I’ve been using Get Shopped’s WP Ecommerce Plugin for myself and clients for over a year now and as I discover more plugin’s I tend to install them, have a play and see how it goes. Only thing is that when I tried to reactive my store, I got a fatal error. Not enough PHP memory.

Google, boys and girls is your best friend!

I found this post on the forums at GetShopped.org and it worked like a charm!!

A few months ago, I found and fell in love with Thesis. Totally head over heals and today I taught myself something new.

I wanted to find out how to put a ‘signature’ after each post and found this fabulous website. Needless to say that if you are using Thesis and want to do the same, go check it out.

No matter what the nature of your business, you use technology every single day. From sending email to entering receipts into accounting software, even a successful lemonade stand today would need some sort of computerisation behind it to help it run smoothly.

This need for technology makes it very difficult for the business owner without IT knowledge to determine what they need to ensure their business will run well. And with everything available on the market today, we could all be streamlining areas of our businesses with better technology.

If you’re not technologically savvy, the best way to get what you need and to spare yourself a very daunting experience, is to write a brief, create a matrix and then test drive it.

Start by brainstorming what you need. What do you need this item to do for your business? What are the goals you have for the hardware or software? How will you track whether or not it’s pulling its weight and doing its job? For example, if you’re looking for bookkeeping software, a sure sign that you’re using the right program is when your accounts are all up to date and reconciled. Another example is if you use your printer for hours out of the day and it doesn’t overheat by lunchtime then it’s doing its job.

Even if you’re not sure whether this item you’re in the market for is able to perform a certain function, write it down anyway. When you’re brainstorming your needs and your tech wish list, everything goes.

Take your brainstorm notes and turn them into a brief to describe to your IT consultant, website designer or Virtual Assistant what it is you want them to quote you on.

If you have a brief then each person you go to will be quoting you on the same thing. You’re going to be able to compare apples to apples.

Once you’ve discussed your needs with a few different service providers who can help you, create a matrix in a spreadsheet or on a piece of paper. To do this, list the key functions you need from your new piece of technology across the top. Down the side, write the names of the consultants who will be providing the quote. If their quote meets a key function, add a check mark and if not then add a cross. It’s simple, really, but it will give you a visual aid and help you to see who is quoting what.

At the bottom of your matrix, include the service providers’ price and leave room for your notes or comments. Now, find out if you can have a test drive of the software you’re looking for and use it actively in your business for two weeks. In that amount of time you’ll know if it’s right for you. It will be trickier to be permitted a test drive of certain hardware, so make sure you take plenty of time to play with it in the showroom and be sure the consultant guides you through how to use it at that time.

After testing the product you’re looking for, with matrix in hand you’ll be in great shape to make a sound decision and a smart purchase.

For the last two years I have been using a Palm Treo and that’s when my love affair with the Smart Phone began. It held all my contact details for both personal and business use, my calendar and it synced with my Exchange server automatically.

Gone were the days of carrying around a clunky day planner.

Gone were the days of double booked appointments.

Gone were the days of carrying everything in my bag for ‘just in case’.

So when my contract ended I decided to go with a Blackberry Bold and wasn’t it all nice and shiny. It does everything the Palm Treo does but it has a better keyboard among other things. I was definitely in love.

But after only a month we started to have issues. We started to have a difference of opinion. My Bold decided that it had had enough of being a smart phone and wanted a career change. It wanted to be a ‘normal’ mobile phone. Pfft!!!

I’m sorry Bold but uncaught exception errors are just not going to cut it and even ‘normal’ mobile phones still allow texting and profile changes.

Seriously Bold, I’ve tried updating your software and backing you up but still the issues persist. Today is the last day you and I will have together. You are going in for repairs and so help me, if you come back faulty, I’m going to drag out my trusty Palm Treo and use it until something better, something more shiny (that works!) comes along.

As if breaking my site clean in half last week end wasn’t enough, I’ve decided to trial using  the WordPress e-Commerce plugin by Instinct to sell my services, info products that are in the nearly finished basket and QuickBooks.

What I like:

• Great interface, very easy to follow and set up.
• Forums and user documentation on the Instinct website for those times when I ‘get stuck’.
• Easy to install, easy to set up.
• Product pages are totally customisable to suit your website.
• Uses eWay (the gateway I’m currently using) to accept credit cards.

