This is a simple fix. All you have to do is navigate into one of the other template folders installed with your base Open-Realty installation.  Copy the next_prev.html and next_prev_bottom.html files.  Upload them in the template folder that is giving you the error.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact us.

This is part three of the series.  In this post we are going to be looking at choosing a web host for your commerce site and an engine to power your store.

Choosing a web host for your commerce site is a critical piece of the puzzle. You want to look fo a reliable hosting partner that will provide you with the maximum amount of up time and support.  When you are comparing web hosts for a commerce site some of the things you should look for are:

• Easy to use control panel (cPanel)
• Secure Server (SSL Certificate)
• Dedicated IP address
• My SQL databases
• 24/7 Support

Web hosts that provide cPanel web hosting also provide an easy script installer called fantastico.  With fantastico you will be able to make a couple of clicks and install a fully working commerce website like OScommerce, Zencart, and CubeCart.  All three of these options are great for ecommerce websites and are commonly used and free.

There are also other options available like Magento, OpenCart, and Prestashop.  You can demo all of these mentioned carts at opensourceCMS.com and choose the one that is right for you.

For this demonstration we are going to use OpenCart, it is a fairly new product but it is very simple to use and install.  You can download the cart from http://opencart.com.  There are installation instructions in the zip file that you download.   Basically you have to create a MySQL DB in your control panel, Ftp the OpenCart files to the server, go to yourdomain.com/install and follow the instructions and fill out the form.

Open cart has a very intuitive admin interface without most bulk and extra features you probably wouldn’t use. My philosophy is to keep your business as simple as possible and focus on providing superior products and support.

You can see the working installation of the cart with the default template that I have installed at http://energysmartpc.com.  When this tutorial is complete the fully working and templated website with the domain name will be for sale.  I haven’t decided on price yet but I will start accepting bids.

The first thing we need to do is find an payment processor.  There are many around the net, for example there is Paypal, 2CO, and Google  Checkout.  These are all a great place to start because you only pay a per transaction fee instead of a monthly fee. I would suggest reading the terms on all of the merchant account providers before you make a decision.

All of these providers will allow you to accept credit cards and bank transfers.  Once your business grows enough and there is some steady income you may look into a merchant account at your bank or authorize.net.  These will save on your transaction fees but there is a larger monthly fee.

Now that we have chosen and signed up for a merchant account it is time to find products to sell.  There are many ways to find products, but we are going to do it without having to put out a bunch of money up front and but inventory.  One way to do this is to look for suppliers that offer blind drop shipping.

Blind drop shipping is when someone orders a product from you, you turn around order the product from your supplier, and the supplier ships the product to your customer with your shipping label on it. Sounds pretty easy doesn’t it?  Well it is.  The best way to go about this is your trusty google search engine.  For example, lets say you want to sell computers and PC parts.  Go to google and do a search for “wholesale computer dropshopper”.  There are many to choose from and you could contact more than one before you decide or you can try a couple.

Some of the reputable PC Distributors that I found are:

Ingram Micro
SYNNEX
Ma Labs
Bass Computers
MaxGroup

When you decide on a distributor you will need to fill out there vendor or partner registration.  You should have your reseller permit to submit with the application.

Now you will need to choose a niche of products.  For this demonstration I’m going to choose energy efficient small form factor computers and parts.

In the next article I will go into detail on choosing the web hosting for your new store and choosing a shopping cart to display all of your products.

In this article series I am going to take you through the steps to create an online e-Commerce business. Some of the things we will go over are:

1. Writing a business Plan
2. Sourcing suppliers
3. Creating a merchant account
4. Purchasing Web Hosting
5. Installing your shopping cart
6. Setting up your shopping cart
7. Adding Products to your Shopping Cart
8. Signing up for an Ebay account
9. Advertise and list your products on Ebay
10. Creating product feeds for Google base/ shopzilla
11. Submitting your product feeds
12. Other Cheap/Free Marketing

Getting Started

When you are planning your new venture you should take the time to draft a blueprint or business plan so that you can keep track of your ideas, structure your business, map out your finances and marketing campaigns.

