After the recent catastrophe, things are settling down and i have decided to start reading more seo blogs. Not just seo blogs, i have also been using as much free time i am getting to read seo books, watch seo videos and catch up on the numerous webmaster and seo blogs , by subscribing to their feeds. Every day you learn something new - and it is necessary to keep one’s self updated with the industry. I am currently subscribed to Matt Cutts, Jill Whalen, Danny Sullivan , SeoMoz, Bill Slawski , Aaron Wall to name a few. I was truly not this organized in my reading before , even though i definitely checked those before too.
When i started thinking that i will do this, i wondered if I could do it with Outlook 2007 as thats something i use regularly to check for emails , so i might be able to check on these from time to time as well and not really have to open “any” site whatsoever for reading up.
MS @#!%^^# is hardly ever so rosy , that it will allow you to do what you want when you want it … ( and I am usually not a MS hater) . The first time added the feeds for seobook and mattcutts google only feed, i got
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Yesterday was suddenly an important day for my DMOZ editor life. I received feedback from a Meta editor, who started by saying “This is a unsolicited feedback…” . The exact contents of the full email is not something i should divulge here , but nevertheless i was critically questioned for my wrong grammar , however minimal it might have been.
Interestingly, I was also “promoted” , so to say and given wider privileges on the ODP and allowed to manage a full locality. I had actually applied for this category after being an editor for its sub-cat for some weeks. Considering the localities i edit in have considerably less webmaster submissions, and also relatively low number of sites to mine, this particular category is nothing large within the ODP … but truly what my meta scolded me for makes more meaning. An editor within such lesser number of sites should be even more meticulous in his editing style.
My additional category requests (mentioned above) were sitting for sometime, so I had opted to do some greenbusting (apply to help out in larger branches of the ODP without being a named editor ), and surprisingly I got that approved yesterday too.
For a visitor to this blog or a webmaster thinking about DMOZ : may take note about the ODP and its quality. People often ask why DMOZ says it has low resources , why the editors are not bothered with site submissions and things such as receiving reply for rejection and such. Surely it is evident that because the resources are used for maintaining the high quality of editing , wherever possible.

osCommerce is a versatile shopping cart script used by hundreds of websites. As a shopping cart script with numerous pre-built functions, plugins ( or user generated contributions) it is undoubtedly comprehensive. However , just to exemplify, some of the key features include :

• web based install
• supports unlimited products and categories
• includes options for physical goods and e-products
• includes taxation as an option
• accounting and invoicing
• customers and transaction reports
• newsletter subscription module
• product reviews
• banner management and statistics
• payment processing using several credit card and web payment options

and many many more .
In my opinion, it has too many options to be able to be listed , even though some of those functions or options might not be necessary for a website owner who requires a shopping cart system for his website. Now, not all of these are advantageous to a basic website operator / owner , and he may even be bit overwhelmed seeing so many options , and requiring to ensure that the ones which are not required are turned off / disabled. As the service provider / web developer / programmer , we often have to ensure that most of these options are turned off or in cases which can not be turned off from the Admin panel, are removed from the php files .
One of our recent osCommerce projects involved several customizations on the base script - one part of which was ensuring around 40-45% of the default osCommerce features be removed from being available in the admin panel , based on instructions given by our client. One of the major customizations we also did was , by default osCommerce allows one cart / shop inside it , but in this case the requirement was to setup 2 separate carts and ensuring that they be administered from one single admin panel. Now this is not a default feature , nor is any proper contribution could be found for this. So it had to be programmed totally from new. The end result was undoubtedly quite nice , as we gained quite a bit of experience in doing this. The end users / visitors to the site would login to the website and find a wine shop as well as a news and magazines shop and wherever they went or registered, they had to login only once and also on check out or buying, the admin would be able to track the customers or the orders from inside the same panel only.
below are screenshots .
Cart 1 and Cart 2.

