I received the following question today in the forum: "For certain sales pages on my site I do not want to have the distraction of the sidebar items. Is there a way to have a second page template without a sidebar for this purpose?" Having an optimized sales/landing page does help with sales conversion and it is really easy to create a custom sales/landing page in WordPress. Any readers of this site using the WordPress Simple Shopping cart or WordPress eStore or the WordPress Membership Plugin are most likely selling something online. In this article I have explained how you can create a custom sales page easily in WordPress and use it to optimize your sales conversion. How do You Create a Custom Sales Page in WordPress? The answer is custom WordPress page template. Your WordPress theme has a file called "page.php". When you create a WordPress page, by default it uses this "page.php" template file which makes the page look a certain way. You can easily create another template file which has a different look/structure and use that template file for a particular page. Say for example, the default "page.php" file displays the page with "header", "body", "sidebar" and "footer". You can create a ...

Many people want to make simple CSS changes but do not know where to start or are afraid that they will change the wrong thing. As a result of this I get asked a lot of CSS related questions from new WordPress users. The fact is that learning CSS is not really that hard. Once you get a hang of the basics, you can quickly become an advanced CSS user if you keep playing around with it. In this article I have explained how to do simple CSS modifications, hopefully it will be of some help to some of you. Let's get started. First, you should make a back up copy of CSS files you are going to modify. You should do this with any file you plan on modifying incase something goes wrong, you can always revert back to the version you know works properly. What is CSS "Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics (that is, the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language. It's most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML ...

In this article I will share a few simple upselling tips that I personally use without irritating the customer and have had success with. Please note that my goal with upselling is not to trick a customer into buying something or sell them some junk. My aim is to show the customer additional products or services that might better meet their needs or will add value to the product that they are already buying. It's a way of demonstrating that I am aware of my customer's needs and care about their satisfaction. What is Upselling? "Upselling is a sales technique whereby a salesperson induces the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale. Upselling usually involves marketing more profitable services or products, but upselling can also be simply exposing the customer to other options he or she may not have considered previously." - Wikipedia 1. Place Offers on the Checkout Page There are many places on your website where you can upsell. The most common would be the view cart/checkout page. Visitors who come to your checkout page are potential buyers and most likely have the credit card ready. So it is a lot ...

The following is a list of common HTML mark up mistakes made by front end developers. Whether you are a newbie web designer, or a programmer who wants to try his hands in UI designing, try to avoid these mistakes. 1. Don't place Block elements within Inline elements An HTML element is displayed as Block or as Inline by default. Block elements, such as divs and paragraphs, make up the structure of the document. Inline elements reside in these blocks, such as anchor and span tags. So you should never put blocks inside inline elements. Wrong: <a href="#"><h2>Block inside Inline</h2></a> Right: <h2><a href="#">Inline inside Block</a></h2> 2. Always have the alt attribute for image tags The ALT attribute is a required one for IMG tags, it describes the context of the image. It helps your user on a screen reader or with a slow connection to decide whether or not the image is important. It also makes the web crawler index your contents better. If the images is just for show, use an empty ALT attribute like alt="" Wrong: <img src="profilepic.jpeg"/> Right: <img src="profilepic.jpeg" alt="Profile pic of the user"/> 3. Don't use line breaks to show a list If you wan't to show a list of things in bulleted or numbered ...

Ubuntu is pushing the Linux desktop movement forward. Since it's inception in 2004, Ubuntu has released over 10 versions so far, each one improving on its predecessor. It remains one of those few operating systems, that boots really fast. Still, if you are one of those brave hackers who likes to tune your machine to maximize efficiency, here are a few tricks on how to make Ubuntu boot faster. Word of caution: These tune ups have been tested on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Haron. I haven't upgraded it as it has been pretty solid and stable release. So if you're on a newer(or older) version, I suggest you do some research before applying these tricks. And of course, always keep back ups. Have Fun! Reducing the boot menu delay If you dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows on your computer the boot menu appears for 10 seconds, during which you can select either Windows or Ubuntu. If you only have Ubuntu installed, a prompt appears for three seconds telling you that you can hit a key to see the boot menu. You obviously don't need to wait for the 3 seconds since you have no other OS to boot from. You can eliminate this delay by ...

