Techy Weekend

I think I've mentioned before how my husband got her own hosting since Jade made him feel bad about using up so much space and bandwidth on our host site. lol! My husband is learning the ropes around web development since his webmaster, Jade, is so temperamental. He has to cajole and practically beg her to get going on his website. This weekend, she was so mad at him for moving the website she designed to another server, and now none of it was working. hehe! My husband had been working on fixing it himself all wee just so he won't have to beg her. This weekend, she finally got around to looking at what was wrong. She was mumbling and grumbling about it, but it took her all of two hours to get things fixed and up and running again. LOL!

My husband is really more of a hardware man. He can take our PC's apart and put them back together again, no problem. Just don't let him look at codes. Lately he's been adding peripherals that I don't even know what they are for, but I think he's got an external hard drive, HDMI switches and some other stuff for the internet. I think it may be a new modem or router. I'm not sure and I really don't care what snakes around our computers just so long as I can get on the internet :)

Hey There Stranger!

Hey guys its me! JADE!! I know it's probably been like 2 years since I posted on here since I had all those other sites in-between. Well now I have my own site-eroo! Or my own domain that is. It's linked to the title. Bella-Umbrella is my other pen-name on this here thing called the internet.

So yes, I've missed you! And I know it was cruel of me to leave you like I did! So I apologize and hope you will find it in your heart to visit my lonely little site (bella-umbrella.net) every now and again. And perhaps tell others of it?

Please then, come to my blog--you know you want to. We have pixels and scribbles and icons and interesting tidbits of life all for the low low price of totally free!

I look forward to seeing you--you'll be on my sitemeter! Love!

Popping Annoyance

It thinks it's not so bad now that we've gotten a decent firewall and popup blocker, but there was a time when I dreaded, yes actually feared, going online. Those annoying pop ups would practically take over the computer! And worst, many of them were not safe for kids to see, so we needed a pop up solution fast. We tried the free stuff that comes with the tool bars first, and they weren't bad. If you do light or moderate surfing, they will probably suffice. But if, like my daughters you frequent interactive sites, then it is probably a good investment to buy something that will stop these annoyances that also carry viruses.

Page Ranks Lost

Google just updated page ranks recently as I have briefly mentioned before. But instead of the rise that we expected, many of us who have decided to monetize our blogs have been penalized by having our page ranks stripped. Yes, not merely reduced, but totally stripped! As in in the case of this blog, we went from a page rank of 4/10 to O.

I was at once shocked and angry to now just feeling numb and helpless. I think it is totally unfair and unfairly self-serving for Google to do this. And I was such a Google fan before. I don't understand all the technical details behind this page rank fiasco, you can read about it on other more informed websites, but I am just so totally bummed about it all.

Were you affected by the page rank demotion?

E-Commerce Software

Jade and I have been working for the last couple of weeks on her dad's website. Neither one of us have ever designed a website from scratch before, and we are up to our necks with 'things to do'. Considering we had zero experience between the two of us, three including her dad, we've done pretty well. The website is actually up and running with real information already posted! Yeah, we're proud of ourselves.

Now the next hurdle for us to find and set up a Shopping Cart Software. My husband eventually want to utilize the website to sell his artwork, you see, so the software needs to be able to accept all major credit cards and also PayPal. From talking to other people who have had experience setting up e-stores, it is no easy task integrating this software into your website.

Ecommerce Software is one that we have been looking to use for the website. This is on the median range pricewise and according to their website, the software is one of the more intuitive and user friendly software available. The site design is fully customizable to make your whole site seem seamless and it comes equipped with wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) editor. One of the more usefull things about this software is the set-up checklist which guides you step-by-step through the set up process.

It still comes equipped with the basic estore capabilities like accepting all major credit cards and PayPal, fraud screening and security, and other merchandising tools. Best of all, they offer 24/7 tech support for when you get stuck doing something in the middle of the night. If, like us, you need a reliable ecommerce software, this solutions may just fit your specific needs.

Our Home brews an online business

When we bought our new domain, we also bought a studio domain for my husband. It's still under construction as we figure out various components that will go into it like a gallery and an online store. The gallery part won't be so hard, we'll just have to fill it with hubby's artwork. The online store, however, will be another problem. My husband has been looking into several ecommerce software but hadn't really decided on which one to use yet.

He knows he will need to be able to take all major credit cards and maybe even paypal. One thing he definitely needs is a shopping cart. If you've shopped online, you know what I mean by a shopping cart. Ashop.com offers a shopping cart software that you can try out for free for ten days. I think this may be a good idea to 'test drive' the software first to see how user friendly it is and how efficient it is. The great thing with this particular one is that paypal is already integrated in the software along with the major banks and credit cards. Some of the other shopping cart software he had looked at did not have paypal integrated and you would have had to use the paypal interface to use their service. We liked this one because of that feature.

Price wise, their prices are comparable with other shopping cart softwares. They provide service for the U.S., U.K., and Australia. Just enter which region you are on and they will work up the appropriate pricing for your area.