There are many resources on writing a business plan, but the most definitive guide I have found is at sba.gov. In the Small Business Planner section you will find a detailed blueprint on everything you need to make your business legal and write your business plan. A good business plan is not written overnight and should be constantly revised. This is the time when you should think about what products you are interested in selling.

Now that you have your business plan started you can move on to making your company legal and choosing a name.  I would suggest a name that describes the products you want to sell. If you want to sell computers a name like “Mike’s Computers ” would be more personal than “Super Computer Blaster Deals”.  You also have to take into account the domain name you will be purchasing to tie to your store.  There is an art to choosing a domain name and finding one that is still available.  Check out this blog post on chosing the right domain name.

The next step is to get your resellers permit and a DBA if your are going to use a name other than your own personal name. You can find the forms on your local and state government websites.  Here in ohio both can be registered for $75.00. For the Ohio DBA you can follow this link. OH DBA For the Ohio reseller license you can follow this link: Reseller License OH

This is the end of part 1.  I think I have given you a big chunk to chew on until part 2 is compete.  I hope you enjoyed this article and I hope you will come back and read the next part.

In this article I am going to show you how to move your Wordpress blog from one host to another with the export tool.

You may ask, why would I want to move my blog from wordpress.com? Wordpress.com is a great service but it is limited in customizations you can perform.  Moving your wordpress blog to a paid host will allow you to further fintune a template, post affiliate links, and Google adsense to be able to make your blog generate income.

Moving your content is as easy as going into your admin area and selecting the Tools link on the left side of the page.

Next you need to click the export link under the tools link.  Now you will have the export page open and there should be a link named download export file.

Click the download export link and save the file to your desktop.

Now that you have the exported file you can go to the admin area of the new blog and go to Tools –> Import –> Wordpress and brows to the file on you desktop and click the upload file and import link.

That is it you’re done, congratulations.

When you decide you are ready to move to the next step of your blogging hobby or career stop by Host-REA we have the right solutions to help with your internet success.  We offer Blog web hosting starting at $4.95 per month with 99.9% uptime, instant setup, and fast friendly service.

More info on the methods described are located HERE

A VPS is a fairly recent development in the IT world that has opened many doors for hosting environments that are under utilized.  Basically, it is a dedicated server with several “virtual machines” running on it.  For instance, you can have four different operating systems running at the same time, completely independently of each other.  In datacenters all over the world, this technology has revolutionized how things are done.

In the old days, you might have a dedicated server sitting around using 100 GB of disk space, but only using 2-5% of a processor’s capability.  Not only is this extremely inefficient, as the Internet expanded, having a dedicated server for each client got to be a monumental task for IT teams.  Then the concept of virtualization was developed.

Let’s say you have five dedicated servers in the same situation as above, each using 5% of a processor’s capability and 100 GB of disk space.  With virtualization, you can take all five of those systems and put them in virtual environments on a single server each having a dedicated IP address.  That server would then be using 25% of a processor’s capability and 500 GB of disk space.  To handle  bursts of traffic, there is a buffer built in so if the processor starts getting used more than usual, it can handle the spike in  traffic.

Imagine the savings involved if you could cut out three servers and keep one as a backup.  You just took five individual computers and combined them into one and recommissioned one for redundancy.  This reduces hardware costs, electricity costs, cooling costs, backup power requirements, the amount of space you need in your datacenter, and so much more.  It only makes sense to virtualize servers where possible – this is why the technology has exploded in usage over the past three years.

A huge advantage is that the virtual servers are all independent of one another, so if you need to reboot, you can do so without taking other virtual containers offline.  Since the VPS isn’t aware of the hardware underneath it, it does not have to physically power off the server, it can just erase and reload itself into memory (which is much faster)!

Costs vs. Benefits

There are significant costs in going with a dedicated server, but you must take a look at your particular requirements to be able to make a good determination.  I can not stress enough that it is vital to always be looking forward up to a year in advance to anticipate changes you need to make.  I have been involved in too many projects where the system requirements were conservative and it later came back to bite, ending up costing more than it would have to over-estimate the expansion possibility.

