Wordpress Tutorials
December 18, 2008 by Efficient Entrepreneur
Filed under For Newbies, Programs
WordPress Tutorials: Fluff 5%, Meat 80%, Gold 15%
If you’re looking to really learn Wordpress, and you’re new to the web you are going to need a very patient and encouraging professor. Better yet, why not learn from one that is truly passionate about the web and web newbies and may even build your first blog for you. Welcome to WordpressTutorials.com created by Sherman Hu.
What is a “Wordpress” and why do I want to learn about it?
But wait?! You’re not even sure if you need Wordpress, or maybe what a “Wordpress” is? Wordpress is free, open-source blogging software. You can go to Wordpress.com right now and start a blog on their blog network. You would have an web address like myblog.wordpress.com. Or you can visit Wordpress.org and download the program that you would then add to your server and create a dynamic or simplistic or artsy or corporate blog.
Blogging once had a pretty bad connotation. In fact, some of you may still cringe at the thought of blogging and that it’s a frivolous waste of time or only for the hippies and political activists out there. But in fact, blogging has turned into one of the most powerful tools for marketing and ranking in search engines. It’s a great way to build an audience and connect with not only friends and family but clients and business partners. If you’d like to see Wordpress flex its muscles check out their showcase of sites.
So why is Sherman Hu’s Wordpress Tutorials worth my time?
Sherman Hu’s WordpressTutorials.com offers videos, a community forum, Podcasts, teleseminars, and video conferencing to teach you everything you need to know. The site also is divided into 5 volumes to cater to beginner users through advanced, so you can grow with the program. All that being said, WordpressTutorials.com is not a free program. As of the date of this article, you could choose between a monthly subscription at $9.95, an annual subscription at $97.00, or a lifetime access is $750.00.
The Breakdown:
Meat and Potatoes:
Split into 5 volumes, with videos to cater to the visual learners and process maps to cater to the more logic-inclined, WordpressTutorials.com offers a wide-array of tutorials for all levels and more impressively for all learning styles.
Gold:
Sherman Hu. That’s it. He’s actively involved with all his subscribers. More than one of his subscribers has mentioned his personal involvement in everything from troubleshooting to building their site to trouble signing into the site. I don’t think any other guru gives you this kind of hands-on attention.
Fluff:
Sherman Hu. If you’re like most of his subscribers, or in fact like anyone who has met him you will get sucked in. You’ll see the home photos and videos. If you’re interested you can even subscribe to his twitter and hear about every step of his day. He has 2895 followers according to his twitter counter, just to give you an idea. All-in-all, harmless fluff, but if you’re not into getting to know your teachers, you may be overwhelmed to find you’ve become part of his family.
Zen-Cart
December 15, 2008 by Efficient Entrepreneur
Filed under Free, Other Resources, Shopping Carts
Zen-Cart Ranking: 5 percent Fluff, 80 percent Meat and Potatoes, 15 percent Gold
Zen-cart is one of my favorite shopping carts available on the free market. It’s a Free shopping cart that you need to have loaded on your server. This shopping cart was started almost 5 and a half years ago by a few dedicated programmers who wanted to take the previous master of free shopping cart, OsCommerce and bump it up a notch.
Zen-Cart’s Meat and Potatoes: Zen-Cart offers an easy-to-use yet very effective shopping cart. The installation is simple and straight-forward. The cart works out of the box, but even a minimal knowledge of coding can really make this cart an ace.
- Use Paypal or Authorize.net to accept Credit Card Payments: Paypal and Authorize.net are the 2 most trusted payment processors available on internet today.
- Simple item addition, shipping selection, category creation, sell downloadable products,
- Lots of cool features like: # of guests & members online, Newsletter integrated into the cart, Customer testimonials and specific product reviews, contact us form and more.
Zen-Cart’s Gold: A huge community that not only provides a useful forum that helps you work through all your programming dreams and hick-ups, but also supplies some great add-ons and templates. Easily incorporate all the coolest aspects of the most professional shopping carts. These are some of my personal favorite add-ons: Google Checkout, Live Chat, Easily import all your stock with an Excel file, Tell a friend and an Order Exporter designed for drop-ship shop owners.
But the aspect that really stands out at Zen-Cart’s most amazing feature is called “Developers Toolbox”. I don’t know why every open-source product out there doesn’t include this tool. This tool alone is your flashlight in the darkness that is coding. Anything funny happening on your site, like random text that you want to get rid of, is found instantly in the code. Developers Toolkit then gives you the exact path to the file. You then download it, edit it in a text editor, re-upload it and your problem is solved. Brilliant aspect, and this is the only open-source program I’ve found that has this feature.
Zen-Cart’s Fluff: Zen-Cart seems to have been originally designed for someone looking to distribute music, so there are a few features that just take up space if (like the hundreds of users) you are not selling music.
