Formula 1 Online Racing Game

Posted on January 19, 2012 by admin

I came across this formula one racing game a while ago and have got to say that it’s hooked me big time. Totally addicted. And the best thing is it’s FREE.

After signing up you’ll find yourself with the foundations in place to build a huge formula one outfit just like real life but without having to invest millions upon millions of serious money. You start with a team headquarters and 4000 bolts (currency for buying extra upgrades later on).

With your 4000 bolts at hand you can get the bear essentials to start forula one racing. To hire a driver will cost 2000 bolts but when you purchase him (or her) you dont have to pay any salery or bonus, that’s it, you have one team driver. Look after them and train regularly and your could end up with a formula one driver who will live on the podium.

Next thing, and pretty importantly, is to buy your first race car. At this stage of the game the only car you can get is a class 1. Theres six to choose from and each one has it’s own characteristics such as good at cornering or braking, acceleration or speed. It’s not really a great concern right now as you can progress through the game to customise the car to your liking. The initial car will cost 1000 bolts which leaves a balance of 1000.

That’s the bear minimum you need to get started but I would recommend you also purchase a race machanic for the remaining 1000. After each race your car will take damage, from other drivers or from the track itself. The machanic will repair your car and make it ready for the next race.

Your driver has one action he can perform a day (the server stats reset at midnight) The driver can either enter a race, repair a car himself, train to improve their stats or simple take a rest.

Each driver has a sponsor who rewards your team daily sponsorship money depending on his race position. The rewards wont be great to begin with – 50 bolts per race (a podium finish gets a nice bonus though) but you can let it build up and get some nice extensions and uprades for your team.

All in all a great addictive game and highly recommended for all F1 fans.

To join in the fun just click the banner below and you never know. We could end up racing each other. Leave a comment with your team name and I’ll keep an eye out for you.

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Who’s to Blame?

Posted on December 17, 2011 by admin

Going through the checkout at the local supermarket, the young cashier suggested to the elderly lady that she should bring her own eco-friendly carrier bags as the plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The old lady apologised and explained that they didn’t have this ‘Green’ thing in her day.

“And that’s why we’ve got the problem now” the cashier responded. “Your generations just didn’t care enough to save the environment for the future generations.

And she was right – Our generation didn’t have the ‘Green’ thing in our day.

Back in ‘our’ day, we returned the milk bottles to the milkman, and took the empty lemonade and beer bottles back to the shops. They would then be sent back to the plants to be washed out and steralised, ready to be refilled so the bottles could be used over and over again. So they really were recycled. But our generation didn’t have the ‘Green’ thing in our day.

Back in ‘our’ day we would walk up endless flights of stairs, because we didn’t have escalators in the big mega stores or supermarkets or office buildings. We walked to our local shops and parks and didn’t climb into a 300 horsepower four wheel drive monster car every time we needed to travel more than 50 yards. But our generation didn’t have the ‘Green’ thing in our day.

Back in ‘our’ day we would wash the baby’s nappies because we didn’t have the luxury of the throwaway kind. We dried our clothes on a washing line and not in the electricity-guzzling tumble driers constantly burning up 240 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our day. The kids got hand-me-down clothes from older brothers or sisters, not brand-new must-have clothing. But our generation didn’t have the ‘Green’ thing in our day.

Back in ‘our’ day we had one television set, or radio in the house, not a TV in every single room. The TV would have a small screen the size of a handkerchief, not a screen the size of a county like Devon. In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric gadgets to do that for us. When we packed fragile items ready to send in the post, we used old screwed up newspapers to cushion them, not polystyrene or Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then we didn’t fire up an engine to burn petrol to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working hard so we didn’t need to go to the health club or gym to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But our generation didn’t have the ‘Green’ thing in our day.

Back in ‘our’ day we would drink from a tap when we were thirsty instead of using a plastic cup or bottle every time we wanted a drink of water. We would refill writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen made from plastic and we would replace razor blades in razors instead of throwing away the entire razor when the blade was blunt, to replace it with another throwaway one made from plastic. But our generation didn’t have the ‘Green’ thing in our day.

Back in ‘our’ day we took the train or bus and the kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their parents into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one or two plug sockets in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power over a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerised gadget system to receive a signal beamed from a satellite over 2000 miles away in outer space just to find out nearest McDonalds.

Isn’t it sad that the current young generation blame us and talk about how wasteful the older generation were just because we didn’t have the ‘Green’ thing in our day?

Please pass this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person.

Remember:  Don’t make old people angry.

We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to pee us off.

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Our new Kitchen Experience

Posted on December 6, 2011 by admin

We’ve lived on a housing association estate for just over 15 years. Nice place, nice neighbours where we are. Most of us have been here the same amount of time from when the houses were first built back in 1996.

Everything was great. All new houses suffer a few niggles in the beginning but it was simply a case of pick up the phone and everything would be dealt with in a totally satisfactory manner. No problems anywhere at all. Maintenance guys were always friendly and helpful and we were on first name terms with a lot of them. Some would even pop in for a chat and a cup of tea when they were passing.

As the years started passing, so for one reason and another, probably our country’s crazy economy, the housing association decided to get shot of their maintenance staff and start contracting repairs and jobs out to other companies.

This wasn’t too bad and we soon got used to the new faces arriving on the estate. The central heating and plumbers were great. Good fun, nice and friendly and the work was excellent. Again, first name terms, which I always think is important, and some good acquaintances were made.

Two or three years ago the contracts must have been renewed again. We started to notice a change in things being done. The new companies weren’t the friendly happy people that used to come. They weren’t chatty, they didn’t like to talk. Fair enough though. They just weren’t outgoing people like we were used to. Nothing wrong with that and the most important thing was that the work was always completed.

I’ve always been really laid back about things and will happily plod on and have a laugh. Hardly anything annoys me at all but the one thing that does get my back up is lack of organisation and negligence. Ok, that’s two things but if you put them together I’m going to try and make that count as one.

Ok, so when the boiler needed it’s yearly service, the man came out scratched around a bit, poked his finger in little holes, checked the flu thing (however that’s spelt) gave us a nod and left. All good I assumed.

A few weeks later the hot tap in the downstairs toilet decided to not turn on anymore. Such a shame because I liked that hot tap. But again in all fairness, and like it’s friend the cold tap next to it, it was 15 years old and looking at them they had got that crusty chrome look. I changed the washer to no avail so decided to give the housing association a ring.