This is only a brief overview of VPS web hosting and and what you need to get started. It is always advised to discuss your requirements with a web hosting provider. A reputed web hosting company would always guide you to choose the right plan for you or your business.

1. Your domain could get blacklisted.
2. Server could crash causing a total data loss.
3. The host simply disappearing and taking your data with it.
4. Non existent support.
   

Not to totally scare you away from free web hosting because it is great for some uses, like testing a site or learning a control panel before you take the plunge into reliable paid hosting. Most free hosts are run by inexperienced people who have signed up for a free reseller account from companies like myownfreehost.net, Resellerspanel.com, or resellercluster.com.

Free hosts are a dime a dozen and come and go like the wind because there is no real accountability for their actions.  Signing up to be a free host is as easy as filling out a form. Getting clients to signup for free hosting is very easy because everyone likes free stuff.  Can you imagine trying to get support questions answered by someone who knows nothing about web hosting.

How do I know this you may ask? I have tried them all, I know how they work and what kind of sites signup for these services. When I was running a free host it was a constant battle deleting adult sites, proxy sites, and just about any kind of militias scripts that people try to get away with running on there free account.

Being grouped in a shared environment with all of these illegal sites can cause IP addresses and all associated domain names to become blacklisted by ISP’s.

Free hosting providers signup hundreds if not thousands of new users every day. They try to cram as many onto one server as they can, causing slow server response and even an overload on the disk drives causing them to fail and lose data.

Most of the free hosting providers generate income by forcing ads and affiliate links into your control panel on your website. It sounds lucrative, but it’s not.  Free hosts make barely enough to pay for the servers let alone a sophisticated backup system with off site storage. Their real income comes from attrition and making your free hosting experience frustrating to the point where they nag you enough to get you to upgrade to a paid hosting account.

When deciding between free and paid hosting there is really only one question you should ask.

How important is my site to me?

Paid Hosting on the other hand is generally reliable and has support channels that are monitored by professionals that care about their customers and their reputation. I’m not saying that all paid hosts are 100% reliable but the majority of them are.

Having a website is a big step for most people and businesses and it is important that your content is secure and support is available when you need it.  A few dollars a month is a small price to pay to have reliable web hosting.

If you are ready to take the next step an have a website to be proud of Host-REA is hear for you.  Please check out our Shared, Reseller , and VPS web hosting options.

Readers of this post can save 20% for life instantly on all Shared Hosting, just use the coupon “TWEET20” at check out.

To solve this website design and maintenance problem, a new technology called a Content Management System (CMS) was developed. A CMS uses a database to store, retrieve, and edit the content of your website.  Each page of your site is stored as simple text – making it easy to edit, search, and manipulate. When someone visits your website the CMS automatically converts your text into the required HTML and Javascript. Furthermore, the CMS database allows for additional features to be easily integrated into the website: user login and passwords, shopping carts, blogs, news feeds, and much more.

Below is an outline of common static website problems, our solutions, and some of the many benefits you will gain once your site has been converted to a CMS.

Common Website Problems

• No updating – static sites are difficult and/or impossible to update
• No search function – users cannot search your site to find the content they are looking for
• Limited features – user login, forums, mailing lists, and calendar features require custom code and are expensive to implement

The Solution

• Install an open source content management system (CMS)
• Move your existing content into it
• Use the CMS admin area and update your website yourself

The Benefits

• The ability to update and change your content anytime using a web browser
• Your site’s content will be displaying using current web standards. This increases accessibility and makes your content more “future proof“
• The CMS has built-in search capability
• Room to grow – Easily add forums and other community building features, set up RSS feeds for your growing content, have users subscribe to newsletters, and much more
• You are not trapped with a single web developer – your CMS is an open source software product understood by thousands of users and developers.

There is a great list and demos of just about every CMS located at: opensourcecms.com

Host-REA specializes in hosting and installing CMS systems.  You can purchase a hosting package for as little as $4.95 per month that fully supports the growing list of CMS’s.  Included with our hosting plans is a one click CMS installer called fantastico.  You can have your CMS up and running in minutes.

