If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, you’ll know by now how much Lakeshore Branding loves Magento eCommerce. We’ve been gushing about how awesome it is, but at the end of the day, of course, it’s just our recommendation. There are literally hundreds of e-Commerce platforms and shopping cart solutions to choose from – aimed at retailers of varying sizes across a number of industries – and we thought that on this post, we’ll look at one of the notable non-Magento ones. Hey, we’re all for fairness. Established in 2006, Shopify is a hosted e-Commerce solution designed expressly for small online retailers. It’s been generating plenty of buzz recently for its ability to get startups and home-based merchants up and selling – quickly, easily, in a matter of minutes, even. Shopify boasts of a rich feature set that’s accessible via its elegant, easy-to-use interface. Almost everything is drag-and-drop, making store management a breeze. To get started, you choose a theme – Read the full article
PCI compliance refers to the set of requirements under the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which mandates that all companies that process, store, or transmit credit card information adhere to these guidelines to maintain a secure payment environment. PCI DSS was constructed by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, an independent group created by the major payment card brands (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, and JCB). PCI DSS governs all businesses and organizations that accept, transmit, or store payment cardholder data, regardless of company size or number of transactions. Furthermore, organizations that use third-party payment card processors still have to meet the PCI compliance guidelines, even though third-party processors may cut down on risk exposure and reduce the effort to validate compliance. Small to medium sized business must satisfy a number of requirements in order to be PCI compliant. While meeting these constraints may seem tedious and difficult, the consequences of failing to be PCI compliant – Read the full article
Reliability, speed, support, and pricing: these are the things that one looks for in a web hosting provider. And while there are plenty of hosts who have put their names and services out into the market, none are perhaps as popular or widely talked about as GoDaddy. You’ve all probably seen the Super Bowl ads. But loving the commercials doesn’t automatically mean being familiar with the product or service. Does GoDaddy live up to the hype? Or are you better off with lesser-known domain registrar and web hosting providers? Services: GoDaddy offers a variety of hosting types – Economy, Deluxe, and Ultimate – each of which comes with unlimited bandwidth. Economy gets you 10 GB of space, 100 E-mail accounts, and 10 MySQL databases. Deluxe, meanwhile, offers the best value with 150 GB of space, 500 E-mails, and 25 MySQL databases. An Ultimate Plan gives you unlimited space, bandwidth, and domains, plus 1,000 E-mail accounts, unlimited databases, and a free – Read the full article
With the recent launch of Facebook Places, many social media users and experts are debating the utility of location-based applications compared with the privacy concerns associated with services like Places, Gowalla, Foursquare, and Yelp. While Foursquare, Gowalla and Yelp location applications have gained popularity over the past year, Facebook Places is bringing location services to the mass public, not just social media savvy users. With over 500 million users, Facebook is undoubtedly the most popular social media platform available. Although Places is currently only available in the United States and has not yet become accessible to all users, some users argue that Facebook’s popularity means Places may pose a major threat to other location applications. Other social media users disagree, arguing that Facebook and Foursquare serve somewhat different functions. While people using Foursquare are clearly comfortable sharing their location with others, many Facebook users feel that Places is an invasion of privacy and have serious reservations about using the service. – Read the full article
One of the most tedious tasks that we’ve all hoped we could do without is tracking receipts. It doesn’t matter if you’re a young corporate hotshot, a one-man startup, a small business owner, or a high-powered on-the-go executive: at one point or another, you’ll have to gather those receipts for office expenses, keep track of those credit card and online payments, and spend time – hours, sometimes – on entering data into your financial records. Bo-ring. It can keep you off working on what really matters, too. But do any of us have a choice? We want to be spared tax-related hassle. We need to stay on budget. Enter the app called Shoeboxed, which basically combines free online software with a paid scanning service to literally digitize and organize your receipts. Shoeboxed is the secretary we all wished we had, the receipt tracker who would never mind the time-consuming task of collecting receipts and doing the math for us busy – Read the full article
It can be tough to measure in tangible terms the impact of the Internet on the environment, but this doesn’t mean there isn’t any. As we continue to enhance our presence online and live and work towards the digital, it’s important to note that the environmental costs of using the Web will inevitably rise, too. The heavier the burden will get. If you have a website or blog, you can be sure that it takes plenty of energy to keep that up and running. The infrastructure needed, the electricity used, the data servers and power plants required to keep all the information online 24/7 are only some of the things through which our online goings-on can affect the environment. Start “greening” your own little place on the Web and minimize the Internet’s environment footprint in your own way. Here’s a list of great tips to help you do just that. Go for green web hosting These days there are plenty – Read the full article
It’s kind of stressful trying to figure out ways on how to rank better in search engines. Just figuring out where your website stands, in terms of relevant keywords, is like rocket science. Like, “Where does my culinary website appear on Google’s search results pages whenever someone searches for ‘easy homemade recipes’?” Sure, there are plenty of web-based apps and tools that promise to help you do just that. But sometimes, these apps and tools are still too expensive. Or too complicated. Their interface makes you want to squint, or hide under a desk. Enter AuthorityLabs. It’s a super simple search engine monitoring service, founded in Arizona by a guy named Chase Granberry. Basically what it does is give you the data or the feedback that you need in order to rank better. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business, an enterprise, an Internet marketing company, or an interactive communications agency; AuthorityLabs is pretty scalable – and extremely easy – Read the full article
Open source content management systems offer a variety of benefits that proprietary CMS fail to deliver. Lower costs, more flexibility and control over your website, community support and other advantages make WordPress a better platform for hosting a website than a proprietary CMS. No Licensing Fees Because the content and design is not proprietary, initial fees when building a website on WordPress are minimal. Downloading and upgrading the software is free, and although some plugins and add-ons cost extra, these fees are generally relatively small. With proprietary CMS websites, there are typically only a few extensions that come standard and adding additional extensions can often involve high licensing and customization costs. Although there may be development costs associated with adding non-standard WordPress capabilities that aren’t available through plugins, these costs are probably much less than what you would pay for a proprietary CMS to develop the same capabilities, and offer the additional benefit of freedom to choose any developer to – Read the full article