Hello, who turns up? It’s the central heating engineer who serviced the boiler. He took a look at the tap and said yep, that will need replacing. No problem I thought and left him to it.

Lots of banging later and he announces that he’s all done. I give him a big hearty thanks and see him to the door. It wasn’t until I needed a wee that I noticed the slight difference in the taps appearance. Now I always thought you bought taps in pairs. Obviously not anymore because I’m looking at a nice shiny hot tap that’s right next to a dull crusty 15 year old cold tap. Kind of looked a bit odd but there you go.

I guess when the now plumber guy has to replace a cold tap somewhere he can charge for a pair again and hope for the best. It’s so cheeky it’s admirable. It’s my own fault anyway; I should have checked it before he left.

Time passed nice and quietly after that until rumours started spreading around the estate that the housing association were installing brand new kitchens for everyone. Cool.

I liked our kitchen; well it was more a kitchen/diner. Nice size with lots of cupboards and we’d looked after it. When a draw came loose, I was there to fix it. I redid the mastic when that was looking a bit shaky and all in all the kitchen served it’s purpose well. But like everything else in the house, it was 15 years old so a brand new kitchen would be welcome.

A letter arrived announcing that a surveyor and planner would be visiting to discuss a plan and what colours we’d like. True enough, on the date, two men arrived armed with tape measures, paper and swatch colour things. Nice couple of blokes and easy to get on with. One measured everything and I mean every little gap. The other showed us a good sample of colours for worktops, cupboards and draws. We were told that they were going to replace the entire lot, electrics, plumbing, lights, even the flooring. My wife explained that we had changed the lights and she wanted to keep them as they were. The same with the floor. We had laminate flooring right throughout the downstairs without any joins in any of the doorways so she wanted that to stay as well. No a problem she was told.

Everything was great. We, no, my wife decided what she wanted and off they went. We were told that the planner would be back a week or so later to finalise the plan and we needed to sign it before any work would be carried out.

A couple of months ago news got round that the first kitchens were to be started. Very exciting times. The work was started right down the other end of the estate so looked like we had a bit of a wait but that didn’t matter, we hadn’t even signed the paperwork yet. No rush.

Slowly news started to filter through that although the work was being carried out, it could have been said that the workmanship should have may be been a little better. Cupboard doors not closing properly, poor tiling, scratched worktops to name a few. Then the stories progressively got a little worse and worse as the days went by.

Finally a letter arrived. We opened it to find that our kitchen would be started on the 30th November 2011. Sadly we weren’t that excited after all the stories we’d heard. I assured my wife there wasn’t anything to worry about because the man still had to come back with that plan we had to sign, we’d talk to him about our concerns then.

As the day neared, still no plans, our next-door neighbour took the decision to phone the guy on a mobile number she was given from one of the kitchen people down the road. Nothing to worry about he assured her, they had a few problems with some workmen but they had been replaced and everything was sailing along. With that news, we waited, but the stories from within the estate kept coming.

Still no plans to sign by the 28th November and news was still confirmed that they would be starting all ours on the 30th. On the 29th I decided to clear the kitchen and for added safety, I started to take the old kitchen out myself leaving a nice tidy pile of boards in the middle of what was our trusty and faithful kitchen.

The 30th arrived. I got out of bed and stood in a bear kitchen, all bar the tall larder cupboard and the sink with unit underneath. I didn’t really want to touch that because of all the pipes. Suddenly at 8:15 a knock at the front door. “I’ve come to rip out the kitchen” this guy announced in broken English. I proudly pointed at my pile of neatly stacked wood in the middle of the room but it seemed to go unnoticed as the Polish chap made a direct line to the larder cupboard. I ran what he said through my head again – I’ve come to rip out your kitchen – I would’ve so preferred him to have said, I’ve come to carefully dismantle your kitchen. Turns out they’re actually called rippers and being polish it was probably easier to say what he had said.

No worries though. Even though the conversation was strained, he was a nice chap and got on with the job in hand and cleared everything away. Just in time for the electricians to arrive.

Now the electricians were nice guys. Good sense of humour, liked football, drank tea, always up for a chat as they worked. We all got on well and it was a good day. They stayed until their job was finished and all the wiring was replaced and all the new sockets were in position. They even changed the fuse box to a brand new up to the moment one. Very tidy guys as well.

Thursday the 1st December came and went with nothing happening. We were told the plasterer would be coming next and he does four kitchens at a time so as there were four in our little row it was understandable. He only had to fill the holes where the old sockets were and tidy up the plaster round the new sockets, plus plaster where the electrician had chased out for the new cables and fill a few holes in the walls where the new cables came through. No worries, leave that till Friday the 2nd.

The following morning came and a knock at the door signalled the show was back on the road. It was the Polish kitchen fitters. Wow they were keen but I told him the plasterer hadn’t been yet. I kind of made out through the language barrier that he was on his way, and sure enough, no longer than a few minutes later he arrived.

The fitters started unloading their tools into the kitchen and unloading our new kitchen into the garden. Meanwhile the plasterer was busy making good everything. (or so we thought haha). No sooner had the plasterer left, the fitters started to get busy and put the kitchen together. We left them to it as they seemed happy enough and I think deep down we both accepted that we couldn’t really understand each other that well. Saying that, they were indeed nice blokes and I was more than happy to leave them to it.

While all that was going on the plumber arrived to disconnect the old sink and connect up the new. We were having new traps as well (whatever that is) and all new pipe work. Everything was going nice and smoothly and I even started to wonder what all the fuss was about from the stories that had been coming our way about the bad workmanship.

They guys worked had and late into the day. It was nearly 7 pm when the plumber finished off the last of his work and one of the fitters announced that they had finished everything. I had to admit, when first looking at all the new cabinets and worktops; they had done a blinding job. We were well impressed. The main fitter even had a proud smile on his face, which was actually quite sweet, and I don’t often say that being a pure bloke myself. But yep, they were happy and we were happy. After seeing them on their way I went to the chip shop. All good.

It wasn’t until I went back into the kitchen with a full tummy of chips that I noticed a bit of plastering around a socket may need some attention. We then noticed that a few other sockets were slightly out of being completely level. I think the plasterer may have been in a bit of a rush or he didn’t have a trowel so used a catapult.

We started to wonder what on earth they had told him to do and all we could think was that he was told to fill up every hole. I think someone must have spotted him and told him not to take that literally while he had started on the plug sockets.

