This step-by-step beginner’s guide takes the pain out of using the world’s best open source e-commerce solution. It guides you through installing the software, configuring your store, populating your store with products, accepting payments, maintaining relationships with your customers, and fulfilling orders.

As your online store grows, you can be sure that this robust e-commerce system will handle your needs. However, getting started with Magento can be difficult without the right guidance. This book provides that guidance in the form of a step-by-step approach to build a simple and effective online store. As you follow along with the guided lessons, you will see how an online coffee store is created from the ground up.

The Cover

Book Description

• Step-by-step guide to building your own online store
• Focuses on the key features of Magento that you must know to get your store up and running
• Customize the store’s appearance to make it uniquely yours
• Clearly illustrated with screenshots and a working example

Free sample for my readers

The publisher sent me a sample chapter (.PDF format) on “Categories and Attributes” that will teach you how to add products to their online Magento store. You can view or download it here.

Where to buy?

You can buy or read more about at PACKT Publishing.

- Designers struggle to create a theme, install the CMS, create a database, change the settings, upgrade to the newest CMS version, teach the client to use it…

- Clients haven’t got a clue about using a CMS and complain about the cost.

Both sides are unhappy!

What’s the solution?

My employer ask me few days ago: “I want something simple to implement and easily editable by anyone. Even a ten years old kid should be able to edit his site. Do you know something?”

I answered: “Yep! CushyCMS”

CushyCMS is the perfect solution for most of small businesses or individuals sites. Designers code their sites as they normally do in their web editor but add an extra class name “cushycms” to each of their editable elements. Clients/editors edit the content in an easy to use interface right from their browsers. It can’t be easier! And it only takes 5 minutes to set it up.

Don’t believe me?

Read the tutorial below and tell me if you still disagree!

Step 1: Add a new site

After you registered, add a new site to CushyCMS. You will be prompted to enter your site url, and FTP details:

Step 2: Control Panel

When you are done, you will be redirected to the control panel. You can Assign a new page or add new editors to site:

At the bottom, CushyCMS gives some basic instructions:

You first need to let Cushy know what parts of your page are editable. You do this by adding a class name of cushycms to each of your editable elements. Example:

Step 3: Assign a new page

In “Sites & Pages” click on “Assign page to site…”. You will be redirected to a new page:

Choose a page from the list and give it a name. Click “Assign page”.

Step 4: Class name cushycms

Open your page in your web editor and add the the class name cushycms to your editable elements (DIV, p, h1, h2…):

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<h1 class="cushycms">Just 4 simple steps...<br />...to turn a static webpage into a powerful sales tool.</h1>
<div class="cushycms">
<h2>1.Contact Us</h2>
<p>The first step in your process will be to contact our company. We will discuss your specific ideas and needs, match them with our product offerings and outline a timeframe for completion. During this time we will analyze and go over variations in your script design, budgetary matters and offer guidance so that your project will be excitement with anticipation.</p>
</div>

Upload the new page to your server and go back to your browser.

Step 5: Edit Content

In control panel, in the section “Sites & Pages”, click on the page you want to edit. It will open the visual editor:

Edit your page and save your changes. Click “View live page”. The page should reflects your changes.

Links

Visit Site »

Still not convinced? Watch the video

Every once in a while a web developer contact me asking me to contribute to a new CMS or review a brand new one. It has never been so difficult to select one especially when there are so many excellent CMS on the web to choose from.

If you don’t know which one to choose, OpenSourceCMS lists and rates some of the most popular Open Source CMS software. This would be a good place to start. You can try online demos here. As an alternative, you can also compare some popular CMS at www.cmsmatrix.org.

As for myself, I use WordPress for most of my web projects for its simplicity, flexibility, number of plugins and its large community always eager to help you. I also use Drupal or Joomla if I need a more robust CMS.

Here’s some factors to keep in mind when choosing a CMS:

• Can non-technical users easily create/update content without any HTML knowledge?
• Is this CMS easy to install, configure, manage and learn?
• Do they have a large community?
• Do they have a support forum and do they get back to you within a few days only?
• What features would you like to use on your site? Can you extend it easily by installing additional plugins/modules or do you need to create your owns?
• Are URL’s search engine friendly? (http://site.com/blog/your-post rather than http://site.com/index.php/?p=210)
• How secure is the system?…

But, let’s get back to what this post really is about: the poll! I’d like to know which CMS you use for your web projects and/or what is your favorite one(s). Take the poll below and make your vote count!

(You can select more than one answer).

Conclusion

The results of this poll should help you decide which CMS to choose for you next Web project. At the end, the decision will be yours.

(You can leave a comment if you think a CMS is missing in this list or if you need to explain why it is the best CMS ever).
[tags]wordpress, poll, cms, drupal, joomla, modx, mambo[/tags]

But let’s talk about what you can do with BambooInvoice. Here are some of the features:

• Add new client and edit their personal information.
• Create new invoice.
• Send invoice to your client by email.
• Create a PDF copy.
• Print invoice.
• Keep track of overdue invoices.
• Export your invoice data to Excel or XML.
• Currently available in English, French, German, Dutch, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese and Bulgarian… and more languages coming soon.
• Released under the GPL.
• …

And the best part of it? BambooInvoice sits on your server so only you know how much you earn and you can be certain that your clients personal info won’t be shared with a third party.

You can see a demo here with the username “info@bambooinvoice.org” and the password “demo“…

BambooInvoice is still very much a beta version but it is a promising application.

“BambooInvoice is still pre 1.0. There are a few bugs and uncompleted features. It is stable for everyday use, and is growing all the time.” Derek Allard.

Derek Allard is now working on the version 1.0 and confirmed me on his forum he will add new functionalities to it. I can’t wait to see it.

Link: BambooInvoice: Free Open-source invoicing software »