The opening salvo of a sales pitch for a new FTP application that is part of the current MacHeist bundle offer, begins by criticising users for continuing with a tried, tested, trusted product that I have used for many years:

Are you still using Transmit, an app that dates all the way back to MacOS 8? Well, if so, then it’s time to make room for the new kid in town… Flow

That’s right, they open their sales pitch in that way, and continue with snipes at Transmit with reference to Transmit’s very basic text editor:

And we’re not talking about a gimped editor…

Panic’s Transmit is one of those apps that I never hesitate to upgrade. Along with hardened, mature tools like BBEDit, they have remained at the core of my day to day development work (BBEdit is even set to auto boot when my Mac starts).

Am I behind the times in my choice of tool? When I find a new tool that stands the test against those I trust, I’ll make the switch. But strip away the bells and whistles of most new tools and I generally find poor substitutes for those that already enable me to do my job.

Of course, tool choice is a personal one and there are many who would never make the same choices as me. But to go so far as to be critical of a user’s choice is an immature, insecure and ignorant form of marketing. Not the kind of company to which I want to make a professional commitment.

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Right now we are working on upgrading all our themes to new Magento release. The good news is that all upgraded templates will be based on our new improved Magento template framework with new improved seo code. Most popular themes will be available till the end of the week. We are planning to finish upgrading all themes within 3 weeks. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

Good to see they are on the case, and a three week wait is not unreasonable considering the number of templates they have made available.

Magento templates are not independent

Template providers for Magento tend to create their products using parts of the default Magento template to supplement their own code. Magento therefore uses parts of the default template, combined with the custom template, to build the site.

This method of easing template creation by not having to reproduce every last element from the default template is a cost-effective means of developing, and consequently brings the cost of each template down. But inevitably leaves developers at the mercy of the Magento developers. If they change the default template structure, it could easily break the third party templates.

This is no criticism of TemplatesMaster, this method of template creation is commonplace and quite acceptable, particularly for complex template structures such as Magento’s. But it does demonstrate how we remain at the mercy of core product developers of large, commercial products such as Magento. Their product development is commercially motivated (as it should be), but this can lead to the broader community of developers having to hop around when things change.

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Magentoexpert has the solution which requires a couple of lines added to /cron.php:

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Magento uses a combination of xml layout directives and php/html (.phtml) template files to build the front-end interface (storefront) of a web shop. Fundamental changes to the look and feel of the store can and should be made directly in these files, all of which reside in the directory:

/app/design/frontend/default/

Smaller scale tweaks to page content can also be added from within the admin interface. Customising the content of an individual category page, for example, is achieved through adding xml code segments to the Custom Design tab of a category.

The difficulty we found was that any customisations for an individual category were added to the page in addition to the standard category layout definitions, rather than replace them with a new, unique set of directives. Resulting, in our case, to duplicated elements on the page.

Solution 1: Create an additional template

The admin allows selection of an entirely different template for an individual category. A powerful option, that’s for sure, but hugely impractical for ongoing maintenance. Multiple templates means multiple changes to layout, phtml and possibly css files if any tweaks are required in the future.

Solution 2: Add category-specific custom code to the master layout xml file

The default category layouts are defined in /app/design/frontend/default/-your-template-/layout/catelog.xml (just look for the <catalog_category_default> element).

To add code for a specific category, all one needs to do is create a new element containing the internal ID of that category (changing XX to the category’s internal ID):

<CATEGORY_XX>

  ....

</CATEGORY_XX>

A good solution which fails only in that it becomes less portable. These xml files are designed to handle the template as a whole. Having specific category designations here mean the template can only be used for a single store with the correct category ID values.

Solution 3: Add custom xml code to the category via the Administration interface

The most practical solution, without a doubt. Here the custom code affects only the single category (and its child-categories should that be selected as an option).

However, both Solution 2 and Solution 3 must solve the problem that additional xml is added to the default xml. In our case, however, we must override the default settings to avoid duplication.

The unsetChild method

Thankfully, Magento provides a means of overriding the default elements, as defined in the layout template, to be replaced by new elements. You can see the unsetChild methods implimented in the screenshot here.

unsetChild

The method tells magento to remove whatever definitions that have already been created for the named elements. Usually, these would have been defined in the main template xml files. It does not remove the named elements themselves, so you are then free to redefine those elements as you wish.

In our case, we wanted to replace the category.products, product_list, and product_list_toolbar elements to avoid duplicating the product grid.

Once unsetChild had been called, we were free to add our customised grid definition below it.

The results are a default, 3-column, 9 product grid for most of the catalog, but a 4-column, 12 product grid for some individual category pages.

The remove method

Magento also provides the ability to entirely remove elements from the xml definition.

<remove name="xxxx" />

This completely removes the defined element, by name. Inappropriate in our case, because it does not provide the option of re-inserting a new version of the element into the page; it removes that element name entirely.