It’s pretty much like that all the way round although these are the pick of the bunch.

We’re not sure if he just didn’t notice the holes in the ceiling or if he just spared them the same fate as the others. We’re still trying to work out why the holes in the ceiling appeared in the first place.  A neighbour suggested it was when they put the light up. But the thing that makes it so amusing is the light was already there.

One suggestion was that they were trying to shoot someone upstairs but I think that was taking it to the extreme.

When the neighbours finally stopped laughing I decided to phone the site manager to ask if he could take a look before the tiler came. I did feel sorry for the poor site manager, he sounded so under pressure and totally stressed. I think anybody would be with the amount of complaints he appears to be receiving. And as I suspected, he didn’t turn up to take a peek.

He didn’t turn up again today (6th) so I gave him another ring. He sounds even more stressed today. But we just wanted confirmation that the sockets would be ok before the tiler comes. Not 30 minutes later the tiler arrives to take a look and great news. The tilier says yes, he can sort it all out as he gets to them. He’ll take all the sockets off and put the plates back using longer screws. So all good news then.

We’ll wait and see what it looks like when it’s tiled. Watch out for an update any day soon.

Well the following day (7th) passed peacefully. Sadly that was because no one turned up. And no one turned up again today (8th) which means that the kitchen hasn’t progressed one tiny bit since last Friday, six days ago. Remember me saying that we were laid back and easy going? I think my wife’s being tested a little bit now, whch is fair enough. If no one turns up tomorrow they may be hearing from us, and if not us then definitely my wife, who can scream really loud. Trust me on that one.

Friday the 9th. Lucky them. A knock at the door this morning and the tiler announces his arrival. We let him in, show him the wall and say Good Luck. The guy didn’t want any tea at all. He had so much to do that he just wanted to get it done as quick as possible and move on to the next one. We kept popping in and out and after what must have been about four and a half hours he had finished.

Both of us prepared for a good bout of laughter followed by a ‘this workmanship has gone on long enough’ but no! The tiling was amazing! He’d done a fantastic job. I asked him about the walls and round the sockets and he just said “nahhhh I smooved it all owt for ya overwise it would’ve been a bit rocky.”

Cracking job and totally transformed the units. He’s coming back Monday to grout them up. So he said anyway. More than happy again at the moment. Even though it’s taken two and a half days work stretched out over 10 days.

Friday 16th December and we’re all completely done. How would I judge the outcome I hear you cry? I’ll tell you this. It’s far greater than we were expecting. After all the rumours we’d heard in the build up to our kitchen being started, I as well and truely impressed with the outcome. It looks fantastic. I’d give it the maximum score.

Yep, I’d agree that if you looked hard enough you’d find a few faults but I’m the kind of guy that would expect that anyway. I’m a perfectionist in everything I do but I know if someone looked hard they would find something to question. They’d have to look seriously hard at my work haha but I bet something could’ve been done differently. It’s human nature. But on the whole the kitchen in superb and get’s a great big thumbs up from me.

Now the task starts to begin putting everything back. And then finally, we can get the decorations up.

When I get chance sometime tomorrow I’ll hopefully get some final images uploaded.

 

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Loading Products with CSV – Zen Cart Walkthrough

Posted on December 1, 2011 by admin

Working with CSV files and Easy Populate.

This is pretty straightforward once you understand the principles of how it works. I think it puts a lot of people off because they are presented with a downloaded file that they’re told works best in excel (spreadsheets) and when they open it for the very first time they see just columns of numbers, letters, and all sorts of good fun stuff. Then there’s the three big scary letters to contend with – CSV.

I’ll explain what it’s all about and how to load the file into your website in nice easy layman terms. When we’ve finished you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about. Come with me.

Let’s first create a typical example of how we would find ourselves in a situation having to work with a CSV file.

You have created, or bought a website which is empty, nothing, no stock, no products listed to sell, no images, no hope. You spend sometime trawling google and after search and researching you find a supplier of products that you’re interested in selling. Excellent, good stuff and you burst into song bellowing out Oh Happy Days.

Then suddenly while reading the suppliers site, right under the heading – Start selling our Products in a few minutes – you find yourself being slapped clean in the face with the dreaded virtual wet fish. For it is now that you read the words, download our CSV file here.

The file downloads and we open it in excel only to be presented with column after column of jumbled letters and numbers.

First of all, you’ll be pleased to know that you can ignore everything on the spreadsheet right now other than what’s in row 1 for each column. We need to see if the CSV file contains the Zen Cart headers, which will work with the Zen Cart’s Easy Populate module.

The Zen Cart Easy Populate module is perfect for dealing with importing CSV files. Quick and smooth. If you haven’t got it installed or don’t know how to install it then just drop me an email or a comment and I’ll happily install and test it for you for a very moral fee.

So back to our CSV file and what do we see in row 1 for each column? It’s quite possible you might see something like Model, Name, Title, Image and so on as the column headings. If so then sadly the file isn’t going to import straight into your Zen Cart database. But don’t despair. Oh no, it’s far from the end of the world by any means. All we have to do is convert the CSV file to work with the nice and straightforward Easy Populate module. Hooray. Another verse of Happy Days is needed.

There’s a couple of ways to do this and my preferred version is maybe one of the longer routes but it is the most safest, and any errors will be easy to trace and rectify.

Here’s how to do it. You need to get all the correct column headings for the Zen Cart Database first. Two easy options available. One would be to create and download your own file using your Easy Populate module in your admin panel. Once downloaded to your desktop simply right click on the file and open with excel. Highlight and delete every single row below row 1. That will leave you with all the column headers in an order that is perfect for Zen Cart.

Option two would be to download a zip file that will contain a spreadsheet with just the headers required in row 1. Simply extract the file from the folder and open with excel. Download Header File Here.

Whichever option you’ve decided upon, you’ll end up with a file looking something like this:

Now go back to your original downloaded CSV file from your supplier. It’s time to play detective and match up the columns.

Look at the column heading you have on your suppliers name and compare them to the Zen Cart headings on your blank spreadsheet. The object is to work across the blank spreadsheet and insert all the column information into it.

Your first column will be v_products_model. This is the column that will contain all of your products model numbers. They can be anything alphanumeric (a mixture of letters or numbers or even both) but the important thing to remember is that every product must have one. Without a model number the easy populate import will throw out an error and the product won’t be inserted into the database.