Yes , my life has changed quite a bit ever since i became a editor at the ODP . previously i have made a post on this blog , where i did already mention that I have this new identity , but i was rather little unsure if I should be mentioning that I am an editor , whether that would be breaking any protocol , whether I would be marked by others or will become a target for unfair advances . Well, no longer I have those confusions .
The protocol I was afraid of does not prohibit me from disclosing that I am editor, rather it is upto me whether I feel safe in disclosing that I am an editor at DMOZ, because there exists uncountable hostile elements , who blame DMOZ because they have nothing better to do .
Yes, there is always the undesirable feeling that I may be target of various kinds of underhanded and illegal advances - bribery or otherwise - but after being an editor over 2 months, i have come across incidents where largely guarded DMOZ editor’s identities have been unearthed and contacts made via - Email, roadside, over phone and what not . So it does not make any difference if your identity is guarded or not . Rather , it is of importance that one remains as indifferent as before and sensible and objective in their work .
What we surely are not allowed to disclose is the internal discussions, and reasons for discussions in open forums , there definitely remains a protocol for external communication.
While being an editor at the ODP , i have come across many discussions where there is an open conflict between various webmasters and individuals who volunteer at the ODP … and it has been stated that DMOZ does not like webmasters .
I am a webmaster myself , and I have come to understand what the above statement means …. which simply means DMOZ likes the regular layman web visitors more .
Google , MSN , Yahoo also seriously does not like webmasters ( to the same effect ) , and they try to make their search capabilities and index more cleaner for the regular web searcher and not the educated webmaster .

Disclaimer : All the statements above are comments made by me as an individual , and not endorsed by the DMOZ or AOL.

PHP is a impressive coding language, and is widely used in major part of our projects. Using the php language with mysql databases hugely successful websites around the world have been created. Every day newer developments are made to make PHP a more robust and secure solution for coders and website owners.
However , recently we have embarked upon converting / adding certain parts of older projects / websites into using AJAX - sometimes on request by the website owner , and sometimes we have offered to convert where we felt using AJAX would give better usability to the project.
One such project involves a Voting / Rating application which was made almost an year ago . The site featured a rating where the current AJAX enabled system would make the voting much more user friendly, instead of the form submit . This would allow the end user to participate in the voting / rating many more times than before - which is the theme of the website , thus keeping him more interested and loyal .
Another project involves enhancing a backend admin panel, which involves various options such as creation of categories, sub categories, and users . The admin backend page usually loads with little bit of time , and for an admin who needs to create around 65 categories , making 65 page loads / refresh was little painful. But the way it is being developed now , creating a new category would be somewhat like , as you find inside the Wordpress admin area . This would provide better usability - this time to an admin , not just an end user .

We have just started creating a custom template for wordpress for a client . The wordpress work involves creating his blog theme to suit and complement his existing website and website design. This is something i have mentioned before that many customers / blog owners will require their blog to look as close to their existing website as they would want their website visitors to feel that they are still on the same website.
The work also includes installing various wordpress plugins , primarily social bookmarking icons, tags and digg and stumbleupon extensions. I wish it would have also included logo design as well , as the logo the customer has looks pretty old and outdated and out of place both on his website as well on the blog header. But as of yet , he is quite adamant that he will keep that logo.
The social bookmarking this is a weird craze and some people have become too impressed with it . I agree it is a very essential plugin for sites as well as blogs , but in this particular case, the client has requested to insert the bookmark icons in the top and bottom of every post along with a additional Digg and Stumbleupon option just under it … which is surely a overkill … the visitor , who was early frustrated by excess Ads on the websites, will not get overwhelmed with these bunch of “social bookmarks” and would easily miss the main content IMO :p

I have a fascination with the color blue . Besides it being my favourite color , it also gives a nice and bright look to a blog . Also with this particular wordpress theme , i wanted to keep the design similar to the main website design , dimensions wise . The theme is developed for the latest version of wordpress i.e. 2.3 and supports the default widget options or sidebar and tags. It is also XHTML validated and W3C compliant and created using minimal graphics .

You can see a demo here : http://www.websys.co.in/designblog/ or

view a screenshot here
if you are interested in buying it , you can … for the low price of 20 USD.

Since 17th October till 21st October , we have the biggest cultural / religious festival in kolkata / west bengal - DURGA PUJA. During this 5 day period most of the offices , shops, institutions and even banks and government departments remain closed and everyone spends a nice little holiday. Writing about Durga Puja / Dushera in detail would be totally beyond the scope of this blog and you can learn more about it from the Wikipedia link or just by typing it in Google.

