Genuine searches for Catskin Studio with a focus on wordpress website development have quadrupled compared to searches of six months ago. As WordPress is a key component in almost all of our PHP/MySQL based projects this is very exciting news for us.

WordPress plugin and theme development are of massive importance in terms of how we make a living and where our passion lies as developers. We welcome and embrace wordpress site owners and website designers who need that extra set of eyes, ears and hands. Whether you’re looking for a simple modification to your website theme, a new wiz-bang feature or the development of an entire website or business application Catskin Studio can provide the goods.

Nothing excites me more than the prospect of our business going 100% wordpress. All wordpress work we produce Free or Paid is a step towards Catskin Studio’s future.

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Shopp is an e-commerce plugin that adds a feature-rich online store to your WordPress-powered website or blog. Get your store up and running in minutes. Then, take it to the next level with the flexibility of Shopp’s customization tools that allow production studios and power users to tailor every aspect of the shopping experience. http://shopplugin.net/

We really believe in Shopp as an eCommerce system. Due to it’s enormous range of customisations and amazing flexibility Shopp enable’s Catskin Studio to design the eCommerce system you’re after without limitations.

We have created a CSV importing Shopp add-on which, with any luck will enhance your Shopp setup experience and reduce the amount of time spent configuring products. This works especially well for product configurations that require a multitude of variations.

Introducing version 0.9 of the FREE CSV import script for Shopp. We’ve finally made it to a release suitable for your consumption, but don’t take my word for it. Try it out!

download shopp product importer

What shopp-product-importer does

1. Version 0.9 shopp_product_importer is designed to make the initial setup stage of your Shopp e-commerce website one easy process.
2. From a flat CSV file you can import all of your product & price variations, categories, images, tags and product descriptions.
3. Because you map your CSV before running the import, you have full control over it’s layout, how many category fields, variations, tags & images. It’s up to you.
4. You can dump a CSV from your existing e-Commerce solution and bring it straight into Shopp – no fuss.

Install it

1. Download the zipped package.
2. Unpack the zip. Hint:7-zip works well!
3. Using FTP, copy the unzipped folder to your
   /wp-content/plugins/
   folder
4. Activate it with wordpress
5. Find it under the Shopp menu

Additional Information for configuration

Environmental Requirements

1. MySQL my.cnf
   max_allowed_packet = 16M +
2. PHP 5.2.x php.ini
   memory_limit = 128M +
3. A suitable testing environment for testing the outcome of using this script. That’s not your live website!

File Permissions

1. CSV Upload location /wp-content/csvs/*
   ensure wordpress has write access while you are uploading your CSV’s
   *it’s case sensitive

Responsibility

1. Import happens periodically, disable the plugin while it’s not in use
2. When you’re done uploading, ensure /wp-content/csvs/ is not writable
3. I don’t know all the ways meanies will try to hack your system. There’s no excuse, don’t let this be one of them.
4. Safest bet – Use it, Remove it. Done!

Your Choice

1. Unfortunately Catskin Studio can’t take responsibilty for problems that arise due to the use of this script. It’s provided FREE of charge for your benefit.
2. We recommend you use it in your testing environment. When you are happy that the script has done what we say it can, it’s your choice to use it in a live production environment.
3. If you don’t feel you can use this script responsibly, we kindly ask that you don’t use it at all. Shopp provides a beautiful user experience for those wanting to enter their products with due care and attention.

View the Plugin page on wordpress.org - MemberView

The MemberView WordPress plugin enables specific post/page content to be displayed only to logged in members through the use of WordPress shortcodes which are embedded into your post or page content. The MemberView shortcode would result in a logged in user seeing the text “Thanks for logging in” while a normal website guest will not see the content.

If you need to extend the functionality to display content to users with specific capabilities add the appropriate capability to the cap attribute. A list of wordpress user capabilities can be found at http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities.

To add content for users with the “publish_posts” capability, you could use the

The MemberView plugin doesn’t try to do anything more than that. It’s purpose is simple and should enable you to quickly produce user aware content that doesn’t involve too much extra work on behalf of the author.

If you find this wordpress plugin useful, you can help us by donating. Every little bit counts and we really appreciate it.

All too often we forget about the precious resource we have spent a huge amount of money and time, building and growing – that resource is our existing customer database. We need to balance our marketing dollars to include existing customers, not just focus on new customers.

When was the last time you aimed a marketing campaign to include your existing customers…

Too often we are bombarded with the hype of advertising for new customers, whether it be in the form of Radio, Television, News Print or even a bigger Yellow Pages ad than your competitors, all at the expense of your existing, already paid for loyal customers. Customers who have gone through the decision making process of deciding to buy from you on a previous occasion, found you to be trustworthy and have found you to be someone they can count on.

Customer surveys often suggest that your customers didn’t buy from you a second time because they were prompted to buy as a result of you competitor’s marketing and forgot about you.