So armed with that knowledge, copy the cell with the word v_products_model or highlight, right click and copy the text v_products_model. Return to your suppliers CSV file and look for the column that would relate to the products model numbers or code or whatever. It could be named model, model number, model id etc. Study hard and you will find it. Once you’re happy you’ve got it, paste your copied text into row 1 so that your replace the supplier’s model header with the Zen Cart model number header (v_products_model).

When that’s done click on the letter that relates to the entire column for the suppliers product model number. Clicking the letter will highlight the entire column. Still hovering over the letter, right click and select copy then return to your Zen Cart spreadsheet and hovering over the letter A (v_products_model) column, right click and select paste. BAM!!! You now have the entire product model numbers under the correct heading.

You repeat these steps all the way along. Copying and pasting the appropriate data into the correct columns. If this is the first time you’re doing this then read the previous four paragraphs again and just substitute the words for the correct column.

Let’s have a quick discussion on the Zen Cart Column Headings. If you don’t need to know this information then just skip past the next section.

v_products_model – As previously talked about above. This column will contain all the model numbers for your products. Every product needs a model number for the CSV or Easy Populate file to work. No model number will equal an error and the product will be skipped during the import procedure.

v_products_image – In this column will be the location of the image main file for the product. When the product is displayed on your website, Zen Cart will look for this file name in your image folder because it’s the image that relates to that product number in the same row. If this field is left blank then no image will be displayed for the product.

v_products_name_1 – This will be the column that contains the product name.

v_products_description_1 – As you’ve probably guessed, the product description will be here. The column can contain straightforward text or html descriptions. If the column is left empty then the row will still load without an error, it just means that your product for this row wont contain a description making selling the item a tad more difficult.

v_products_url_1 – This will display a URL (website address) of the product in question. It’s rarely used unless you have good reason to point the website viewer to the products manufacturer for additional info or example. Some will even delete this column completely from the spreadsheet. It can be left blank without generating an error.

v_specials_price – If the product will be listed on your website as a special offer then the special (discounted) product price will be entered here. Again, no probs if the entire column is left blank, or deleted.

v_specials_date_avail – (available). This column would contain the date for when the special offer product would become active on your website. The default format for the date data would be mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm but again, no harm will be caused if this column is left blank or deleted from your file. These columns are like, if you have relevant data then stick it here, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.

v_specials_expires_date – Again, another column that’s not needed but if you have a date for when the product will finish being offered as a special then this column is the place to be. Same format as above. If you skipped the above explanation then shame on you.

v_products_price – Here’s an important column. This will contain the selling price for your products and the price that will be displayed on your website. Just include the price in numeric fashion. No currency symbols for this.

v_products_weight – Some suppliers shipping costs are based on the weight of the order. Your product weight will go in this column. It will be numeric just like the price column. No symbols or letters such as grams, kg etc. If you decide to use the weight method as shipping then please remember to adjust your shipping module option accordingly to reflect these.

v_date_avail – (available) Alrighty. If the product in this row isn’t available for sale yet from your supplier then this column would contain the date information when it would be. The default date format is the same as it is for ‘v_specials_date_avail’ as discussed above. If you didn’t read it then off you go and do so. Hey, don’t moan at me. I want you to learn and absorb this stuff. The best way to do that is by reading everything that I’m typing. I’m not doing this for fun you know. Why am I doing it then you ask?  Don’t know really, I enjoy it plus I suppose deep down I’m hoping you’ll buy me a beer (see top of side column, but not now, do it later when you’ve finished this).

v_date_added – This column will relate to the date the product was added to your website. It can happily be any date in the past, yesterday, last week, last month etc. Some suppliers list this column while others don’t. You can enter a date in here and relate to the help file for your particular spreadsheet on how to duplicate a cell for the entire column if you don’t want to spend too much time on this one.

v_products_quantity – This is another important one to have info in. It relates to the amount of stock your supplier has of each product. Ideally this column needs data. If each cell has zero then the product will automatically be disabled on your website and will either show the Sold Out status or wont display at all.

v_manufacturers_name – This column will contain the manufacturers name for each product the row relates to. Pretty useful if you’re selling branded items and a lot of your websites visitors are coming from search engines where they have searched for the manufacture such as Ford, Prada, Channel, etc. (first names that came into my head there). The column can be left blank. All that will happen is your product wont be connected to any manufacturer or brand name in a manufacturers product list, if you used it on your website. No probs, all cool, happy days.

v_categories_name_1 – Here’s an important one that will actually throw an error on the product if it’s left blank. Quite simply, this is the name of the category that the product will be appearing under. If your suppliers suggested category isn’t one that is already present on your website then it’s no problem at all, Zen Cart will just create it. Obviously, if the category is already listed on your website then the product is simply added to the category.

v_categories_name_2 – This column will contain the name of any sub category for the mother category. It breaks down the category tree into branches. Your main category name may be say; watches and the category may have sub categories names men’s watches and ladies watches. So the sub category that the product fits into is named here. Remember, the main category still has to be named in v_categories_name_1.

v_categories_name_3 – As above. A sub category of your sub category if required. Again, it’s quite harmless to leave the sub category cells blank but the main category (v_categories_name_1) must have a name declared.

v_categories_name_4 – As above. Another sub category branch.

v_categories_name_5 – As above. You’ve guessed it.

v_categories_name_6 – As above. There are 7 of these on a default file.

v_categories_name_7 – As above. Here’s the seventh.

v_tax_class_title – If you’re new to this or unless you have reason to change this then the default can be entered here which is: –none–

v_status – This column tells the database if the imported product is to display or not. The entry for each row here should be 1 or 0 (one or zero) 1 means yes, display the product while 0 mean no, disable the product.

EOREOR – Each row needs to end with these six letters, especially if you will be saving your converted CSV file as a text file. Every single row, even the column headings row 1 must end with EOREOR. Refer to your spreadsheet help files to find a quick way to duplicate all the cells in the column.

Ok, so lets say your copying and pasting is finished and you’re confident and happy with everything you have. All the relevant columns have their information and it’s time to proceed.

Select File in the top horizontal menu and click Save File As… In the box that appears enter something that’s easy to remember and relate to in the File Name box. In the Save As Type box select Text (Tab Delimited) and finally click Save. I normally save the file to my desktop rather than the default location such as My Documents. I just find it easier to find later.

Whoo Hoooo! It’s time to load our CSV (or text) file into our database.

