OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

In order to create this effect on your image texts, just follow this nice and simple guide to create image reflections in Fireworks CS3.

1. Decide on the text that you want to create a reflection for? We have chosen a nice text saying ‘reflect-me’. Now if you want the reflect to line up properly then make sure you chose a font which has a constant bottom line.

2. Now highlight the text and press CTRL+C (or click the menu option Edit | Copy), creating a new copy of the same text in the process. Be aware though that the copied image will be on-top of the original image, so you will need to select it and then move it downwards. This new copied text (layer) will now become the new reflection.

3. Now we need to flip the new text upside down or vertically. Select the new text and click Modify | Transform | Flip Vertical. Notice how this gives you a non-shaded reflection.

4. Now we need to add a fade in order to make the reflection look more realistic. Select the new text and then click Commands | Creative | Fade Image, choosing the 4th option on the top line of image fade options (see below).

5. And there you have it, a nice reflective image text. Now there are a few more things you can do to the image in order to make the reflection look even more realistic. The first one being to change the gradient so that the bottom of it disappears, and secondly to put a drop shadow onto the original text so that it looks a bit 3D.

In order to successfully create, setup, and run an online shop you will need various things, as well as time, money, and people to build it into what you require.

The way to look at this, is no different to a physical shop. You need someone to create the shop (inside and out), People to work in the shop, and someone to manager its processes and other essentials such as sales and  marketing.

Somethings which should be focused on quite early however include:

1. A set of products, that unless you want to manually enter them, formatted preferably as a .CSV file.
2. A method to ship your customers products back to them, FedEx have a mission statement to ‘get any product anywhere’ – so perhaps that is a good place to start!
3. An E-commerce application, either bespoke, off-the-shelf, or Open Source.
4. Someone slightly, Technical to administrate your new e-shop and its products and customers.
5. Someone very Technical, to analyse, design, and development you new e-shop, and its customers and market position.
6. An Internet Marketing strategy, which obviously includes AdWords and organic S.E.O but also much more than just this.

The hardest part of setting up any e-shop or e-commerce, is working out how, why, where and to who – to sell you products to. This initial analysis is no different to a physical business, except the how part above.

1: Automated Product Uploads (into your e-store)

Most people understand that organic visitors from google is based upon the number of pages in Google’s index, as well as 99.8 other things.

Therefore with each product that you add to your e-commerce store actually become from 1-5 pages (dependent on your chosen e-commerce application or provider), it becomes obvious that owners or operators would want as many products onto the system, in most cases as quick as possible.

Automated product uploads offers this kind of result being able to upload thousands of products per second, rather per week or month!

Additionally when you have complete understand (and hence control) over the code that produces this effective, it can customised easily and powerfully, only being constrained by the programmers SQL knowledge.

The steps involved in achieving this result, or rather writing this code, is done via:

• Write .CSV file, formatted with rows full of your product information, and a zip file full of your images (correctly sized and named), with their image names referenced in the .CSV file so both items can be linked.
• Read in .CSV (ignore top header row) and build into a PHP 5 Array.
• Open DB Connection to E-Store DB, and use appropriate functionality to insert key DB Table updates.
• Confirm writes and inform user, close connections, etc.

Its that simple! If you need help, get in touch.

2: Your chosen E-Commerce Application

This the second most important thing after your products, it underpins how effective your attempts will as well as will dictate costs, both operational and technical.

Be wary of any person that states (or asserts) that “N is perfect for you to sell online and WILL get X, Y, and Z”. In our experience each new e-commerce store will need to be looked at, not to mention the market you aim to enter as well as the processes involved to get you products sold and to the customer.

All of this should be carefully looked at with stake holders and full requirements being created. Many business and therefore people fail with e-commerce for reasons that include the most basic business skills such as business and marketing plans, not to mention customer and market analysis.

Like any shop, if people don’t walk past your shop then they definitely wont shop, and if they don’t shop they definitely wont buy! SWOT analysis and a basic marketing plan is ESSENTIAL  if you want to survive and grow in the online marketing place, with documented grows at over 20% per anum.

The Cake PHP Cheat Sheet fully documents the current API for Config, Model, Controller, Component, and Global Functions.

At a glance it allows you to see all the functions, parameters, configurations, and other essential elements required to program using the Cake PHP framework.

Download the CakePHP Cheatsheet (pdf)

If you’re new to Cake PHP then you may not be aware of the best way to get your application setup, in terms of structure, and later creating new Models, Controllers and Views. Now is the time to start leaning about Cake Bake, the automatic tool for setting these up.

If you come from a Ruby on Rails background or have just used it, then you will be aware of how much time these types of tools can save you; The Cake PHP Bake tool is no different. Essentially the Bake tool is a script that you will find within your installation of Cake PHP.

Now unlike most modern (web based) administration scripts, this is one is completely text based, like DOS (Windows before it came Visual), command.com our Unix – but don’t worry it is easy to use and in most cases just requires you to answer yes or no.

Getting Ready

The first thing you will need to do is get your version of Cake PHP setup and ready to, in terms of CSS files and the end Database that you want to use. If you new to Cake PHP then you may not know that when you first go to the new installation you can see pretty quick if it has been setup correctly or not. If all went well with the paths then you will see nice graphics explaining this, and once you have setup the database correctly the page will confirm this too.

Remember (for now) that all the Models you are going to have in your application need to have a corresponding table within the database. Also remember that the table should be Singular, whereas the Model needs to be Plural, in terms of the names you give them; this often trips up new Cake PHP coders.

Part one Installation:

1. Download the main zip (compressed) file from: http://wordpress.org/download/

2. When you have  downloaded the zipped file, save it to the correct location (in relation to where it will be going on your hosting server).

For this example installation, we will upload it to our main root folder (e.g. public_html).

3. As soon as you have confirmed that the zip file has been uploaded, to the correct location – Log into your CPanel account, and then click: the File Manager option.

4. In CPanel / File Manager – select the zip file (which in this example is in the foot folder, or public_html). Then click the un-pack option from the top horizontal menu.

5. The CPanel File Manager wizard will now unzip the Word Press zip files into the same directory.

Part two installation:

6. Close the File Manager page, and instead open the MySQL Databases page.

7. In the CPanel MySQL Databases page, you will need to create a new database, user and password. Wordpress will install and create the necessary DB tables within your new DB using your new user and password.

8. Once you have done this you will need to give permission to that User to use your new DB; So choose that User and Database you want to authorise access to, and then click Add.

9. Download and Change the name of the file: wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php, updating your correct User, Database, and Password details within the file; Once done then re-upload this file to the sever (with the new name).

10. If you need to move files around, this is the time to do this, including removing any container folders in order to thave your new Word Press website run from the root or main folder (public_html).