You’ve probably seen the news about Viacoms lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infingement. Well,  everyone new that was coming and it will be a test case that will  be very interesting.

But I really do have some doubts about Google… If you know anything about the internet and search engines, you know that Google is the major player and has been for a while. However, whereas just a couple of short years ago Google was a free service, just like YouTube, Google has now morpehd into a multi, multi billion dollar advertising system with a front-end that still appears to be free search engine results.

The truth is far different from that though, as far as I can see…

Monsters Spawned

Adwords; Pay Per Click is the first child, Son Of Google. It generates billions of dollars in advertising revenue for G by allowing people to bid on keywords.

Adsense; the Ugly Sister. Allows me or you to show advertisers Adwords adds contextually on our web pages and share in the profits with G.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think these are great ideas. But both have become monsters in their own right. It seems that G is unable stop spamming and its attempts to do so invariably hurt real businesses when they get dropped from the SERPS or are forced to bid high on keywords because of low quality scores.

Google is all about relevence, at least that’s what they claim. Yet they will be the first to admit that their SERPS quality is pretty bad a lot of the time. And, of course its a SPAM issue. Well, now SPAM comes in 3 flavours. SEO, PPC and Adsense. What’s your favorite?

So Google is in a constant mode of trying to control all its spam flavors, while making billions of dollars. There’s a saying that goes something like ‘If you need to control something then its out of control’…

I wonder if we could get some sort of recompense from Google whenever spam shows up in their SERPS or Adwords or Adsense related to our keywords. You know what its like when you see your website listed amongst a load of crud and spammy pages… Well, if Viacoms lawsuit is successful that’s going to be just the tip of the iceberg. I’m sure some clever lawyer out in California will come up with a class action lawsuit.

And getting back to that lawsuit. I think its very strange that holier than though G can decide its OK for people to share copyrighted material online, but you can’t put up a web page that requires someones email address without paying, in some cases, outrageous financial penalties to G.

You can make money without doing evil… Hmmmm

This guide will show you the necessary steps to install and configure PHP 5.2.1 (5.x) on Windows server 2003 using IIS 6 as the web application server. This guide does not show you how to install Windows server or install IIS, just the config steps neccesary after install.

Here are the steps;

1. Install PHP
2. Configure PHP
3. Configure IIS
4. Test the install

Here we go…

Step 1: Install PHP

1. Get the latest version of PHP from php.net. Get the latest binaries but not the Windows installer as we are going to do all the dirty work by hand… Don’t worry, there’s not too much…
2. Get the latest version of the PECL Modules too if you need these specific extensions for you application. If you’re not sure, get them anyway and wait until later in the install before loading them onto your server…
3. Create a directory on the root of your server system drive in which to extract the PHP files. I use C:\PHP (tada!).
4. Unzip the binaries into the C:\PHP folder. You will now have a directory structure that looks like this:
   • C:\PHP
   • C:\PHP\DEV
   • C:\PHP\EXT
   • C:\PHP\EXTRAS
   • C:\PHP\EXTRAS\MIBS
   • C:\PHP\EXTRAS\OPENSSL
   • C:\PHP\EXTRAS\PDF-RELATED
   • C:\PHP\EXTRAS\PEAR

   This is the basic directory structure as of version 5.2.1.

5. If you know you need the PECL extensions you can extract those now. If you’re not sure you can come back to this point later and extract them. Either way, extract the files into;
   • C:\PHP\EXT

Step 2: Configure PHP

1. In your C:\PHP directory you’ll find a file named php.ini-recommended. Rename or copy and rename that file as php.ini.
2. Open php.ini up in your favorite text editor and preform the following edits (I’ve listed them in order as of PHP version 5.2.1)
   • extension_dir = “c:\php\ext\”
   • cgi.force_redirect = 0
   • browscap = “c:\php\extras\php_browscap.ini”
   • session.save_path = “c:\php\sessions\”
3. Install a browscap.ini file. This is optional but prefered so right mouse click and choose Save Target As… here to get the php_browscap.ini that I’m using or else search and find the one you want. Then copy it to c:\php\extras\php_browscap.ini (rename it from .txt to .ini).
4. Create a directory for the PHP session files. I chose to use C:\PHP\SESSIONS\ initilally. Create it here to start and when the install works then move it onto a different drive if you want.
5. Add C:\PHP to your servers path environment variable.
   • Right click My Computer, Properties and select the Advanced tab, then click on the Environment Variables button.
   • Select the Path variable and click the edit button.
   • Add C:\PHP; to THE BEGINING OF THE ENVIRONMENT STRING
   • Click on OK.
6. Add New variable PHPRC to the Environment Variables.
   • Click the New button
   • Variable name is PHPRC
   • Variable value is c:\php
   • Click OK.
7. Clcik OK back to desktop.

Step 3: Configure IIS

Add PHP ISAPI Extension

1. Open IIS Manger
2. In the left pane select Web Service Extensions
3. Click the link Add A New Web Service Extension…
4. Extension name is PHP 5.2.1 Extensions (Name can be whatever you want)
5. Click the Add… button
6. The path to the file is C:\PHP\php5isapi.dll
7. Check the Set Extension Status Allowed… checkbox
8. Click OK to finish

Add .PHP Extension

1. Right click on Web Sites and choose Properties
2. Select the Home Directories tab
3. Click on the Configuration button
4. On the Mappings tab click the Add… button
5. Executable browse to C:\PHP\php5isapi.dll
6. Extension is .php
7. Select Limit to: and type GET,POST,HEAD
8. Check Verify that file exists and click OK. Then OK again to get back to the Home Directory tab of the Web Sites properties dialog
9. Set Execute Permissions to Scripts only

10. Click OK.

REBOOT THE SERVER!