]]> http://hostrea.com/archives/107/feed 0 http://hostrea.com/archives/87 http://hostrea.com/archives/87#comments Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:52:17 +0000 Kirk http://blog.hostrea.com/?p=87 Choosing the right domain name is like naming a child, except for the fact that domain names can only be used once. This is very frustrating when you have a great idea to create a website and give it the perfect name, only to find that either someone is already using it or holding it ransom for a ridiculous amount of money.

I don’t know about you but I don’t think it is worth it to spend thousands of dollars to purchase a name. There have been many companies that have simply made up names to combat this, like google and twitter. There are many tools on the internet to aid in the creation of a name like domainsbot, nametumbler, and NameBoy just to name a few. When using these sites all you have to do is type in a few keywords or a phrase and the site will recommend some names.  Next to the name recommendations you will also see if the name is available for registration.

Many people wonder if they need a .com domain.  The short answer is YES.  The .com extension is the most widely known and trusted top level domain. The best case would be to purchase .com, .net, and .org to protect your name.  If you still can’t find a name try using a hyphen.  Breaking up a domain name into two words separated by a hyphen will net you two keywords in the domain name and help with your site SEO.

When you find a name that you love the next step will be to register that name.  There are many registrars out there and most are reputable.  The main thing to look for is if they are ICANN certified.  Two registrars I would recommend checking out are Namecheap and Godaddy.  Both of these registrars have been around a long time, offer competitive prices and have easy to use control panels.

Having your domain name separate from your web hosting is always a good idea unless your host provides you with a free one, then it’s a no brainer.  Keeping the domain separate will allow you to have total control over your name allowing you to point it wherever you want or sell it for a ridiculous amount of money .

]]> http://hostrea.com/archives/87/feed 4 http://hostrea.com/archives/77 http://hostrea.com/archives/77#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:35:57 +0000 Kirk http://blog.hostrea.com/?p=77 Blogging has become very popular over the past few years. There are many options that range from free to an unlimited price. With the introduction of Wordpress and Blogger just about any one can have a blog up and running in a matter of minutes. In this article I an going to skip the free method, I think everyone has mastered the art of filling out a form and and living within the limitations of free accounts, instead I am going to focus on paid hosting and installing your own blogging platform. Doing this will give you the freedom to customize the look and the plugins you use.

Hosting your own blog gives you the freedom to keep your data and easily move it and back it up if you need to . Other advantages are that you can make your blog look the way you want, you can post ads and affiliate links so that you can earn money from blogging and not have ads forced from another company on your site.

Installing blogging software is as easy as signing up for a free account. If you have cPanel with your web hosting, all you have to do is go into your control panel and click on the fantastico link. Once you are in the fantastico control panel you will have the choice of installing three different blogging platforms. I would recommend Wordpress, it has one of the larges support communities and more plugins than you can count. To install Wordpress all you have to do is click on the Wordpress link and fill out a form. When the form is complete click the finish button and view your new site.

After your site is  up and running you can go to your Wordpress control panel located a yourdomain.whatever/wp-admin. From your admin area you can add articles, change the template, manage extensions, and upload media.

To add more templates you will need an ftp program like cyberduck.ch and a template you want to use. There are many free and premium templates on the internet I would suggest googling it. When you find a template you like simply open the ftp program, connect to your server, navigate to the wp-content/templates folder and upload your template. When the transfer is complete go to your Wordpress admin and activate the new theme.

It is very easy to put ads on your wordpress site.  First you will have to go to google and signup for an adsense account and generate your code.  You will also need an adsense module for your wordpress site that can be downloaded on the wordpress plugin site for free and upload it through ftp to the wp-content/plugins folder.  When the plugin is installed go to your wp-admin and paste the adsense code into the plugin.

Hosting you own blog is really no more work than having a free account, but in the long run having full control over your content is priceless. For more information on hosting your own blog please view our blog hosting plans.  You can take control for as little as $4.95 a month.

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