What are you doing with the hundreds and sometimes thousands of customers who you have already spent advertising dollars on and who liked you enough to do business with you? We need to utilize this resource, we need to keep in touch with our customers to keep the association of our products foremost in their minds. Surprisingly it is this group of customers that are missed when it comes to marketing campaigns.

Customer’s don’t care how much you’ve got to sell them until they know how much you care about them and with the advent of the internet, Email has become the most cost efficient means by which to keep in contact with and care for your existing customers.

One major benefit of Email Marketing – It’s personal to your customer

Simple steps to setting up a successful Email Marketing campaign

1. Start collecting every customers email address with every sale
2. Say hi to your customers once a month via Email. Generally no more than this or you risk annoying them, unless you have a valid reason for contacting them.
3. Always have a reason for the Email, a discounted, product on special or an upcoming event are great reasons to touch base.
4. Offer something free in every Email, perhaps a tip, technical advice or invite them to the showroom for a coffee.
5. Ask for feedback by occasionally including a very basic survey or a call to action prompting your customers response. Your customers will usually be thrilled to offer their opinion.

‘If you give, you will most likely receive’

There is a theory at work here – by always giving something to your customer, whether it be free but useful information, a special discount, or free gift, your customer’s nature is to return the favour by coming back to you.

You are actually building and maintaining a relationship with your customer, such that when the customer needs similar products again, your company’s name is the name that springs to mind, not some other company vying for your customer’s loyalty and business, hopeful of another impulse buyer.

Hope you enjoyed the read. Here’s the skinny:

$200 bucks, absolutely free…

Order an eShout marketing campaign before the 17th of February 2010 and we’ll give you $200 credit toward your next campaign. To claim the free $200, all you have to do is post a comment explaining in 200 words or less why email marketing works for you.

OK, here’s your chance to present your business to the world, just the way you want, via the most awesome colour glossy brochure without having to print and distribute it to thousands of potential customers.

But it’s way more than that, it’s capable of being updated at a moments notice to reflect the changes and innovations you introduce through your business. it’s even capable of providing you with customer feedback, vital to your ongoing marketing strategies.

The importance of making an excellent first impression on others as you meet them is the same concept you must consider when presenting your business  through your website.

So, when we think of webpage design there are some elements that MUST fall into place for it to be truly effective. Here’s a brief outline:

• How we present – First impressions
• Communication
• Information
• Media
• Art

Let’s look at SEO & SEM

Here’s the question:

Here’s the answer:

Need more answers?

SEO:

SEM:

SEM means to pay someone for a top ranking link to your site. The more interest you create with SEM, the more it costs you and hopefully the more dollars you make. And for those who need to understand the abbreviation, its Search Engine Marketing.

Our SEO & SEM policy:

It may sound as though we don’t do SEO but the truth is that we love it. It’s easy to get your site ranking well, and it’s the number one concern for most of our current clients. What you need to remember is that it always takes time to grow your search engine ranking. Any honest SEO expert will tell you the same. If you feel you aren’t getting enough from your Google rankings you should get in touch with us. We will guide you on what you need to do to make your dream rankings a reality. Don’t forget, it takes time…

The Art, Media, Information, Communication bit:

Our favorite past time is working on creative communicative projects. Looking through our client list, you’ll see photographers, sign writers, exhibition designers, event organisers and many others specifically in the auto trade. The websites and marketing we design are to our clients exact specifications. Nothing more, nothing less. As much as we like to guide our clients on what is a good or bad idea, ultimately the decision is theirs. If however, you don’t know what to write or look for, we can provide you with a full copy-writing service as well as photography, print and email media that personifies your business in a way that your usual web designer may not understand.

Contact Forms

Adding a contact form to your site is generally a good solution to this problem as your email address is handled at the server and not sent to the web browser or ever output to a web page. Taking this course of action means that no-one including web crawlers know your email address until you respond to the email enquiry. Including a “no-robot” CAPTCHA security token on the form is generally a pretty wise practice too. This is all good but what if you need to display a public email address? You could try a client-side solution such as JavaScript.

JavaScript

You can use javascript to display an email address, transformed once it gets to the users browser. As the real email address is not served within the html source of the website, spammers have little chance of actually intercepting the address. Relying on this method of presenting an email address means that guests browsing your site with JavaScript turned off will not be able to see your email address either.

WordPress was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPL. It is the official successor of b2/cafelog. WordPress is fresh software, but its roots and development go back to 2001. It is a mature and stable product with a focus on user experience and web standards.

WordPress started as just a blogging system, but has evolved to be used as a full content management system and so much more through the thousands of plugins, widgets, and themes, WordPress is limited only by your imagination and technical ability. Catskin Studio offer our clients the best of everything WordPress has to offer plus the ability to custom develop and implement any additional features you require such as eCommerce plugins, Resource and Business management tools and more.