Ok let’s skip off to your Zen Cart admin control panel and navigate our way to the Easy Populate module under the tools heading.

Whether you managed to get a Zen Cart compatible CSV file from your supplier or you converted your suppliers CSV file to suit Zen Cart using the correct heading, we will only be concerned with the top box on the Easy Populate module menu named: Upload EP File.

To the right of the top input field click the browse button and navigate your way to your saved text file you created earlier; or the downloaded suppliers CSV if it was Zen Cart compatible. With the file location safely in the box click the Insert in DB (database) button and sit back and watch the show.

Depending on how big the text file is depends on how long the file takes to load in but you usually won’t have to wait longer than a few seconds for the outcome. All being well you should see a list or results appear below the form menu. If it is the first time you’ve run this file from your supplier then the results should appear in green. That is perfect. Blue will still be ok, it just means the product is updating. Red is an Oh dear. Red will mean that the product hasn’t been loaded but you should still see a little message giving the reason why. It will be up to you to correct the error and load it again or ignore the product until next time.

When the file has loaded, you’re error free, the products are in the database then it’s time to have a check on the website and see how it looks. Examine what you see, can you see the new categories, sub categories, are the new products displaying, as they should? Are the prices correct? Check everything and then double check.

If it’s the first time you’ve run the file then the one thing you may not see are the product images. This is quite common and nothing to worry about. Remember the v_products_image column information only tells the database which image file name relates to the product. It does actually give the image file to the database. Oh no, these have to be uploaded separately, normally via FTP, to the servers image file in the root directory.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if your supplier has a CSV file available then there will also be an Image Pack available for download. So if you haven’t done so already then nip back to your suppliers download pages and grab the image files.

Extract and open the image folder and using your favourite FTP software transfer all the images to the appropriate locations in your websites images file.

When the upload has completed you can return to your website and all being well the images will be proudly displaying with the appropriate products.

Sit back in your chair and bask in the glory that your have loaded all your suppliers products to your Zen Cart website. You have done very well. Finish the Happy Days song.

I hope you have found this article helpful and interesting.

Many many thanks for reading.

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Zen Cart Help – Walkthrough – How to Add Additional Product Images.

Posted on November 28, 2011 by admin

I’ve been asked a few time how to do this when using Zen Cart so thought I’d add the method I, and many others use for adding additional product images to the product info display page.

Alrighty. Most of this method involves renaming images but we’ll discuss why as we move along.

So let’s say we’re going to display all the product information on our website for a caravan. We’ve got all the details written down and listed on the page and everything is looking good. Our next step is to upload and display that all-important image of the caravan. Easy enough, we’ve taken a good quality sized photo and it’s uploaded through the admin panel like a dream.

You’ve checked the product and everything looks fantastic. But wait… a picture of the inside of the caravan would really help this product. Not only one picture but maybe two, three or even four additional pictures. Hell, we might even want seven.

Here’s how to do it.

The first thing to make a note of is the name of your main image for that product. So let’s look at the initial image you want to use for the Caravan that will be displayed in your website’s listing page. Let’s say for this example that the image is named: newcaravan1.jpg. (It’s always good practice to have your main image, or any image named something that you can easily relate to, but for this exercise we’ll just go with the newcaravan1 name).

Now let’s say that the caravan in question has a nice modern kitchen area, a beautiful bedroom and the proudest shower cubicle anyone ever did see. Well worth including additional images to help show off this fantastic caravan’s features online.

With the images safely created and stored in your camera you can then transfer them onto your pc’s desktop of image folder. The chances are your camera has named the images 001.jpg, 002.jpg, 003.jpg and so on just adding +1 as you go along.

If you fire up your trusty ftp software and upload these as is to your websites image folder all you’ll have is the images sitting there doing nothing, waiting for something which will call them to be displayed by that name – 001.jpg and so on. They’ll be sad and lonely and just waiting in anticipation for something to do. Not so bad if they’re going to be used as a main image one day but if they’re images of the inside of a particular caravan then it could take a while before they’re actually called upon directly with those generated names the camera gave them. So before you actually upload them to the server you would ideally rename them and relate them to the master image for the caravan in question. In our case – newcaravan1.jpg.

How Zen Cart will use them as addition product images is quite straightforward. It has a product that is using newcaravan1.jpg as the main image and will then look for other images starting with newcaravan1 to also display with the product (caravan) on the website.

To let Zen Cart find these extra images for the product you simply rename them to newcaravan1_1.jpg, next image would be renamed to newcaravan1_2.jpg, next image for the product would be newcaravan1_3.jpg and so on and so on. Main image name then underscore 4, underscore 5, underscore 6 all the way along.

As long as you keep the main image name in its entirety at the beginning (newcaravan1) then any additional images with the underscore and number (newcaravan1_1, newcaravan1_2 etc) will be displayed along with the product.

When you’ve renamed all the images for that product (caravan) then upload them to your website’s image folder on the server. And that’s all you have to do as Zen Cart will find them and display them on the product info page with the main image.

Renaming the images this way also helps to easily see which images will go with which particular product. Your next products main image could be newcaravan2.jpg. Additional images for the product would then be renamed to newcaravan2_1, newcaravan2_2, newcaravan2_3 and so on.

I agree this method is a little tedious but it’s the safest most stable way to rename and organise images when there are more than one image to be displayed for a product.

I hope you found this small article helpful.

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Zen Cart Help – How to Space the Category Product List Page

Posted on November 23, 2011 by admin

This is one I’ve been asked about a couple of times. I’d be inclined to agree that with some product images, the products list can look a bit pants when they’re all touching each other. Zen Cart is a fantastic bit of kit for an ecommerce software solution but there are a few tiny episodes that do need sorting out on the design and layout side and the product list page is one of them.

Just look at the one on the left compared to the one on the right. Which one will your customer think looks nicer and easier on the eye?

Here’s how you can space them out a tiny bit to make them look neater.

Real easy. Fire up your faithful FTP software and navigate on the server side to includes/templates/template_default/common/tpl_tabular_display.php and download it to your desktop. If you’re using a template override then follow the path to includes/templates/Your_Template/common/tpl_tabular_display.php

Once downloaded, open in Notepad (or php editing software if you use it) and browse to the freshly downloaded tpl_tabular_display.php file. Click Open and scroll a little way down, (it’s not a big file) and look for:

<table width=”100%” border=”0″ cellspacing=”0″ cellpadding=”0″ id=”<?php echo ‘cat’ . $cPath . ‘Table’; ?>”>

All we need to change is the zero on cellpadding=”0″. Just change the zero to a 10 (or just stick a 1 in front of the 0 and pat yourself on the back for a cunning move) and it will create a 10 pixel space all around the image and product descriptions ect.

