I run a number of other mini blogs out there which aggregate data from one or multiple sources. I could never get WP-o-Matic or WP Robot to run cron jobs correctly in cPanel. No matter what I did I always got the error: No such file or directory.

A simple fix to this error is adding the code ” wget -O /dev/null ” before the URL of your cron job when typing it into cPanel.

With just the URL cPanel does not know which program to use.  In this case ‘wget’ is the program. Since the URL actually returns no output (for the user or for wget), wget wants to write an empty file to your hosting home directory. The ‘ -O /dev/null ‘ option tells wget to write that file to ‘nowhere’ so you don’t get a bunch of empty files cluttering up your home directory and using up inodes.

Happy Automated Blogging!

Happened to be up late on Labor Day working on projects. Went to my beloved Google to look up some Magento question and WHAM bouncing balls over. Head over to Google.com or check out the screen shots below:

The balls as the page loads

The balls at rest - reading "Google"

Anyone know the purpose? Haven’t seen anyone mention why/what on Twitter. All in all pretty neat use of code. Maybe they are just showing off?

Just found this great clip of me on Fox 18 way back in 2006. I was interviewed by Morgan Fogarty on the subject of File Sharing Security. Talk about a throw back! I had turned 21 a few months before this. Check out that long spiked hair(it still looks the same, but shorter!)

Wanna feel a little old? I saw this and had to share!

Magento’s out of the box WYSIWYG editor annoying adds a line break after each time you press enter or return. I found this to be very frustrating when I was creating descriptions and even more annoying when I was copy and pasting descriptions. No other eCommerce platform or WYSIWYG system I’ve worked for did this odd extra spacing. In the end its quite an easy fix:

Open File: /app/design/frontend/default/-YOURTEMPLATE-/template/catalog/product/view/description.phtml

Locate this code:

1

<?php echo $this->helper(’catalog/output’)->productAttribute($this->getProduct(), nl2br($this->getProduct()->getDescription()), ‘description’) ?>

Replace it with this code:

1

<?php echo $this->helper(’catalog/output’)->productAttribute($this->getProduct(), $this->getProduct()->getDescription(), ‘description’) ?>

The code which causes this extra spacing is nl2br(). So if you need to adjust it in future versions or other fields just find the nl2br() call.

This week I was able to attend a brand new Internet Marketing Conference called Search Exchange here in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was almost certain I was not going to be able to make it due to a recent change in employment and a long time planned vacation. The stars aligned and my new employer EDreamz was great enough to send me. Typically these events are not in my agenda. My attitude is pretty negative due to many worthless conferences in the past. In this case I happen to know the organizers through local events/meet ups. These guys are top notch so I knew it was going to be something great.

I was out of town I majority of day one and half of day two. Managed to arrive just before Joanna Lord took the stage and quickly(she talks fast!) fed us full of information about Social Media Tools. It was an action packed presentation at the ‘right’ pace(fast talkers=no time wasted.) Next up Jason Keath showed us some cool unicorns and a neat looking bull. He also shared some really valuable information on having a real revenue plan for social media. Then a unique character named Neal Rodriquez dropped one of the best presentations I’ve seen in my entire conference career. He explained viral traffic, digg, crack heads, teabagging, and flying on private plane then flying Jet Blue. Yes.. All of those subjects plus a ton more of craziness. Really enjoyed listening everything he had to say. The last presentation I was able to hear this day was Chris Winfield who shared information on ROI in Social Media Marketing. The whole group headed to Wild Wings Cafe where we shared some great wings and fun stories. As the night dawned on us we moved to Whiskey River where the bar was open and people were really getting started. Sadly I had work in the AM so I cut the night short before things really got out of hand!

Day 3 I was unable to make it in the AM due to some client work. I slipped in just as Dan London was explaining in-house struggles and hilariousness. I could really connect to this as I have worked in a small business where no one else had any internet marketing(or marketing in general) skills. Kate Morris gave a grand overview on PPC which I really enjoyed. All the information was very simple and probably familiar to most, but it was a great reminder of the obvious. Really got me thinking and rethinking some of my accounts. I’ve already implemented changes based on her presentation. Benjamin Rudolph gave us an overview of how to use Analytics to Optimize Landing Pages. This is something I have tons of experience in, but just like in Kate’s PPC overview I was able to spark new ideas which I plan to implement soon. The last presentation I was able to catch was Rhea Drysdale on Online Reputiation Management. I took away boatloads of truly useful information from her. ORM is something I have very little experience in. I thought I understood it/had the basics down, but her presentation really opened my eyes to what it really is.

I wish I could have made it every day for all the presentations, but the ones I attended made it worth every dime spent. I give huge props to Robert Enriquez, Keith Schilling, and Roy Morejon for putting on something amazing.

Looking forward to the next Search Exchange already!

Following my Twitter stream I saw a tweet by @Shopify that said one of their stores have customers texting in questions. This struck me as a bit odd at first, but after reading it’s implementation I find it quite genius.

The company name is Baby Melons. You can see right up top on their customer service page they have a number ready for your text question. Here is the best part about it:  you could have this setup for free and implementation is just signing up for a Google Voice number. Post the number on your website. Then receive and reply to text messages in the same way you do emails.

This is something that as a customer I would do just to try. If the experience was good I would be even more likely to purchase from the company. On the business side a customer service rep can only handle one phone call at a time. In theory now the rep could now handle multiple clients at a time with more time to respond.

Benefits: Save labor expenses, give better responses, show off a new side of technology to customers.
Negatives: Some customers may not understand how to text.

I’m always looking for more  innovative ways to close sales or communicate with customers. Do you have any? Comment below.

Direct link to the original blog article: http://blog.shopify.com/2010/5/5/let-them-text-us-for-customer-service