If you frequently make paypal payments to multiple recipients (e.g. to payout for affiliate commisson) and if you don't use the PayPal's mass payment option then this article is for you. Now, my first question to you is "Why aren't you using mass payment again?" :) PayPal's mass payment allows anyone with a Premier or Business account to send multiple payments instantly and has the following two big advantages: You save a big on the fees. A low fee of 2.0% of the payment amount with a cap of $1.00 USD (or its equivalent in the payment currency) is assessed on each payment made with Mass Payment. Payments with PayPal’s Mass Payment are instant so you don't have to mail out the checks. How to Make a PayPal Mass Payment Step 1: Create a Mass Pay File Create a tab-delimited text file. List the recipients' email addresses in the first column and the payment amounts in the second column. In the third column, enter the three-letter code for the currency in which the payments will be sent. The following is a screenshot of a sample mass payment file: [caption id="attachment_1935" align="alignnone" width="296" caption="Screenshot of a Mass Pay File"][/caption] Step 2: Make the Payment In this step you have ...

If you sell stuff online especially digital product(s) then chances are that at some point down the path you will face some fraudulent customers who will try to rip you off. I sell many products online (some from my Tips and Tricks site and some from my other web sites). I have seen many of these tricks that the fraudulent customers use to take unfair advantage from the seller. You probably already know that I have a few WordPress Plugins (e.g. Simple WordPress Shopping Cart, WP eStore, Another one in development) that help you sell online from your WordPress blog so a lot of my readers have WordPress powered site and sell products online. Going forward I am going to try to write more posts on various fraudulent tricks that customers tried on me and how I handled it. Hopefully these posts will help improve your online selling experience as a shop admin. In this post I have covered some aspects of the refund trick that many customers use. The Good Old Refund Trick I am pretty sure that most of you who are selling online have a system that makes sure the customer only gets the product after they have made a ...

Firebug has become an indispensable tool for doing front-end development of web applications. However, most developers are unaware of some very useful features of this tool, especially when it comes to debugging JavaScript code. I've personally seen many of my colleagues relying on alert() function to reveal the flow of execution of their complex codes. In this article we'll look into some ways that Firebug can help you debug JavaScript and boost your productivity. Breakpoints Setting a breakpoint on a line enables you to pause/resume execution of code at your will. When you put a breakpoint on a line, say line 10, the program pauses execution when it reaches line 10. Let's see how we can do that: Turn Firebug on and enable Console and Script views. Then visit ajaxify.com. In the Script view, choose firebug.js from the dropdown menu at the top left corner. On the sub-view at the right click on Breakpoints pane. On the left margin of Script view, you will see the line numbers appear. Now click on line 10, it will be marked by a red circle. This red circle is the breakpoint, the Breakpoint sub-view will list you have set. Now refresh and hit the Change the Message! ...

This WordPress plugin lets you customize the email details that appear on emails sent from WordPress. By default the "From Name" on emails sent from wordpress has a name "WordPress" and the "From Address" on emails has "wordpress@your-domian.com" which is not very meaningful. You can customize both these fields with this plugin so your customers are not confused. Plugin Installation Unzip and Upload the folder "change-wp-mail-from-details" to the "/wp-content/plugins/" directory. Activate the plugin through the "Plugins" menu in WordPress. Plugin Usage Check the appropriate checkbox for the options that you want to customize. Enter the customized text in the appropriate field. [caption id="attachment_1884" align="alignnone" width="443" caption="Settings Screen of the Change "Email From Details" Plugin"][/caption] Support/Donation Option Donation option can be found on my projects page. Download Latest Version (v1.0) Download the Plugin.

If you are using any of my WordPress shopping cart plugins (WP eStore or WP Simple Shopping Cart) then chances are that you have a PayPal account and making a bit of money selling your stuff online too. Next step is to keep your money safe so you don't loose it from hacking related issues or get fooled by some scam email. In this post I have shared two simple PayPal security related tips that you can start using and add that extra layer of security and sleep better at night. The first one is to add more protection around your PayPal account login. Use The PayPal security key The security key gives you an extra layer of security when you log in to your PayPal account. It creates random security codes to use along with your regular username and password. It’s like a combination lock for your account – designed to let you in and keep others out – except that the combination always changes. It comes in 2 types, each with different advantages: Security key: This is a small device, the size of a credit card that you carry with you. It creates a unique security code that you use to log in ...