However , explaining it to clients / employers is an important task , one should not forget. The American’s have the 4th of july / memorial day , the British have their Christmas / New Years day and many others have their own customary holidays , hence everyone more or less understands even if you have got some unfinished project during this time , but nevertheless it does not harm taking preparations for such a extended break if you have got a steady inflow of web designing / programming / outsourced web development work. Some of the measures one should take are :

• Start mentioning about it casually to your regular clients and request the break
• Surely you would not be able to chat with all your clients , so a email to all your existing clients or more specifically the one with current projects would help - explaining the reason and the time duration
• If you have an active Elance or Guru profile , it would also be better if you change your screen identity to reflect your on Vacation Status - i put myself as “myname - on vacation till 22nd october ” . Yes , it does look odd and unprofessional but hey , i am actually helping them .
• And of course there is the Vacation mail setting , on your email account - almost all ISP’s or hosting providers , allow you to create a vacation mail - which might be something like “Thank you for emailing me , I / We are on vacation till date MM/DD/YY . For emergencies , call Mr.Y at xxx xxx xxxx “
• If the previous points  were for what to do prior to the vacation , there are also things one should prepare for after the vacation - such as how to handle the backlog afterwards i.e when you return to work .  A chart / list of works that needs to be resumed based on priority, would be a good thing to start with . This will help making the life easier and with less tension of “oh there’s so much to do , who to tackle first “
• I don’t know about you but i am a computeholic hence my PC gets little or no rest or and even in office there’s hardly any chance for the computers to go on maintenance mode . So , thinking that way , this would be a good time to put the computers up for maintenance - things like running scandisk , anti-virus , defragment , disk cleanup , hardware check … basically the works.
• buy postcards … if you are going on a trip and remember to put up a gallery on flickr after you return and blog it or send the link to your friends , clients even… get them interested in your culture . Since postcards are almost a lost tradition , especially with the new photo sharing websites coming up , if you have a digital camera , that might be good too.

Saying all this , if you are working on with very high valued clients, or customers who deserve some respect , you surely should not leave email accounts totally unattended … what with the rise of broadband , Gmail , Blackberry be sure to check once during the night - even if you don’t reply fully , it will make you feel good knowing that you have got some Puja Greetings back from that satisfied customer , whom you emailed about the request for leave.

Over the past 2 weeks , we have developed vbulletin skins for 2 different websites / clients . One for a flower discussion community forum and now currently a Spanish fantasy gaming website . The 2 new templates that have been developed are quite a bit more colorful than before , especially the Spanish forum .

Developing custom templates is naturally costlier than regular templates, because they are uniquely designed for 1 single customer to maintain their individuality . These templates we do not allow for download directly from our website. Among the last 2 clients i was mentioning, one of them provided their own PSD and our work involved converting the Photoshop design into a fully coded vbulletin template , which could be imported on their existing forum , which also used vB CMPS , along with 13 other vbulletin Addons / Plugins / Modifications. The odd thing , however , is that both times the client / customer requested their “unique vbulletin template” to be a clone of a existing forum site design !!

I have been discussing about the legality of doing this design with a few web designer friends of mine and have also posted on webmaster forums . As of yet , people are of the idea that since the liability of the content - design and text copy , is of the owner of the domain , it should not concern me , as the designer. However , as the designer it should be in my best interests to let the customer / site owner know that he is opting towards probable legal hassle. My friend suggested that i get at least a email confirmation , if not in writing , that it is by his idea the design is being cloned . Furthermore, he also suggested that I should not include a link back to my website / portfolio page - proudly claiming that the vbulletin clone design was done by me / us, thus alienating ourselves from any complaints or such.

The site is not yet launched, and I am planning yet another redesign. Yes, I am talking about Phpcafe only.

Reason:

1. I do not want much text in this site , I have way too much text in Websys and Featuredhost website already. I want this one to be block block , see - buy - download kind of look.
2. This current design was my own idea only and i don’t like it much :p. I have seen the new design and i think its going to be much better
3. we now almost have a new logo
4. Wordpress has come out with 2.3 final , so the templates have to be upgraded any way

Hopefully by the time the new design is up, I will be able to start the Downloads section here as well.