This little snippet is being posted because of extreme frustration in trying to find the answer for how to close a fancybox window with a link or button. Hopefully this little tid-bit will help you out.
Sorting Product order in WP-Ecommerce with Short Code
This is a quick little snippet I am sharing because it helped me out alot and was VERY difficult to find actual documentation on it. I had been trying to sort the products on a client’s website for some time now and the built in product sorter on WP-Ecommerce was not working at all . The goal was to sort the products in alphabetical order starting from “A” and going down. For some reason the site had them in reverse alphabetical order and I do not know why. So, here is how to sort your products by using shortcode with WP-Ecommerce:
If your product shortcode looks like this: [wpsc_products category_id='2 ']
You will want to simply add this: order=’name’
So your final product would be [wpsc_products category_id='12 ' order='name']
That’s it! Should work. You may be able to use other “order” functions but I have not tried that out. Hope this helps!
So this recent project I completed is actually a personal website of mine that I have been wanting to finish up for some time now and I finally got it done. The Wine Balancer is a very simple ecommerce website currently selling only one product, a Wine Balancer. A Wine Balancer is basically a piece of wood that is cut at a certain angle which blanances a bottle of wine giving it the effect of being “gravity defying”. I personally make these balancers myself out of Oak using a drill press and a chop box and then hand sanding and staining them.
Cart66 Lite – Using this to manage my Ecommerce Aspect. This is the free version and there is a more robust “paid” version available as well. So far this has worked out great.
Easing Slider – For my home page Slider
Exclude Pages from Navigation – Always use this plugin to keep certain pages out of the Nav
Fast Secure Contact Form – My Favorite Contact Form Plugin
Google Analytics for WordPress – For Analytics, Duh
Google XML Sitemaps – For sitemaps, Duh
Login Lockdown – Site Security Plugin. Easy and Effective. Prevents people from guessing your login
My Page Order – To help order my navigation
No Self Pings – Cause self pings are just annoying
Raven’s Anitspam – New Antispam plugin I am trying out
Secure WordPress – For Security Purpsoses
Subscribe to Comments – Allows visitors to subscribe to your comments
Viper’s Video Quicktags – Makes adding videos much easier
WordPress Database Backup – Emails me weekly backups of my Database
WP-prettyPhoto – One of several Lightbox plugins I choose from
This morning came complete with an awesome sunrise looking off our back deck towards Mount Hood. I guess that is the one thing I like about these shorter days… you don’t have to wake up at 5am to catch the sunrise.
Here is the original photo this morning:
And here it is after applying a little magic with the iphone’s Camera+ app (just 99 cents).
We recently finished up a new website for KHI Construction to highlight their commercial side of their business. The site is www.khicommercial.com and came out very nice.
The website was a collaborative effort and the design was put together by Jessica Geary with Flora Fauna Designs. The design was then given to us and coded up from scratch using a blank WordPress theme. The whole site is powered by WordPress and is using a number of plugins listed below:
Plugins used on KHI Commercial site:
Custom Fields Template – used for custom fields
FancyBox for WordPress – used for the nice Lightbox effect found on the site
Fast Secure Contact Form – Easy to use contact form
Google XML Sitemaps – Easy sitemaps that are search engine friendly
Login LockDown – For Security purposes, allows us to lock down the login after X number of failed login attempts
Login Logo – Customize the login page for the client back end access
My Page Order – A must have for WordPress sites – allows us to order the menu items
NextGen Gallery – powers our photo gallery
No Self Pings – so we don’t constantly get notifications about comments, new posts, pingbacks, etc
Print Friendly and PDF – a nice plugin that generates a printer friendly version of the site
Subscribe to Comments – lets users subscribe to post comments by email
Viper’s Video Quicktags – Makes it easier to embed videos from Youtube, Vimeo, etc. into posts
Widget Logic – Allows us to control which pages widgets appear on
Last month I finished up a site for Stefan McGuire with A-Team Home Inspections. The requirements for the site were relatively simple: A static website with a brouchure like style that highlights core services, shows testimonials and provides a way for prospects to contact the client. After further digging we agreed that it would make sense to install a photo albums section that the client could update themselves.
Here are some screen shots from the website:
The photo gallery uses an API from Google’s Picasa Web Albums to source the images which allows the client to upload new images whenever they want. It is really a slick plugin if you do not need something very robust and just need the ability to manage a photo album. Visit http://code.google.com/p/pwi/ to get the code to integrate Picasa Web Albums into your website.
For the lightbox plugin we used the Fancybox plugin which use jquery and allows for iframes, images, videos from Youtube and more.
I am beginning to run into more and more website hacks lately and it is really becoming quite the head ache. Lucky for me, I run weekly backups of my sites and am able to quickly and easily restore them after the hacks.
The most recent hack I have run into was rather pointless as all they did was hijack the website and display a different index.php page and change the username in my WordPress database. Here is a screen shot of what appeared on the website when I went to it:
As you can see all it does is display the text:
OpPs !! Channal One is Here !!
Saudi Arabid HaCkeR
Hacked By EjRam 7rb ~ ReD HaT TeaM
… and then a bunch of other crap here.
To remove the hack simply login to your them and delete the index.php file and replace it with a clean one. Or, if you have a backup of your whole theme folder just delete it all and replace it. You will also want to check your login name and on my site they changed it to r00t as the username and who knows what the password was.
After you clean it up change your passwords and tighten up security. There are a number of WordPress plugins that can help with security including Login Lockdown.
Basically, the moral of the story is to keep a backup of your WordPress files and database all the time. You just never know when your site might be hacked. Oh, and if you think your site won’t be hacked because you are small time, think again. The site of mine that was hacked nets less than 20 visitors a week.
Recently I have a slew of calls, emails and even a letter from the Better Business Bureau accusing my business of fraudulently making continuous credit card charges on their accounts. When I got the first call, I figured it was just an anomaly and I helped the guy determine what happened, we found the company he was looking for and moved on. The second call I got started to get me a little worried. The third call, an email and a letter from the BBB downright freaked me out. In Oregon, there is a business using a name similar to mine, and they are scamming people out of their money. I decided to write a post on how it works and what you can do to make sure you don’t fall victim to something like this.
My company name is Moore Web Exposure. The company scamming people is called WebExposure. The problem gets worse given the fact that I run my business in Portland, OR and these con artists run theirs in Clackamas, OR.
What they are doing:
From what I have been told,WebXposure tells its victims that they will put their business Google Local listings for a fee of a couple of hundred bucks. The first problem with this is anyone can get a Google Local account for FREE. But this alone is not a big deal. What is a big deal is once the victim gives this company their credit card information, WebXposure keeps billing them without authorization until the victim catches on and cancels the card.
So, how could these victims avoided this altogether? Simple. Start asking questions. Had they done a simple Google search for this business, they would have found the following:
Chances are good that the people who got scammed here will never get their money back. Best thing they can do is call their credit card company and report it.
The moral of the story is DO YOUR RESEARCH!!!! Ask for testimonials, look for their footprint on the internet, see what others have to say about them. If it is a legitimate business, they should have a large footprint on the internet. If you cannot find them on the internet, turn and run as fast as you can!
