Bluelounge End of Summer Deal
For anyone who curious to know what kind of products that Bluelounge make, now is the best time to take a look or even buy one!
By inputting this coupon code during checkout, you wil get a $10 off any purchase of $50 or more: LD2008
This code is only valid until Sept 1, 2008.
CSS Reference
There are too many good CSS out there, possibly thousands, but I still want to share my most useful links. I always look that these sites first whenever I need something new or face some problem and need solution.
- Listmatic - Using CSS and a simple list to create radically different list options
- CSS Table Gallery - A showcase of how CSS and data tables can work together to create usable and pretty results
- Position Is Everything - Explain some obtuse CSS bugs in modern browsers, provide demo examples of interesting CSS behaviors, and show how to “make it work” without using tables for layout purposes
- A List Apart - Explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices
- CSS tests and experiments
You can share yours too..
Ajax Loader Image Generator
Always having a hard time to find the perfect loader for your AJAX scripts? Then you need to bookmark this site: Ajaxload.
Not only it provides a few dozens of animated GIF image for your loader, you can even customize it background and foreground colors. Nice!
SSH Cheatsheet
Funny, I never really took any use SSH until recently. So I have a whole lot of commands to learn and remember, and I am lousy at remembering! Good thing I found this Common SSH Commands page. All the basic commands and short description for each of them. Definitely helpful!
App of The Week: AppCleaner
AppCleaner by freemacsoft
Price: free
If you always look for small Mac apps that you hope they can make your everyday tasks easier and cannot resist to try them one by one, then you will need AppCleaner. It is a small app which allows you to thoroughly and easily uninstall your apps.
I used to leave so many small preference files scattered on my Mac because I would download, install and uninstall apps that did not really work for me. With AppCleaner, it makes everything more simply and safe.
Review: Shopify
Website: www.shopify.com
Rating: 
A shop in minutes, a business for life. JadedPixel, developer of Shopify, is certainly not exaggerating its tagline, you really can set up your online store in minutes.
It all started a year ago. I had zero experience on working with e-commerce system. I always thought it had to be customized by someone who had absolute knowledge of programming that supports the system, whether it was PHP, ASP, anything. Surprisingly, it only took a few days to fully understand how the themes work and I could create a customized theme in a few days. Note, you can start building your online shop using the provided default themes.
Customization
Just like stated above, it is super easy to learn and create a new theme. It uses its own Liquid templatling system for dynamic content, but believe me it is easy to understand. Of course you still definitely need to have at least an understanding of (x)HTML, CSS and basic programming algorithm.
You only need to modify 6 or 7 theme files and one CSS file, compared to dozens on most of other similar systems. Worth to note, it is also convenient to add a customized JavaScript modules without interfering with the rest of system most of the time
Backend Admin
This is also one of the biggest point why we love it so much. The look and feel is very clean. AJAX support makes it possible to drag and drop to sort your products.
Shopify's Admin interface screenshot
Support
The first place you need to go when you are experiencing any problem or bug is their forums which can be a good or a bad thing. The good thing is there are so many nice and skilled people on the community that will gladly share their knowledge and help you out. The bad thing, you just sometimes need a direct respond and explanations from the developers and it may take a while to get their attention.
Improvement
Shopify is growing along with your business. There are countless updates and new features that have been added since the first time we use it, and they plan to keep on doing it. Although there are some features that we wish they should have added, but not yet. They listen to their customers, so I am sure one day they will be added.
Price
Shopify offers a very unique pricing. You only pay a very reasonable monthly fee plus a small percentage of your transaction fee (ranging from 0.5% to 2%). This makes sense, if you want to start your first online business you possibly do not want to spend hundreds or thousands of dollar each month. You can check their detailed pricing plans here.
Final Words
I have worked partially with other systems since then, nothing is as simple as Shopify. It really stands with its concept, to make everything as easy as possible. For a small and medium business, Shopify is perfect! But if you need more detailed features like bulk shipping update, more flexible coupon code creation options or customer membership, you might have to wait until they include them to the system.
Restart
I couldn’t believe it’s been almost a year since my last post. A lot has happened and I’ve learned so many new things. So now I will try to post more things here, share stuff that I think is interesting.
In addition, I completely change my blog theme. Thanks to Brian Gardner for this free & simple, yet super nice, Silhoutte theme.
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Checking Regularly
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