Your line of php code will now look like this:

<table width=”100%” border=”0″ cellspacing=”0″ cellpadding=”10″ id=”<?php echo ‘cat’ . $cPath . ‘Table’; ?>”>

You may think 10 pixels wont be enough, but listen up tiger. Don’t forget that there will be a 10 pixel space all round the image. So you’ll have 10px at the top and 10px bottom. So in between two images you’ll actually have a 20 pixel space. Just right.

With that little titchy witchy edit done, save the file and close. Now return to your ever-loving ftp software and upload the edit file from whence it came. Job Done.

Award yourself 3 points and bask in your own glory and satisfaction. YEAH!

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Website Link Exchange for Beginners.

Posted on November 21, 2011 by admin

I sometimes get asked to write an article or a How to…. guide on something to do with websites. Little bit horrified when I was asked to rustle up one for exchanging website links. But here it is. I admit I’m not an expert in this particular field so it’s open for anyone to pick upon any bad advice. I hope someone else finds it useful anyway.

One of the most important parts of running a website is maintenance. By this we mean maintaining the work you, or you’ve had done, to get the website launched and ready for the big World Wide Web. You’re ready for action and you want your website to fly like a bird into the massively beautiful blue sky.

There are several factors involved in maintaining your website such as adding fresh content regularly, submitting sitemaps to the main 3 big boy search engines, Google, Bing and yahoo, writing and updating titles and descriptions with clever keyword enhanced text and so on. There is one thing that should be worked upon and maintained, and is viewed as a huge positive step for any website, and that is exchanging, or swapping links.

Link exchanging is referred to by several different titles – link swapping, resources, banner exchange etc but it all boils down to the same thing. Someone else’s website will place a link to your website on their web pages and you will do the same for them. So in effect, you’re swapping links, exchanging links.

So, with that little introduction out the way, let’s look at how to go about swapping links  with someone.

Alrighty. First thing to do is think about your link that you’ll be offering. Well not just one link, you should be armed with a battalion of text links all stored safely in a file somewhere on your pc, and we don’t mean a police constable here, that would be pointless, plus he would be cross if you covered him in bit of paper.

Wait a minute. What’s that ‘text link’ mentioned above? Yep, text link. Many will consider this to be the stronger of the two most popular options. The other being banner link. Text link is exactly that. A sentence of text about your website (or product) with a link to your website home page (or product page). More about a product text link later. One step at a time youngster.

A banner link is an image that your want to use with your website domain name attached to it.

Now, let’s have a quick chat about how search engine spiders and robots work. They do a pretty fine job of imitating humans, that’s for sure. BUT, they’re not humans. They can read text and understand what it says but they can read images. Oh no. No matter how clever they think they are, when it comes to an image, a search engine spider will only see a picture. They wont be able to see any words written on the picture. You can add what’s called alt text to an image for the spiders to look at and that would help but it sadly doesn’t really beat good old-fashioned text. You can say anything with text. You can say it with meaning, say it with love and say it with pride. But you write that on an image, the spiders and bots aint gonna see it. No ma’am.

Okey dokey. We’ll have a look at writing a killer text link. A real blinder. Here we go.

Now the object of this text link is two-fold. We’re going to plan for it to be displayed on someone else’s website. So we want two things to happen. One, we want their website readers to find it and fingers crossed, to click the link and visit our website. Two, when the search engine spiders and bots crawl their website, we want them to find the link, like the link and give our website a big round of applause.

We need to plan and think about our link before we go anywhere near offering it to other website owners. There’s no point saying: “Hey, wanna swap links with me?” and having nothing to swap. That’s just silly. So we have to go in forearmed with our already prepared killer text link.

Writing a text link is like making love to a beautiful woman. Actually it’s not. Nothing like that at all. And what would I know? I’ve been married 25 years and have 3 kids and I still haven’t made love to a beautiful woman. Enough about me anyway, ok, text link time. We’re going to have a few words to explain what our website is for and to capture the readers attention.

So before we put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard. Lets have a look at our website and look at our keywords. We’ll want to include those words in our short text. So if we have a website that’s selling let’s say, football club merchandise, our keywords could be something like – football, gifts, memorabilia, souvenirs. Remember, these are just examples. Check out google’s keyword tools to find some good one’s for your website. Look for how many times the words are searched, how many results they return. Find a good balance as well. You ideally want to find keywords that are searched regularly but don’t produce pages upon pages of results for that keyword. Don’t forget what our mums always taught us. It’s better to be a big fish in a little pond than a little fish in a big pond. Unless there’s a cat watching you. Yeah, she didn’t add that bit did she?

Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah, keywords for our text link. So in our example for our football products website we have chosen – football, gifts, memorabilia, and souvenirs. So let’s write a small text link using those words.

Football Gifts and Merchandise for worldwide Soccer supporters. The Latest Football Souvenirs, Football Merchandise and Memorabilia to find the perfect football Gift Ideas.

There we are. We’ve written two sentences using 23 words in total. Nice, short, easy to read and good use of keywords. Let’s also look at the keyword frequency. We’ve used ‘football’ four times, ‘merchandise’ twice, we’ve included memorabilia, souvenirs, gift and gifts, we’ve also included other good words like soccer, supporter and gift ideas. And they’re all wrapped up in the football theme. If you’re not to certain what’s going on, just take your time and read the last three paragraphs again and hopefully you’ll start to get your own idea’s on how to write a text link for your website.

The three things that other website owners will need when exchanging text links would be a website title, description and url (your website domain name). We’ve already written our description up there and it’s kept locked away nice and safe. The next two parts, title and domain name are pretty straightforward but the title should still be given some thought. After all, it will be the eye-catching words that will be looked at first.

Here we would use four, five or six words to power home what our website is about. Include your best keywords that you want to be found under here. In our example we’d be looking to use something like – Premier Football Merchandise Gift Shop.

BAM. Five words telling the reader and search engine spider exactly what the website is all about. No stop words like ‘and’, ‘the’, ‘or’ ‘if’. We’ve used five words to make a key title.