Step 4: Test the Install

1. Download this test file and copy it to a working website folder on your web server. i.e. yourdomain.com/info.php (rename it from .txt to .php)
2. Open the url in a browser http://yourdomain.com/info.php
3. If the install is good you will see something that starts off like this;

Please look at the 6th entry, the path to the php.ini file. If it’s your path, you have a good install and you can continue with the rest of your setup for the particular PHP system you are putting in. If it’s not your path, go back to the Environment Variable setting and make sure you put the variable at the FRONT of the path string.

That’s about it, good luck! Stephen Tickner

There are a multitude of payment options online today, many of which are very affordable for the small or medium size business. If you are selling your own products or those of another as a retailer you will most likely want to be able to receive payment at your website.

PayPal There used to be somewhat of a stigma surrounding PayPal but I don’t think that is really applicable these days. PayPal is now owned by EBay and as such a real force to be reckoned with online. It’s easy to setup links on your html web page and hook into PayPal without any technical knowledge. Let PayPal handle the cart processing and checkout away from your website. This you can setup literally in minutes and it doesn’t cost too much either.

Furthermore, PayPal is a merchant processor too, so you can accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex and PayPal payments. It’s possible to integrate through PayPal and your visitor won’t even know that PayPal is involved in the transaction.

Google checkout Google has a fairly new offering with its Google checkout and you can setup a cart and have visitors redirected to Google for payment, much the same as PayPal.

If you need to have a storefront for multiple retail items that you want to sell online, you could setup a Yahoo store, Froogle store with Google, Amazon store, EBay store etc… Plus there are a multitude of online store systems, cart systems that integrate with your website, the list goes on and on… So there really is no reason that you shouldn’t be selling your products or services online today…

Credibility Of course your credibility is one of the major factors that come into play when someone is about to buy from you online. The way your website looks (to a certain extent), your sales copy, the order form layout and ease of use, the checkout process, speed, customer testimonials (that’s why eBay , Amazon and yahoo have a ranking system for their sellers. This is social proof that the seller is credible and can deliver. So if you are doing the checkout on your own site make sure you have a nice site, good cart, easy checkout and plenty of customer testimonials along the way to make your buyer see that you deliver what you say you will, and then some…

Better Business Bureau Institutions such as better business bureau will provide you with a seal that you can put on your website, which indicates that you meet their standards and should therefore be a trustowrth wendor.

It’s been difficult to do any development work for TRS Technology because I’ve been so busy with customer account work. However, I’ve worked like a dog evening and weekends in order to be able to make this system available for myself and, of course, my beloved customers.

So, what’s it all about then?

My new ecommerce platform encompasses the following components / systems.

1. Sales and marketing
2. Payment processing
3. Product delivery and fulfillment

Systems used or integrated are;

1. Email marketing using auto responder
2. List building with special reports or free downloads
3. Affiliate marketing
4. Customizable offers using sales pages
5. Ability to track visitors and conversion on those sales pages
6. Offer cart for payment processing of the offer items
7. Ability to up sell and or cross sell
8. Invoicing after payment
9. Collection and storage of all customer data in sql server
10. Product delivery immediately if digital downloadable product
11. Ability to deliver a mix of digital and retail products that require shipping
12. Emailing invoice to customer at payment
13. Adding customer to a specific customer list for each product to allow follow-up after purchase and follow on sales / repeat sales
14. Ability to request download links for a product if lost
15. The customer can remove themselves from any or all product list if they want to

That’s an approximate outline of the system. I’ll post an update soon about the technology used in the cart (AJAX), which is very cool.

I’ll also post a rationale as to why I developed this rather than using other systems that are available. There are a lot of reasons…

This project is going to be really interesting! It encompasses all of the following technologies and will no doubt be quite a challenge!

1. Windows .NET development (Windows Forms) 2. Encryption (3DES) 3. FTP 4. Website ASP.NET development 5. SQL Server Reporting Services 6. Secure Sockets Layer 7. XML Web Services

I don’t think i’ve missed anything. This is going to be a doozy!

Here is the newly designed page layout, created by Gigi Ortwein. Looks nice. The original is below.

A customer has decided that they want to completely change their new website design. Even after signing off on the design phase of the project. This is proof that you really must have a game plan and sign-off milestones in any project. Even web site designs can be re-called and new designs requested.

Had I not had the sign-off, I would be in a difficult position now, but as I have a signed document, I can go back and redesign all day long and it is a rechargable item. This is good as I try not to work for free unless I’m working for a non profit organization!

Ah well, back to the drawing board!

On the subject of website linking and optimization, a really important element of your internal linking strategy will be your ‘standard’ html sitemap.

Not to be confused with your Google sitemap! If you checked out Revenge Of The Mininet you will know what I mean.

So here is a link to a very nice Java sitemap generator that you can download free and use to create a nice html sitemap for your website. Click on the picture/ box that says Site Mapping Tool and get started today!

Oh and Happy Independence Day!

Ajax, shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML basically allows you to post back to your web server and return without a full refresh of the page. It’s very nice for the website visitor as just the requested area of a page can be refreshed, so the interaction with the web server seems almost non existent.

I was looking for a new tabstrip control for a website project that I’m working on for Cannons Marina .

The control suite I bought is from a company called ASPXLAB. All of the controls are nice and easy to use and code and the AJAX component is really good too.

I’ve been working on updating my own website using RSS & Atom feeds. This is further work that started with a new service that I introduced at the beginning of this year called Newsletter Manager.

So, Newsletter Manager uses RSS feeds to provide additional, hopefully on-topic, information links in the newsletter that readers can then follow and peruse at their leisure.

I’m now implementing a reader that will incorporate feeds into my own sites web pages.

There’s a reason that I’m doing this… do you know what it is?