$2,000 in free Advertising coupons

Ok, I know this post is a little out of sorts, but, I do work on the side making money. A lot of times it's making money by doing more programming. Sometimes I wonder if it will ever end. More hours equals more money, but I would like to take a break sometime.

Anyway, I've been doing affiliate marketing on the side to get some residual. After all, I've been building sites for everyone else to make some money, I might as well make some for me.

Well, I just signed up for the new ShoeMoney system (Yes, the guy with the $130,000 Adsense check from Google.) He's got this new video tutorial system that trains you how to make money. Granted it hasn't been long, but after following his blog, I've made $60. I'm looking for the training videos to make me a little more :) He's got a teacher on there that took the class and she's already banking a little extra cash.

Anyway, the system comes with $2,000 in Advertising coupons from Google, AOL, Facebook and many others. Essentially, the program pays for itself. Even if you're just looking to get free ad time, it's worth it. To check it out, go here to take him up on the offer!

Paypal Express setup

Don't forget, setting up Paypal express is not always cut and dry. Check out these instructions on how you can set up your Paypal express checkout. It will take about 5 minutes, but will save you an enormous amount of time trying to guess.

An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that u

If you're having any issues doing an install on Vista and you encounter the error:
An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a connection to SQL Server) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 2)

Try the link below to resolve that issue.

http://littletalk.wordpress.com/2008/03/21/an-error-has-occurred-while-establishing-a-connection-to-the-server-when-connecting-to-sql-server-2005-this-failure-may-be-caused-by-the-fact-that-under-the-default-settings-sql-server-does-not-all/

How to beat adwords

A lot of clients ask how they can make sales but not spend a ton of money on adwords. We've used this product to gain some insight on how to market your pay-per-click campaigns. The main focus is based on eliminating generic keywords and better yet focusing on purchasing clicks rather than browsing clicks.

Don't forget, you know your clients the best. Also, you don't have to send people to your home page. The best marketing is specific and product based. Learn more!

Click here to get

How to add a category

How to add a category

1. Log in to the administrator
   
2. Click on the category tab
   
3. Click on the categories sub tab
   
4. To add a standard category, look to the left of the page, make sure the Static category radio button is selected and click on the new button.
   
5. Voila, you have a new category.
   
6. When filling out the information for a category, fill out all of the general options for the best SEO results. These options include Page title, Meta description, Meta Keywords, and keywords.
   

To add a subcategory

1. Browse to see your category on the category page. For instructions, follow those above.
   
2. Click on the option to View Sub Categories
   
3. Add your category
   

System.OutOfMemory

It's never a good sign when you wake up in the morning and your site says System.OutOfMemory. No one changed anything on the site, so why is this happening?

Quick answer... All of the other sites on the same server running BV Commerce were running fine. No one had made any changes to the site, so why was this happening. We're going to track it to see if it happens again.

Solution: To fix it, we simply refreshed the web.config. I couldn't tell you why, but for some reason, I knew that was the answer.

Testing email blasts

So, you've put a beautiful email together and hit the send button in BVCommerce. Whew, time to start counting the sales. Then, what, the page shows an error message. Now what, did the emails go out? Who received the emails and who didn't?

The answers to these questions depend on how much information hosting will give you. We had some issues within BV2004 and here's how we answered some of them.

BVCommerce sends out emails in alphabetical order. So, we simply set up email addresses for aaa@[yourcompany.com] and zzz@[yourcompany.com]. This still doesn't give you all of the answers, but it will give you some insight.

So, with the emails set up above, you will know if the email went to everyone. Next step. If your page is timing out, this is a setting that hosting can help with. What's happening is your page is timing out and there is a limit. I'm not sure about most hosting companies, but Randy at Globalweb has helped us. I'd give him a call.

The combination of those two solutions has resolved our problem.

Free Shipping - BV5

Common question, how can I allow free shipping on an option.Here goes:

First, create or open your method of shipping that you would like to be free.

Next, Go to the bottom of the shipping option details screen.
Look for the "Adjustements" Section.
In there, you will see a text box titled "Adjust price by:" Change this to say -100. Next, change the drop down to state "Percentage." Now, click on the Save Changes button. That's it.

Please remember to always double check this by running through a sample order. Happy holidays!

Common HTML for everyone

Every once in a while I'm asked how to do some simple changes in HTML. Not all administrative areas allow you to use that nice WYSIWYG editor. So, here are the most common requests:

Text Color - red, green, white, black, etc common colors
<font color="red">enter text here</font>

Line break
<br>

Hyperlink
<a href="http://www.bluecreekweb.com">www.bluecreekweb.com</a>

Paragraph
<p>

Bold
<strong>enter text here </strong>

What to do if you want to unbold something?

Well there are a couple of situations.
If the text looks like this: hello joe, how are you
Then the code would look like this <strong>hello </strong> joe, <strong> how are you </strong>

OR the code can look like this:
hello joe, how are you
hello <span style="font-weight:normal">joe </span> how are you

BVCommerce 5 Paypal expres error

For anyone that has encountered this error, it was fixed in one of the newer patches. The message on screen is stated below:

Since the site has changed and some forum information has been archived, the link has changed. Here is the new link to the fix:
http://forums.bvcommerce.com/default.aspx?f=81&m=43087



Page.IsValid cannot be called before validation has taken place. It should be queried in the event handler for a control that has CausesValidation=True and initiated the postback, or after a call to Page.Validate.[ at System.Web.UI.Page.get_IsValid() at BVModules_Controls_PaypalExpressCheckoutButton.PaypalImageButton_Click(Object sender, ImageClickEventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.ImageButton.OnClick(ImageClickEventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.ImageButton.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.ImageButton.System.Web.UI.IPostBackEventHandler.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) at System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(IPostBackEventHandler sourceControl, String eventArgument) at System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(NameValueCollection postData) at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) ]

How to offer Free Shipping in BV2004

1. Log into the admin
2. Click the catalog tab
3. In the left hand navigation, click on "Discounts"
4. Click on the New button in the upper right
5. On the new page that appears, use the drop down for "Discount" and select "Shipping Method" and the page will refresh.
6. Now that you have the new screen, you can select between which shipping methods you would like to offer the discount and, you can choose to give a 100% discount.
   