Our final remaining steps will be to add our three bits together and make it pretty ready for offering it to our website owners. The normal format would be to write it as title first, description second and domain name third.

Premier Football Merchandise Gift Shop.
Football Gifts and Merchandise for worldwide Soccer supporters. The Latest Football Souvenirs, Football Merchandise and Memorabilia to find the perfect football Gift Ideas.

http://yourdomainname.co.uk

Perfect. Ok, easy tiger. Before we go charging off looking for websites to swap links with (more about this later) we need to get the next stage of our planning in place.

We need to make our very own website link page. At the moment you need to have somewhere to place your link partner’s own text link. It’s good practice to display their link before asking other website owners if they would display yours. It can honestly sway their decision if you have taken the time to already add their link. Nine times out of ten you will always find other website owners link details on their own link pages.

When you create you link page include your own link details at the top of the page. Include information based on how you yourself would like to receive link exchange requests. Don’t worry about it too much right now if you’re not sure. Read on as we’ll discuss link pages in a short while and you’ll get ideas on how you’d prefer to do yours. So, in the immortal words of Clair Raynor in the Always advert from years ago – Let’s press on.

Ok, now let’s take a look at the most common different ways that we would exchange links with another website.

When you find a website that looks good to exchange links with (we’ll discuss how to look for a promising website later) you’ll be presented with a method of how to submit your link. Let’s have a chat about the three most common one’s.

Ok, you’re on the website and have read the submission information and rules and one way that you’re asked to submit your text link information is via email. Nice and straight forward this one. You’ll probably find a link to click that will have their preferred email address to use. So get an email sent off to them, be polite and to the point. Points to remember in general is that people don’t really like being called dude by someone they’ve never met, so starting an email with Hi Dude will soon end up in their deleted messages after those two words are read. Ask; don’t order that they must swap links with you. Ask them if they would be interested in a link exchange, include your link title, description and domain name and also where they can find their website link on your website that we quickly mentioned earlier. Include the link to your website links page where they can find their link and make sure it’s clickable for their own ease. This is called the reciprocal link.

When the email has been sent, make a note of it and if you haven’t heard anything after 7 days, have a look for your link on their website link pages. If you can’t find it anywhere then remove their link from your link page. Don’t waste time chasing it up.

Another method to submit your link is via a form. Many websites use forms for submission, as you’ll discover. Again, nice and straight forward as you just have to fill out the form fields and then wait patiently.

They’ll be pretty much self-explanatory but one thing you might stumble on is a field asking for the reciprocal link mentioned in the last paragraph. Always a good idea to do this before submitting the form. Just minimise the page you’re on and get their link details added to your website links page. Check it in a browser to make sure it’s done correctly. Then, and only then, return to their submission page and fill out the reciprocal link field. It can sometimes also be known as the returns link field.

It’s important to get the reciprocal link done before submitting the form. If the website owner checks that link and can’t find their link details, that will be it, game over. You wont get a link partner on this occasion. So please take my advice on this one. Don’t submit the form and think you’ll add their link later. You’re asking them to swap links, they’re not asking you, so get your side done and completed first.

Like the email query, if you don’t hear anything after 7 days then just simply remove their link from your link page and move on.

Here’s a bit of technical fun. Sometimes you can have an option to submit your source code in a link exchange form. Let’s have a quick look at how we would do that.

The source code they’re talking about would be a coding language called html (hyper-text mark-up language) All we need to do is write our link title, description and domain name in html and we’re done. Don’t panic, I’ll explain how you can do this.

Open notepad and type out, or copy and paste this text…. (Using our example above)

<strong><a href=”http://www.yourdomainname.co.uk” target=”_blank”>Premier Football Merchandise Gift Shop.</a></strong><br />Football Gifts and Merchandise for worldwide Soccer supporters. The Latest Football Souvenirs, Football Merchandise and Memorabilia to find the perfect football Gift Ideas.<br /><a href=”http://www.yourdomainname.co.uk” target=”_blank”>http://www.yourdomainname.co.uk</a><br />

If you’ve never seen that before, that code snippet will probably scare your pants off but read on as I’ll explain what each bit is about.

Our link title, description and domain name is here in red. In notepad, just edit those red bits with your own title, description and domain name.

<strong><a href=”http://www.yourdomainname.co.uk” target=”_blank”>Premier Football Merchandise Gift Shop.</a></strong><br />Football Gifts and Merchandise for worldwide Soccer supporters. The Latest Football Souvenirs, Football Merchandise and Memorabilia to find the perfect football Gift Ideas.<br /><a href=”http://www.yourdomainname.co.uk” target=”_blank”>http://www.yourdomainname.co.uk</a><br />

With this code your title will be in bold text and will stand out nicely. That is caused by the <strong> html tag. We’re also making the title a clickable link to your website by adding the a href=http://www.yourdomainname.co.uk before it and before the domain name at the bottom. The target=”_blank will tell the browser to open the link in a new window when it’s clicked.

So once again, just simply open notepad on your pc, very carefully edit the parts in red with your own details and then copy and paste the code into their source box if they have one.

We’re now ready to enter the stage and start looking for a good website to link to. We’ve got our link page ready for adding reciprocal links and we’ve got a text link prepared to offer to other website owners. So let battle commence.

With our keywords we chose earlier for our example – football, gifts, memorabilia, souvenirs, merchandise – we’ll take a selection of these and open up the google search. For this example let’s use ‘football gifts’ and see what results are returned.

In a UK search football gifts has returned 12,100,000 results so there appears to be a lot of action going on for that search term. A Football Merchandise search in the UK has returned 5,070,000 so more than half the competition has disappeared for this search term. Football memorabilia has returned 2,130,000 for the UK so half again and football souvenirs have given us 210,000.

Looking at our results football gifts looks like it’s going to be a tough one to start with. Football Merchandise is worth a good look at after we have a few links returning from other websites so football memorabilia and football souvenirs search terms would be our best place to start out for our example.

So now we’ll take a closer look at ‘football memorabilia’ results and see what websites tickle our fancy in the links department.

Before you go clicking on any old website in the results, first take a look at your own website stats. What is your google page rank, how old is your website, what is your website’s Alexa Ranking? Find out the answers if you don’t already know. When you’ve got that info to hand, start looking at the websites listed in the organic listings on google. A good tip is to try and only exchange links with a website that has better search engine stats and presence than yours. Linking to these websites will drag your website up the search engine results in effect. That’s the idea anyway.

