Setting up a WordPress eCommerce website

If you’re new to the world of ecommerce and you’re looking for a cheap option to build your site, I’d highly recommend using WordPress. Turning this free blog builder program into a functional site where you can process orders and control your design is more confusing to set up initially than many all-in-one builders out there, but could save you money in the long run. Plus, you will have the flexibility to take your site to another hosting company in the future, or even take it offline for awhile without losing everything if you change your mind.

WordPress is designed to build blogs, but instead of writing posts, you can create pages that will stay in place. By having it hosted yourself (usually $6-8/month), you’ll have full ecommerce abilities like using your own domain name, attaching a shopping cart plug-in to process sales, and using new themes, etc.

Initially, you can sign up for a free blog at www.wordpress.com and play around with various options, like uploading pictures, changing templates, changing widgets, etc.

Once you decide to have it hosted on your own, you’ll need to take a few steps:

1. Visit http://wordpress.org/hosting and pick a host that’s easy-to-use with WordPress.
2. Install an FTP client on your computer. This will enable you to save all the files you’ll need for your site and send them to your host. I highly recommend downloading the free option at http://smartftp.com.
3. Download the latest version of WordPress from http://wordpress.org/download.
4. Follow the instructions at http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress to connect the dots.

Here are a few more resources that will be useful:

• http://www.wordpress.org – a collection of tutorials
• http://free-wordpress-plugins.blogspot.com – a list of plugins to make various functions work
• http://www.instinct.co.nz/?p=16 – a free shopping cart plug-in

The joys of Gmail

It’s time folks. If you haven’t joined the Gmail bandwagon, you have no excuse for complaining about AOL, MSN, Hotmail, or any other frustrating email program for that matter. I feel your pain. After nine years of loyalty to the same address, I took charge of my email accountability and put an end to emails being lost or delayed or never having enough storage. You too can sign up for a free Gmail account . . . today. Believe me, your stress load may be relieved considerably!

One stop shop

Not only does Gmail offer tons of free storage space (2.8 + GB and counting), you’ll always be able to sort your archived mail quickly (one of the first in the game to let you do this!). Gmail also will facilitate sending/receiving larger files (20 MB) than the competition so you’re not as limited when it comes to updating friends and family with your latest photos.

The chat function is another excellent attribute that allows you to chat (or group chat) with anyone who has a Gmail account. That’s starting to include most of America, minus the people to whom you should send a link to read this blog J Plus, the excellent part about Gmail chats is that they’re archived so you can easily search for them along side your emails. You can even respond to an email via chat if you see your friend is online, to speed delivery while keeping everything recorded in that message’s thread.

If chat doesn’t make you accessible enough, you’ll love Google Talk, which lets people leave voicemail messages for you that you can open up as sound files in Gmail! Seriously, Google created a whole new ball game with Gmail.

Plus, with Google Documents you don’t even have to download files to view them. This is great as a preview option to ensure you don’t put junk on your computer, but it’s also nice if you’re working on a public computer at a library or at work.

And, if you’re looking for a better way to manage and edit your photos, you’ll love the Google-integrated program, Picasa. You can quickly create a slideshow or set incoming photos as your screen saver. Plus, you can make them brighter, in another color tone (like sepia, etc), and play around with a plethora of other free tools.

Once you realize how great Gmail is, and all the cool products connected to it, you’ll find it easy to get lost in Google’s almost endless array of helpful free products.  I even text message GOOGLE (466453) to find addresses and phone numbers for companies when I’m out and about.  And that’s just a glance at the tip of the iceberg . . . If you ever have a problem, most likely Google can both find an answer, and provide a solution.

Open Office Freebies

When your computer doesn’t come with some basic options like a word processing, spreadsheet, or presentation program, Open Office can save the day!

Open Office offers several great open platform programs that are operable on just about any system or in any language. For a free download, go to www.openoffice.org. The most common programs are Writer (a word processor similar to Microsoft Word), Calc (a spreadsheet similar to Microsoft Excel), Impress (a presentation program similar to Microsoft PowerPoint), and Draw (a vector graphics editor similar to Corel Draw). They have a few other programs there as well than can be used for more advanced office applications. These programs also allow you to export your creations as PDFs, which is a very convenient feature!

For tutorials on how to work Open Office programs and for some free templates, visit the following sites:

• http://www.kaaredyret.dk/openoffice_links.html
• http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html
• http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/templates/index.html
• http://www.smalldataproblem.org/ooextras

For more information on the history of Open Office and additional links, feel free to visit our friend Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org.

Try out Word Press

If you’re new to web design, Word Press is one of the best web design options for affordability flexibility. It was designed as an an open source blogging program, but there are tons of options to design pages to go the traditional website route. In addition to running the eCommerce SOS blog, I also have a few other accounts including a Word Press account to keep my siblings in touch sharing updates on everyone’s families. It’s a great place to share pictures with loved ones and friends who live far apart!

Register for a Word Press account and play around with various options, like uploading pictures, changing templates, changing widgets, etc.

Technically, Word Press “hosts” the site for you, but if you want to use a different domain (that doesn’t have Word Press in the name) you have to sign up for an additional hosting provider, like Blue Host, 1 and 1, iPowerWeb, or Hostmonster, just to name a few, once you’re ready to launch the site. You’ll have a lot more flexibility if you have the site hosted by a company that gives you FTP access so you can attach a shopping cart plug-in, use new themes, etc.)

See www.wordpress.org for a collection of tutorials, as well as http://free-wordpress-plugins.blogspot.com/, where you can find a list of good plugins to make various functions work. You can get a free shopping cart plug-in at http://www.instinct.co.nz/?p=16.