Meta Tags (BV2004)

For search engine optimization, one key component is Meta Tags. Below you will find ways and techniques on how you can edit those.

Product Detail pages

1. Log in as an administrator
2. Click on the Catalog tab
3. Do a find all or search to show a listing of the products
4. Put a check in the box next to the product you want to edit
5. Click on the yellow edit button on the right
6. Towards the bottom, under other properties, you will see some bolded options. Click on the option that states Meta tags.
7. Here you can edit the meta title, keywords and description.

Category pages

1. Log in as the administrator
2. Click on the Catalog tab
3. In the left hand navigation, click on "Categories"
4. Search for the category you want to edit, then highlight it. (The page will refresh)
5. Click on the yellow edit button above the list.
6. Now, you will be on the category edit page.
7. Look to the bottom and you will see some bolded options in gray. Click on the meta tags option.
8. Here you can edit the meta title, keywords, and description for this category.

Editing the genral store's meta tags

1. Log in as the administrator
2. Click on the Content tab
3. On the left hand navigation, click on the option Store Meta tags
4. Here you can edit the keywords and description. You can not edit the store title here. BV Commerce assumes that most of your titles will come from the individual pages on each category and product detail page.

Custom pages

1. Log in as the administrator
2. Click on the content tab
3. On the left hand side navigation, click on Custom pages
4. Click on the yellow edit button next to the custom page you want to edit
5. This screen is a little different. Whatever information you put in for the "Page Title" will display as the pages meta title. There is no option to edit the store meta description as this is prefilled from the store meta tags mentioned above.

General Note on Meta tags and Titles

Unless it's mentioned above, there are no other ways to edit the meta tags except through code.

How do I enter an email address if I place an order through the back end/admin

Original question:
Can you make it to where I make a new order on the backend there is a place for their e-mail address and then that e-mail address is automatically added to our mailing list? Right now there is not a place for their e-mail (only their website) and that is where I have been putting it.

This is a good question because it's not obvious. You can actually do this now in BVCommerce 5.

Here's how to do it.

1. Log in as the administrator
2. Click on the Orders tab
3. Click on New Order in the sub navigation.
4. The key to placing an order and capturing the email address is on the right hand side. On the right, you will see the options with the username and a blank box, as well as Browse and New buttons.
5. As a default, always check to see if the customer exists by typing in their name and hitting the Arrow button. This will prevent any possibilities of duplications or mixed accounts. You may also want to choose browse. If you find the right person, their information will prefill in the address information.
6. If you have a new person, simply click on the New button. This will allow you to add their name and email address.
7. That's it.

For those of you that have our updated system which automatically adds customers to your mailing list, each time you place an order, their name will be added to your mailing list.

Integrating Google Analytics

To see the full discussion on Google Analytics into BVCommerce 5 and to receive the files, please visit: http://forums.bvcommerce.com/default.aspx?f=79&m=42170&g=46508#m46508

After installing the code, we were recieving security messages during the checkout. This occurs because the Google Analytics code uses a standard http connection instead of https. The simplest fix we found was introduced by Promotion Sickness. Instead of using the standard http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js to connect to Google, simply change this link to https://ssl.google-analytics.com/urchin.js in your themes Default.master page.

My product modifiers aren't recalculating the total

Ok, this was probably my fault. We had added several product modifiers. We wanted to add items to this product that were options. These options added extra costs, and weight. When we went to test it on the site, the calculations weren't showing up. Thanks to Justin at BV Commerce we figured it out.

Our specific find was found because the Your price did not change on the product detail page.

We had upgraded from BV5 sp1 to sp2 V3. When we did this for some reason, the new anthem.dll did not pass through. If this happens to you, simply copy the new anthem.dll to your bin directory and all will work.

How come I can't remove product upsells

Here's some background. I went to my website and looked at one of my products. I saw "Customers who purchased this item also purchased these items:" Ok, I thought, this doesn't belong here. So, I went in to the administrator, and looked at this product. I went to look at product upsells and cross sells. Guess what I found, nothing. Don't be alarmed.

Here's what's happening. BV Commerce 5 implements something called suggested items. Suggested items are items that are ordered more often. You don't have control over this, as it's automatic.

If you don't want it to show up, here's what you do.

• Log into the admin
• Click on the Options tab
• On the left hand navigation, click on Performance
• Set "Suggested Items Maximum Results" to 0
• Click Save Changes

How do I change my shipping options

Ths shipping options are very important. Make sure you check these before you launch. Make sure you're not losing any money.

• Log in as the administrator
• Click on the options tab
• Then click on Shipping

I can't save my product

Saving a product depends on what information you have entered. The most common problem we have found is because of the SKU. Make sure the SKU does not have any special characters or spaces. Make this quick change and you should be fine. But, don't forget to make your SKU search engine friendly!

When I click on a link to my product, the page crashes

This happens every once in a while. The problem here is probably the name of the product. Check for any special characters that are in the name. It is also possible that your product name is too long.

BV Commerce 5 Website Launch

TheSmartFarmer.com launched their new BV Commerce 5 website. We're proud to be one of the first to launch.

TheSmartFarmer.com was originally built with effortlesse software. As theSmartFarmer.com grew, they needed a more robust solution. If you're looking to switch hosting from another ecommerce solution, BV Commerce may be your solution.