creating several custom modifications as well as contributions, CRE Loaded templates can eventually weigh nearly 1/3 of their average weight while reducing processing time as much as 80% in all the demo’s and tests I’ve ran. I think that alone speaks for itself.

But compliance in relation to CRE Loaded really begins with the doctype and then all the little redundant generated code methods that make up the application on a whole. CRE Loaded has a proud feature set in its admin panel that let you alter the design to a degree and this doesn’t play well with an all CSS Layout.

I’ve been able to make features like template width, background color and other things controllable in the admin panel work well with an all CSS template. But an all CSS / XHTML compliant template for CRE is a lofty endeavor to say the least.

Now I love CRE Loaded and I suggest it to clients more so than any other commerce application. I wont even touch things like VirtueMart or Zen Cart anymore now that I’ve had some serious time invested into looking at, learning about, and designing for CRE Loaded customers. Compliance was a personal challenge when I decided to take it serious and the very first things I nailed was the module boxes.

CRE Loaded All CSS Templates / Themes

People who use osCommerce or CRE Loaded may be familiar with some of the menu tools available such as JS Cool Menu or DHTML Menu among others. The big issue I’ve always had is that neither one of those menu systems will rank or index with google and the ease of use is almost nil.

The very first obstacle I had was creating and all css multi level menu that I could apply to many of the other CRE Modules so it would index in search engines and reduce its weight and redundant “countless nesting” table levels that were really odd to work with.

After diligence, plenty of $$ for coders, and testing, I was finally able to produce a few master layouts that will validate according to both XHTML and CSS compliance tests and reduce the size to such a degree that when compared to stock templates, the CSS designs will weigh on average about 70% less and load much quicker.

Does this matter? Well I’ll let you and the search engines be the judge as my next posts on the subject wont be until I publish the results I certainly know and expect in terms of indexing and usability.

Regardless of the arguments surrounding compliance standards, CRE Loaded in my personal opinion benefits greatly by quality template design as many would plainly see. The temptation to produce turnkey tabled layouts is hard to avoid considering that most template houses sell their designs for $150 on average. The headache has been the exhaustive amount of layout code that makes up the pages when finally rendered. I think if you look at some of the designs I’ll publish you may consider a similar transition and because of such I’ve assembled a 5 template package which includes several custom menu contributions (All CSS mind you) along with STAR PRODUCT and a few other contributions that will help you in your own template design.

I’ll call it a template kit even though I don’t want it associated in any way to the Rapid Template Design Series. But look If I can save a would be client or customer hundreds of dollars in design by providing a nice little package for $50 my only question to you would be. Is it worth it? and if so, I’m going to publish it!

A designers #1 mistake and how to fix it.

Posted on July 1, 2007
Filed Under Portfolio, Real Estate News | Leave a Comment

Website owners assume people care about them.

The first rule in all web design should be that the only person you will ever impress is the person you are designing for and maybe yourself. People do not visit sites because they care about you or your design; they visit your site to find a solution specific to their need and if you fail to provide that, then the rest is moot.

Much like writing a book, the creative and intuitive process can be broken down into steps that when followed will likely produce consistent and predictable results. Writing is said to be many things but more often than not its said to be an expression of thought. True the pen is mightier than the sword, writing has the power to influence to a great degree, the audience of its intent. Therein lies the key fundamental solution on how to fix a web designers #1 Mistake in design. The process of good design is all about being intuitive and you can expect predictable results when the entire process is followed from conception to delivery. But this in no way says that a designer should NOT make a web site attractive visually. Right? Lets keep things in perspective.

Think about this for a moment. Would you take a 30 gallon metal garbage can and put high grade European automotive paint on it? Why or why not? What exactly is wrong with having a nice looking garbage can? Maybe this isn’t the best way to articulate a point but then again if your site is a container for garbage, then no amount of expensive paint is going to change that.

You design for your audience

It is a bold statement to say that visitors to your site care less about you and your design than you would hope they do. But all to often site designers (and I’m guilty of it myself) focus more on the appearance than the content in hopes that the design will impress enough that someone will caress my ego with praise.

But good quality web design is not a one time $100 shot in the dark for an interface. I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked to simply provide attractive interfaces wherein some of the design specifications defy good marketability of the finished product. I’ve written on guided navigation and intuitive layouts in no fewer than a dozen forums and every time I do, the interaction and responses are so great in number that its clear to me its a subject not covered enough.

Good web design begins with…

So how then does a designer solve this self love and presumption that a visitor cares about his / her design? Simple! All of the above provides the introduction and the summary goes like this;

First lets restate the mistake;
Designing for you and your needs, operating under the belief that people care about your design. Big mistake!

Easy Solution!
When approaching good design, keep your audience always in mind and design for them, NOT YOU. Every facet from interface to content and typography is all for someone else and rarely for you. Good web design begins with a clear idea of who your target audience is before all else. It should be the first group of question a designer asks a client just prior to all other interview questions.

If you have to caress your ego, get a blog, it works wonders for mine.

All CSS Menu for CRELoaded

Posted on June 21, 2007
Filed Under Portfolio | Leave a Comment

Long have I wanted to take the menu we use in osCommerce templates and make it work for CRELoaded. Until recently I have had little incentive to do so because no one ever seems to ask for the feature or even take casual interest in it.

CoolMenu and DHTML Menu like effects

Javascript menu’s wont index in seach engines and the two most popular sub cat type cascading menus used in most shops are either the JS CoolMenu contribution or the Dynamic Drive DHTML Menu contribution, each of which is a JavaScript menu.

My idea was to take one of the stock cascading nav systems I have in my snippet db for oscommerce and create one that will both index well in search engines and function well like the popular JS menu types. You can see the contribution working in this example. http://www.livedemosite.com/demo/oscommerce/

Look for the feature in our CRELoaded template inventory that will be published on http://www.asiteabove.com

keep looking »