Have any of you made a bone head mistake? We all have but are you willing to admit it? The truth will set you free if you just admit your mistake and just move on. Once you make a mistake it is your duty to help others learn from it. I feel this is the price you pay to make things better for the mistake you made. So with out any further fan fare please read my bone head mistake below. :) 

     When I built my site I weighed every product carefully and put in the weight exactly as it was. Then when a customer placed an order I could not figure out why I was losing money on that order. Well after a lot of finger pointing at many differnt people the problem was this. I did not take into account what the weight of the product was when it was packed up. Product+box=weight should be the simple formula when you set your site up. I wish I did not over look this simple but very important part of my web site. So please take a moment and think about your product weight after it is packed up.

     Please feel free to share your own bone head mistakes here so I can  feel better about myself.  No laughing and looking down your nose at me about this mistake is allowed until I leave the room. :)

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Brian

     The new Extended Validation Security Certificate (going green) that Websiteforge has acquired for us will give us a huge advantage over other web sites that do not have it. I really do believe that. Now it is up to us as web site owners to take advantage of it. As with any new security feature released to the public customer acceptance comes down to marketing and customer education. Customer education on this new and better security standard for us as web site owners is very important. I feel with proper customer education this will lead us all to more sales with our sites. So it is up to us to show them why we are special with our new Extended Validation Security Certificates on our web sites. With a little bit of marketing on our part we could have a great opportunity here to get even more business for our sites.

     On my site I have taken the step to create a link explaining what Extended Validation Security is and showing why that Extended Validation is special. I have it posted all through my check out process and product search pages and close up picture pages. We have a great advantage here over our competition now let all of us be wise enough to take advantage of it.

 Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Have a great day!

Brian

     The  hardest decision to make for a person running a e-commerce business today is buying the right technology at the right time. 

     You and I are not e-commerce million dollar companies yet! In the mean time we must use innovation and pure business savvy to become 1 of those e-commerce million dollar companies. So what do you do when you want to become one of those e-commerce million dollar companies? You must study your competition. You need to know them better than you know your self. One of things you need to do is focus on the technology they deployed for their business online and figure out a way to be better at it or make a better informed decision what technology to buy.

     I have my competition now upgrading their websites to compete with the technology that Website Forge has offered my business. This is a great development due to the fact I forced them to spend even more money to keep up with me and my site. Website Forge has many more updates coming and this will force them to even spend more money to keep up with my website. Those other websites use an older technology and this forces them to divert any extra income they have to update their own websites. In the mean time I can use the extra income I earn from my website to expand my inventory and grow my website business. So buying the wrong technology (or not keeping the up with the current technology) at the wrong time can cause you headaches as a business owner. So please have the wisdom to buy the right technology and be sure to keep up with the current technology or you will be in my competitions situation.

So yes I did buy the right technology at the right time. You know you are making the right decision about something when you force your competition to spend thousands of dollars which they had not budgeted to keep up with you. I will go to bed tonight knowing that my people here at Website Forge are hard at work to give me thousands of dollars of free upgrades with out any further cost to me. I know my competition is hard at work trying to raise the additional money they need to keep up with me. I will be dreaming of how I can expand my inventory with all the extra money I have. They will be having nightmares of how are they going to keep up with me. 

Good night! :)

Hello everyone.  We are considering some television and radio advertising in the near future and are working on some concepts for a "Sound Logo".    A Sound Logo is basically a short clip used to reinforce a brand.  Most of you can imagine the sound at the end of a Duracell commercial.

I'm having a hard time deciding and hoped I could get some opinions.  Here are 3 MP3 files.  Please let me know which, if any, sound best and stick in your mind.  We are looking for that unique sound that will immediately identify Website Forge when heard.

CLICK HERE TO listen to Sound Logos

Please post comments with your thoughts.

Shane Merem

Hi everyone.  At approximately 4:00 PM EST we had a temporary outtage for some customers.  I wanted to share some of the detais.

This is the report we received from our data center:

Some customers who were behind our managed firewall experienced network
outage due to DOS attack to individual IP addresses at 4:10 EST. 
Network engineers routed the IP addresses targeted, and
normal operation followed.

We have opened a ticket with our firewall vendor to investigate the
reason IPS did not catch this particular DOS. We will update you with
our findings as soon as we receive more information from our vendor.

What does this all mean?  Here is the short version... A DOS attack is when one or more computers send a flurry of communications to one destination with the intent of slowing down or halting the ability of a server to respond.  Our hardware firewall should of detected and stopped this attack but didn't.  Further investigation will uncover why the firewall device was unable to do it's job.

This DOS attack was not directed to Website Forge or one of it's customers, however some of our customers use that particular traffic route to reach their site.

The good news is that the attack has been averted and things are back to normal.  We had no software or hardware failures.  All great news.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience for the small segement of customers that were affected by this attack.  It sucks that there are "cyberterrorists" out there that feel compelled to cause trouble.  However, we will continue to protect ourselves from future issues.

Click here to read the definition of a DOS Attack

Thanks,
Shane Merem
www.websiteforge.com

I found this e-mail very funny.  I thought I'd share.  We can all relate.

Shane Merem
Web Design and E-commerce
www.websiteforge.com

For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on. At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part):

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed an Illegal Operation" warning light.

7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.

Many of you may not know about a useful feature called "Product Types".

A "Product Type" defines the physical field layout of a product.  For instance:

You may sell belts with the following fields:

• SKU
• Description
• Image
• Price
• Belt Size [28, 30, 32, 34, 40, 48, etc]
• Color

And you may also carry digital cameras with this field layout:

• SKU
• Description
• Image
• Price
• Resolution
• Features

The "Product Types" feature inside Website Forge will allow you to define and display every product type you sell.  You may also display each product differently on your Website Forge web site pages.

If you sell varying types of products and have not yet explored this feature -- contact our LIVE SUPPORT at www.websiteforge.com to get some assistance enabling and using this feature.

Shane Merem
www.websiteforge.com
Web Design and E-commerce

Hey.  I am just checking out the Word Press blog.  My well trusted programmer Eugene said it's a great product.

It has a way to play videos too.  This is a video I put on the site recently.
Testing.

Download link

I wanted to create this Blog as a way to communicate useful information about web site design, e-commerce systems, and marketing techniques.

Enjoy.
Shane Merem
www.websiteforge.com
www.magnusoft.com
shane.merem@magnusoft.com