Cart66 actually has Constant Contact integration which adds an “opt-in” style mailing list signup that is added to the checkout which would normally work fine for most eCommerce sites however I we needed to make the signup compulsory for the user and to do it seamlessly without the user knowing that this has occurred so they receive the daily emails that they have purchased.

The undocumented cart66_after_order_saved hook

I hunted around the Cart66 support section to see if Cart66 had any hooks built in and I found out that there are four hooks which aren’t documented at this stage. One of these hooks is the cart66_after_order_saved hook which I decided to use for the additional functionality I required. I started with a function and after hunting through the Cart66 code I found that the $orderInfo array would get passed into the function.

[php]

function sennza_add_to_constant_contact($orderInfo){

/* This is where my logic will go*/

}
add_action( ‘cart66_after_order_saved’ , ‘sennza_add_to_constant_contact’ );

[/php]

What’s in the $orderInfo array?

Next up I need to find out what the contents of the $orderInfo array are so I used print_r($orderInfo) to echo them out. The array contents are as follows:

[php]

Array
(
[ship_first_name] => Test
[ship_last_name] => User
[ship_address] => 888 Brunswick Street
[ship_address2] =>
[ship_city] => NEW FARM
[ship_state] => Queensland
[ship_zip] => 4005
[ship_country] => Australia
[bill_first_name] => Test
[bill_last_name] => User
[bill_address] =>
[bill_address2] =>
[bill_city] =>
[bill_state] =>
[bill_zip] =>
[phone] =>
[email] => test@here.com
[coupon] => none
[tax] =>
[shipping] => 0.00
[subtotal] => 0
[total] => 0.00
[non_subscription_total] => 0.00
[trans_id] => MT-ZLPLDQNSJC7JGE
[status] => New
[ordered_on] => 2012-01-31 13:06:05
[shipping_method] => None
[account_id] => 2829
[ip] => 124.171.95.111
[discount_amount] => 0
[id] => 4987
)

[/php]

 Alright, stop… Database time!

Now I knew that $orderInfo[account_id] was the newly generated Cart66 Account ID I looked into the database tables in phpmyadmin and realised that I needed to use this id to find out the membership level (or ‘feature_level’ as Cart66 names it).

[php]

function sennza_add_to_constant_contact($orderInfo){
global $wpdb;;
$account_id = $orderInfo[account_id];
$table_name = $wpdb->prefix . “cart66_account_subscriptions”;
$sql = “SELECT `feature_level` FROM $table_name WHERE `account_id` = $account_id”;
$account_type = $wpdb->get_var($sql);

/* User $account_type to perform the Constant Contact Logic */

}
add_action( ‘cart66_after_order_saved’ , ‘sennza_add_to_constant_contact’ );

[/php]

Take note of the $wpdb class that I’ve interacted with in this function. The $wpdb class has a massive amount of power that makes interacting with the WordPress database a breeze! In this case I only wanted to pull out one variable so I’ve used the $wpdb->get->var function.

After that I ended up reading some of the Constant Contact API documentation to generate some XML to send to Constant Contact so that the subscribers were instantly added to the appropriate mailing list.

NB: I haven’t included the additional logic for the Constant Contact API as it is very site specific and I just wanted to document the data that the cart66_after_order_saved hook receives for other Cart66 developers

My name is Mat and I am proud to be the newest addition to the Sennza team.

I will start with a little bit about me. I am 22 years old and have a passion for Web Development. When I’m not behind the monitor, you will find me riding my bike or at the beach.

Like Bronson and Lachlan, I too have fallen in love with WordPress. After starting on other CMS (Joomla, Drupal), I found WordPress and have never looked back since!

If you want to keep in touch with what I am doing, feel free to follow me on twitter @MathewHood.

I look forward to interacting with you all and hope you get some benefit from what I have to offer.

-Mat

Why do we assume that simple is good? Because with physical products, we have to feel we can dominate them. As you bring order to complexity, you find a way to make the product defer to you. Simplicity isn’t just a visual style. It’s not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of the complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. For example, to have no screws on something, you can end up having a product that is so convoluted and so complex. The better way is to go deeper with the simplicity, to understand everything about it and how it’s manufactured. You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential.

- Jony Ive

(From Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson)

via www.therussiansusedapencil.com

The theme for Novembers Meetup was ‘What I Learn in 2011′ so I volunteered to do a 5 minute lightning talk titled ‘WordPress Is Taking Over The Internet’. I hope you enjoy it!