So looking at the very first website in the organic listings on google UK for the search term ‘football memorabilia’ we’re looking at a website with a page rank 4, an Alexa rank of 332260 (not brilliant, but definitely not bad) and a web age dating August 17th 2000 (excellent). This website would be considered well worth our time to have a look at for swapping a link with. Let’s hope they’ve got a links page. We’ll click the link and look for anything that says they have a link exchange program active.

Sadly not. Big affiliate program but no link exchange links. A pity because it had some good search engine stats. Not to worry, let’s instantly move on. This time, we’ll look at .co.uk domain names with better search engine stats then ours.

Here we are. Sitting third on page one of google UK for the search term that we’re looking at. A UK domain name with a page rank of 3, an Alexa rank of 2653893 (it doesn’t make me jump out the chair but it’s a better rank than we’ve got so still a positive). No web age, but we can get an idea of that on a whois if need be and look for the registration date. Let’s give this one a click and see if we can spot a links page.

We’re in luck! The website has a ‘links’ link near the top of the page (a good sign as the search engine robots will see it a lot). If you want to follow this discussion really closely, the website I’m looking at it www.footybits.co.uk so just open a browser window and we’ll walk through this together.

As I type this article, their ‘Links’ text link is near the top of the page in what is called the websites header section. This is a big positive as it means that the link to their link exchange page will probably be available on every single page of their website. We’ll give the ‘Link text’ a click and see where it leads us.

We’re now on a page with link categories so we’ll have a look down the list to see what category we would best be suited to. Our website in our example is selling football merchandise so we should ideally be looking at the category on this page named ‘Football – Shopping’. Let’s follow that link and see what gives.

It’s worth while mentioning that there we ten categories on that page. It’s generally considered that link pages with less that 20 links per page is good. So the page having only 10 category links can be considered as a good sign right now.

Ok, we’ll looking at the ‘Football – Shopping’ links page. There is only (as we speak) 7 active links on this page, all in banners. To me, I’m thinking that because all the banners are the exact same height and width, they are added by the website owner afterwards to keep the page nicely presented. If we submit our link to this page then we’re asking for it to appear among these other 7 links so making it 8. That’s still more than half the accepted 20 links per page rule. A good sign.

One more thing to look at is how many clicks did we make to get to this page. That will give us an indication of how deep into the site the search engine spiders will have to go to get to this page. I counted two clicks, one from the home page to get to the link categories page and then one clicking the shopping link category to get to this page. Two clicks aren’t bad at all. The stats would have to be really good for three clicks in and any more than that, you would have to ask yourself if it was really worth it. But here the two clicks in are good so next we should look for the info on how to submit our link. Normally the info will be on these pages somewhere.

Down the bottom of the shopping category links page there’s a bit of vague information about adding links and their spam policy. Just below that is a button graphic titled ‘Add your Own link’ which looks promising. On clicking that we should expect to be asked for our website link title, our description and our url, (website domain name) it will probably also have their link information hat we can add to our links page and there will be a field for our link page address where they can view their link.

Ok, that’s what would be presented to us most of the time but on this occasion we are presented with a page asking for our website description and our domain name. We can look on this as a very promising site if our link is accepted as it will generate a one-way link back to our website. They’re not asking for you to add their details first or even at all for that matter. From what we’ve discovered in our discussion here this is considered a definite to apply for a text link to be added. So we could fill out the two fields here, description and domain name, and hit submit. Then return to the google search page to start our task over again.

Let’s take a break for a minute now and look over some good key points that we’ve discussed so far.

Plan wisely when starting a campaign for link exchanges for your website. Look at your website and compose a small description which includes your chosen keywords. Then write a title that is eye-catching to not only humans but to the search engine spiders and robots as well. Try to avoid excessive use of stop words. Stop words are words like and, or, if, the etc. I don’t know why they’re called stop words but they are so just go with me on that one.

Make a web page on your website that will be solely for displaying website links. You don’t really need to sink hours of time into in the beginning. As you look at other website owners link pages you’ll soon see a regular format for how they are laid out and it will help your thoughts grow for how you would want yours to be displayed. So you can then go back and tweak your page design every now and then.

When applying for a web link via email remember to write the email as though you were receiving it. What would you want to read? How would you like to be approached for swapping links with someone? A well written email will help towards you link being accepted on their website.

Do some good research into looking for websites to swap with. Only look for websites that have similar content and ideally have a web presence higher than yours. There is no benefit at all to your search engine optimisation efforts exchanging links with a website that promotes central heating boilers when you have a lingerie website yourself. It’s mostly considered a good rule of thumb to only link to websites in your chosen market.

Remember that some website owners you approach wont always respond. So if you have added their link to your web page then just remove it. I wouldn’t worry about chasing it up. Leave it 7 or 8 days before you remove their link. But hey, if they don’t respond it makes you appreciate the one’s that do more. Love is all around.

Link directories and link farms can be tempting to use but do try to avoid them. It wont help your rankings and can even damage them. Try to keep to manually searching for good linking websites and you’ll do well.

Another episode that can happen, and can be a little annoying but we just have to move on, is when filling out a website’s link submission form only to hit submit and find that the form generate an error and doesn’t send your info to the website owner. It is frustrating but don’t let it get you down. You certainly wont be the first or last person this has happened to. It’s happened to me loads of times and I’m sure it will happen loads times more. Just look at it as if there’s an error on that page, there could be errors elsewhere on that website so probably not a good one to link too anyway. If you’ve already added their link info to your website, remember to remove it straight away on this occasion.

One last thing before we close is to check your accepted links often. Make sure they’re displaying on the websites you know you’re linking to. If you find that your link has suddenly been removed then check back once more after a couple of days as you may have caught the site during a maintenance period. If you link still isn’t visible and you had a reciprocal link on your page then just remove it.

Before we finish this discussion for good lets just have a look at targeted product links. This is where instead of using a text link for our website, we’re actually using a text link for a range of products or a particular product.

You may have a product on your website that generates good interest and sells well so you decide to promote the product using a link exchange method. It’s very similar to the text link we composed earlier except it’s for one of your products. The same principles are used with deciding your title and description – good choice and use of keywords for your chosen product – and now instead of the website domain name being used for the url, you would now submit the product page on your website so bringing in any traffic to that actual page.

This method is proven and known to increase sales for that particular product.

That’s it for this article. Very best of luck with your link exchange campaigns and we all hope it’s very successful for you.

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