What I don’t like:

• When adding products it’s very slow and I mean slooooooooooooooow.
• Documentation could be more comprehensive for those of us who may want to jump straight in with both feet.
• Have to purchase the Gold Cart to use  the eWay gateway.
• Questions on forums don’t seem to get answered in a timely fashion.

My next step is to see why it’s so slow when adding products. If I can’t resolve this issue then I’ll have to ask for my money back otherwise I’m pretty happy with the plugin so far.

So what are you experimenting with? Any new plugin’s you’d like to share with us?

I have to confess I’ve been really busy with both client work and some exciting new projects for Tilda Virtual Services. I’m in the midst of creating my first info product as a joint venture with Angela den Hollander at communic8 design and I have been working hard at rebranding my e-newsletter.

The newsletter is now called Techno Update – and it will be a monthly cheat sheet on the latest technology for online businesses trying to market their services or products. Topics will include VoIP, Content Management Systems, Customer Relationship Management Software, Setting up and promoting Teleseminars and much more.

Techno Update will give you all the information you’ll need to decide if using particular software or technology is going to help you to achieve your goals.

I kind of can’t help myself and read a LOT of ‘stuff’ on the Internet and I thought what better way to market my business and my services than to share this knowledge with the rest of the world.

To subscribe you can click on the home page and subscribe in the form there on the right or you can send a blank email to kylie-349256@autocontactor.com

Why not drop me a line and tell me what it is you are looking for, but don’t know what you need?

The Virtual Assistant (otherwise known as Kylie) woke from her slumber and rose to eat breakfast with her young family. Afterwards code monkey assisted her in preparing each of the trainee code monkeys/Virtual Assistants for child care and school. She just knew that today would be a fantastic day. The sun was shining brightly, she loved her family and she loved her work.

As she travelled to her brand new office outside of her home, she quickly summarised what had to be done that day in her head. She’d need to check in with each of her Associates as well as complete client projects due that day.

After 5 minutes she arrived, collected her belongings from the boot and walked the last few metres to her door. “Hmm, that’s strange” she thought to herself. “Beckie is normally here by now, I bet she’s left me a text message on my phone.” And so she had. Beckie was unwell today and so the Virtual Assistant rearranged the schedule slightly and reallocated some of the client tasks scheduled for that day.

The Virtual Assistant unpacked her fourth baby (her MacBook Pro), turned it on and went to make herself a coffee with her cappachino machine. When she returned she saw that it appeared to be having trouble starting up. She did a forced quit and restarted. Still, the same thing happened again.

Nearly in tears, the Virtual Assistant called her code monkey to tell him of her troubles. “oh oh, I think we need to reinstall it” he said.

—–

Normally this is the part of the story where you read about the person being unable to meet deadlines, unable to communicate and unable to work AT ALL because they didn’t have a contingency plan for when things like this happen. Luckily I do. I simply jumped onto a PC, logged onto the network and other than the different operating system, it was like I was on my Mac. I had NO DOWNTIME!

Have you planned for contingencies?

It’s been a marathon but we solved it. What did we solve? A good friend of mine and Associate VA went to open a Word document I sent to her for a client task. Only problem was that when she went to open it, she got an error message and Word refused to respond.

My Associate had looming deadlines including coursework for her PhD, my client task and her own client tasks. Word not working = very upset and stressed out VA.

She persevered for hours before grabbing me on Skype where we Googled, troubleshooting to no avail. Three hours after we started working on solving it together, my codemonkey husband came home. Another three and a half hours later (now 4am for my stressed out VA) Codemonkey solved the problem. He used an article from Geekswithblogs and thank goodness the article was there.

Troubleshooting more often than not is simply a case of trying multiple solutions until you find the right one. In this case there was a huge number of solutions we attempted until we found the right one. Why did this happen? Who knows.. what I do know is that my lovely VA can now go to sleep, has recovered her documents and all is well with her laptop.

I had the pleasure of talking with Katie from Mint Coaching this week and she mentioned to me that she was surfing later on during the day. I of course responded “oh yeah, I’ve been catching up on my blog reading….” and there was this silence on the other end of the phone.

Katie said “um, I’m going surfing” to which I asked her “what, with water and … stuff?”

Silence…

“OH I get it now, you’re going surfing”

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Poor woman, I doubt she’s ever spoken to a real live nerd before.

Well it was bound to happen one day. Don’t people have better things to do??????

Read about it here.