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On her blog this week is a guest post from Billy Coffey, one of the authors she represents, discussing what happens after an author finds the right agent. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

Having an agent has become so important in recent times that one might consider it to be the summit of all the effort after completing one’s novel. But as Coffey rightly describes, that is when the work really starts.

A different focus

Coffey describes landing an agent as a mid point in getting published. You have come a long way already, but there’s still a mighty climb ahead.

I have never been one of those wannabe writers who falls into the trap of thinking one can simply hand over a novel for an agent to sell to a publisher. There seems no question, to me, that much more work must be done after that time. But I am sure it will be a very different time.

Right now, in the latter stages of my first novel, I am piecing together information and scattered guidance from wherever I can. It’s not tough to find and I am glad to say rarely conflicting from different sources. But it feels as though I am working in the dark, feeling my way around, making mistakes, learning, trying again, hoping I get it right and do not waste an opportunity through inexperience.

Agents know how to navigate the choppy waters of publishing and though I doubt they never get it wrong, are certainly aware of how an author can give their work the best chance of being published. Often that chance is at the price of more work, more editing, rewriting, polishing and buffing the writing.

Having someone to light the way ahead, even the next handful of steps, with solid experience and knowledge would transform the drudge of honing a novel and give it a more defined purpose.

If you are a writer in search of an agent, follow Rachelle’s twitter and blog, I am sure they will help you on your journey.

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For those of you not familiar with the growing annual online event, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a challenge for anyone with the desire to write a novel, to start writing on November 1, and finish a minimum of 50,000 words by midnight November 30th. That’s a very tall order of 1,666 words per day. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

If you’ve ever tried to write 1,666 words of quality in a day, then you will no doubt fear the thought. But NaNoWriMo is all about quantity. Forget ideals of writing the next literary classic, just write all the words you can and edit them later.

I haven’t done it yet

Timing has always been off for my participation. Either I have been travelling, have heavy day-job workloads, or, like last year, was already enveloped in my first novel, Persistent Spirit.

This year, if all goes according to plan, I might manage to make it, providing I can get the latest draft of Persistent Spirit off my to-do list. I have no concerns about working on two books at the same time, particularly because one follows the other and involve many of the same characters. But I need to get Persistent Spirit finished and delaying that another month is not something I want to do.

Yet, I am also itching to write the first draft of the second TableRappers book, A Shot in Time, which was planned for this year’s NaNoWriMo.

UPDATE (Oct 19): Decision made, I’m pausing Persistent Spirit editing for a month and doing NaNoWriMo. This way I can get the first draft (equalls “totally shite draft”) of book two out of the way then have a gap to let it simmer (while completing book one edits) before writing the second draft. You and me, NaNoWriMo, outside, now…

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Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don’t have any effect in our search ranking at present.

So there it is, no more wondering, no more endless speculation and scrabbling for evidence of whatever side of the fence one might sit.

Could this be a hint of more, clear-cut statements like this from Google?
I doubt it. The air of mystery works very much to their advantage and keeps the SEO world running rings around itself drying to second guess Google’s technology.

What it does signify is a move away from deliberately inserted page elements to a more whole-page approach, taking the real, visible content to determine page context and authority – in addition to many other factors.

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Persistent Spirit is undergoing a re-write. After having been away from it for a few months, I have returned to write the third full draft. I now fully understand the necessity of the breathing space to allow time before returning to the editing process. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

I am spotting errors and problems I never saw last time through the text. Silly mistakes such as passive verb use (my pet-hate, in particuar), and duplicated words in consecutive sentences. All are getting fixed.

It’s laborious, but I love this part of the editing process. The chance to polish and fix problems and make it a better product overall, can’t be anything but good.

So, that’s why there’s been little activity on this blog: when you are buried in the words, there’s little else to say!

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Rapid indexing of new and relevant content seems to be of increasing importance to Google and it is this that might provide the difference in search results.

Exactly how Caffeine will integrate most recently indexed content amongst the aged, authoritative content previously given prominence in Google SERPs remains to be seen. We are likely to see results shifting rather rapidly. Hot topics will float to the top of listings, but only temporarily, sinking almost as rapidly to blend with the more stable results. But that is pure speculation at this time.

Is it all about twitter-fear?

Earlier this year, twitter began aligning itself as the future of immediate search. Google got understandably nervous, and Caffeine might be the result. I doubt Google will replace the place twitter has become to so many of us as a place to get literally up to the minute news about important events.

Though still nowhere near as immediate as searching the contents of the twitter timeline, Caffeine does index and present relevant results much sooner than Google before it.

How does this affect SEO?

The jury remains out on how this enhances or inhibits direct SEO activity. We are certainly expecting to see more flexible and dynamic results for many searches as new, fresh content is intermixed with the authoritative.

There are still apparent glitches in the system right now, so no Caffeine search results can be trusted as representative at this time.

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