For those of you who don’t know, RSS (originally RDF Site Summary, often dubbed Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.

For example, click to view my RSS Feed.

Anyway, I won’t go into details, but let you read for yourself. Click here to read the article.

From within the store settings, go to checkout. One of your form fields should be:

(Blank Name) – Email Address – billingemail – Mandatory (ticked)

and will display a little (?) next to it, highlighting that this will be the email address the the purchase receipt is sent too.

What I done is deleted that field, and simply re-added it again with the details:

Email – Email Address – billingemail – Mandatory (ticked)

and receipt emails are now sending again from my site.

I can’t promise this is going to solve the problem for everybody, but give it a try.

Good luck.

I tried many different apps, 5 in total and most were just awful. The fact that I had tried 4, and still needed to try and find a 5th option says something about how good they were. Anyway, I wont name and shame the ones I tried and that failed me, but I will point you in the direction of the one that worked perfectly for me first time:

Tweet Eraser at http://www.tweeteraser.com/.

It really was as simple as:

• Sign in using your Twitter login details, to authourise the app
• Search your timeline (with the ability to filter by date, text or #hashtags, if you only want to delete specifics)
• Select all and delete

It was done within 60 seconds and I now have a 100% clean and clear Twitter account.

Rosco’s Facebook

A little history
This specific client wasn’t mine from the beginning, it was a client I took over from a colleague a while ago, offering hosting for an already created website. The website was maybe 6 years old, created in flash and has been due an overhaul for a while. It had some SEO work done a while ago, keeping it a steady page #1 in Google for its major industry searches in its local Geographical region.

Although using an old technology and needing a refresh, the website had been serving the client well for some time.

The refresh
The client approached me, wanting to re-design/re-develop the website, maintaining the same/a similar structure and using it as an opportunity to re-jig the content. There was a little money to spend but nothing extravagant. It was looking like a simple build to create a mobile/tablet/PC friendly website while keeping costs sensible.

This type of website was the sort of thing I role out a lot, so I gave a few ideas about how I envisaged the website to look/work, explained the importance of mobile/tablet compatibly and gave a good quote. I waited to hear back from the client as to his thoughts, but what I didn’t do was sell myself enough.

In the midst of a heavy workload at the moment, large projects and looming deadlines, I unfortunately was a little too blase about this project, this client and the way I handled this quotation process. I rarely lose work I quote on, and to be honest, I’ve never lost an existing client during the process of quoting for work, so this was a valuable wake up call for me.

The client in question isn’t very technologically savvy, doesn’t understand what makes a website ‘work’ and like many people, mainly assesses a website on how it looks visually. I did highlight the previous SEO work done, I did explain that I would maintain the current websites structure in terms of keywording, content and other bits and pieces within the new development, so the new website would maintain the same value within Google and hopefully maintain its rankings. What I didn’t do is stress the importance of this, explain enough and make him fully understand the true value of what I was saying.

This is where I lost him
This would be my downfall and this is why another supplier snapped him up. Not because the other supplier did cover and explain all the things above, but because I didn’t educate my client enough to appreciate the above. This meant he happily moved away for a ‘I can do it for less money and turn it around in two days‘ response from his new supplier.

I don’t feel bad selfishly, for losing the client, and it wasn’t a big job/contract so its not going to break the bank balance – I feel bad that the client has wandered off aimlessly into the unknown and while wanting to upgrade and improve his website, he has stumbled across a cheap, quick and potentially dangerous solution which has all the hallmarks of a step backwards.

I don’t know the new supplier and I haven’t scoped their portfolio, but from a little look at the clients new website, I fear I was right to feel bad. On the face of it, the new website isn’t any more attractive than the last, although thankfully it is developed in html rather than flash. A few other points to highlight about the new website:

• The new site isn’t using a canonical url, meaning Google will start to list all pages with the www. and all pages without the www. which will show as duplicate content and will harm Google rankings
• None of the old flash urls and being redirected to the new html urls, so years worth of progress in Google will be lost
• The pages aren’t carrying the necessary meta tags and descriptions, which will harm Google rankings significantly
• The source code is very squiffy in its read through. It’s readable by Google, but very confusing in its order.
• There are bits of the website content cut off, and made unreadable through very old development and coding methods

Now, although the new website is amateurish, I don’t want to criticise the new developer. When I think back to my first websites I created for myself, some were as bad, maybe worse and we all have to start somewhere.

I’m criticising myself, that after my 10+ years experience in web development, and 7 years running my own company, I have let this client wander, blindly and potentially harm his online presence.

I fear the client may have gone anyway, I think price was going to be the deciding factor, I just wish I had highlighted the ‘value’ of the website and the appropriate quote, so his decision may have been a little more educated.

I’ve learnt many lessons in the past 10+ years, and sometimes you need a reminder of them to keep you on track.

I’ve been scouting for potential portfolio customers for Exquisite21, a new site I’m launching in the US. I’m looking at offering a couple of freebies for the right clients/portfolio pieces.

What else have I been doing? It feels like I’ve been non-stop, but it’s been a ‘bitty’ day with little bits here and there. Busy, but nothing has really been ticked off the list.

Oh, I have shipped off a pair of Emerica HSU Shoes to the US of A, from a purchase on Sk8Schooz.com, my yummy shoe shop.

I also signed up to Foursquare today, hopefully offering me inspiration for foodage ideas for the last minute ‘I don’t know what to have’ moments. I’m surrounded by food options living here, yet I never know what to eat. First world problems, hey.

I was wanting to add a span id in my product description, but the system was having none of it. To cut a long story short, after much digging around I have found a solution.

In your website directory wp-content/plugins/wp-e-commerce/wpsc-includes, download and open the file wpsc_query.php in notepad, wordpad or similar (always back up your file before editing). Navigate to line 278, or there abouts and replace the code:

return wpautop(wptexturize( wp_kses(stripslashes($wpsc_query->product['description']), $description_allowed_tags )));

with:

return $wpsc_query->product['description'];

upload your edited file to the same location, overwriting the old one, and job done. Your product description will now handle and display all html code on the front end of your shop.

QR Code for the Globe Travel Health Centre

From within the barcode you can encode:

• Text
• Website URL
• Phone Number
• SMS Message
• Other Data

This technology is frequently used in Japan (where it was created by Toyota subsidiary Denso-Wave in 1994), and now seeing increasing use around the world.

You can download QR reader software for iPhone, Andriod, Blackberry and other smartphones and devices. Many of which are completely free.

If you have any other questions about QR Codes, or want additional information on how you can make them work for you and your business both online and offline, don’t hesitate to contact us.