The slides from the talk are available on Slideshare!

Design: The practical solution to a problem.

Mike Monteiro – Let’s Make Mistakes Podcast #23

In response to the the Obama campaign requesting designers to submit free work for the governments “Support American Jobs” campaign, Mike explains why design is so important.

If you define design as:

“The practical solution to a problem, then if you are asking me to design something I need to have an opportunity to go find out what the problem is, you need to explain the problem to me, you need to tell me what you are trying to get across to whom, then I need to figure out what language those people speak, figure out if their problem and your solution agree with each other, and figure out a way to present your problem so that they understand its their solution.”

Credit link

Our blog uses VaultPress for backups and security and VaultPress were onto the vulnerability post haste. I’m often singing VaultPress’s praises on Twitter but I wanted to post on the record about just how amazing the VaultPress plugin and team are when it comes to backups and security! Read on to find out about yet another amazing VaultPress experience of mine!

Round 1: We were in the clear with TimThumb

I received the following email from the VaultPress team so I knew we were covered for the meantime:

You can read about the initial findings in a post by John Ford on the VaultPress blog.

The Round 1 Intermission

In a brief chat to Dion Hulse on Skype, Dion mentioned a few other vulnerabilities that he’d noted which you can find in Dion’s comments on this blog post. So thanks to Dion I was aware that there was more to it than the initial findings.

I spent yesterday doing some WordPress consulting at Brisbane Technology Park and funnily enough the theme that the company was using there used timthumb.php as well so I spent the time fixing that for them yesterday and thought to myself: ‘I have to fix this issue on our site first thing tomorrow’.

VaultPress To The Rescue

I checked my email this morning after I woke up and was pleasantly surprised to find out that the VaultPress team had been following the findings and had patched our site while I was sleeping so I didn’t have to update our site this morning!

To say I was pleasantly surprised would be a serious understatement. I love VaultPress and wouldn’t be without it. Knowing that your backups are safe is one thing….but knowing your site is secure as well…even while your sleeping is something that you can’t put a dollar amount on!

Go and sign up to VaultPress now if you haven’t already!!!

Edit: Have a read of Matt’s thoughts on the TimThumb saga. You’ll see that the idea of VaultPress updating your site while you sleep is one of the key features that was envisioned for VaultPress. 

Google has made more changes to its search algorithm in recents months than any other time I can remember,with the Panada update and the 4 corresponding revisions since Feb 2010.

I believe that all these things now mean one thing for SEO’s. Design now matters for search engine optimisation, and design will continue to matter more and more.

I hope you enjoy watching this and learn some creative uses of WordPress!

For the sake of argument we will talk about WordPress platform and WordPress blogs, as the most popular blogging platform in the world powering the greatest number of blogs. Too say it honestly, it is the easiest one to use, easy to install, modify, design for and it is widely supported by the online community, so there are always new additions that can help you with your work and most importantly, with your SEO and link building efforts.

Why You Need a Blog in General

It doesn’t matter if you are a company or an individual offering services, products or information, the easiest way to engage the market is through blogging. It offers you the ability to not only get fresh updates regarding your market on your site, but to do many things a company needs if they want to succeed online:

• Engage the users with useful and helpful content
• Get some buzz going on
• Communicate directly with visitors through commenting
• Offer new product/service updates
• Ask for reviews
• Offer incentives, contest, promotions which is easy to share on the web
• Get great content with supporting keywords to increase the topic relevance
• Create inner links for SEO purposes

Why WordPress as a Platform?

WordPress is very easy to use, and the fact that it is widely supported by the online community is a measure of credibility, but not just that. As widely spread you can find all sorts of plugins that will make your blog easy to optimise, track and build links for.

You can easily install Google Analytics plugin to your blog and connect your Analytics account, so every time you visit your blog’s dashboard you will be able to see stats regarding your blog. There is now JetPack WP integration that is very easy and also lets you get the analytic insights.

To help you optimise your blog there are several useful plugins, most known is All in One SEO Plugin, but there are similar plugins that help you optimise your Meta titles and Meta Descriptions to get the sale pitch going.

To help you inner-link your pages there are several plugins you can use, like SEO Smart Links and LinkWithin. This process of placing things on auto-drive will give you more time to concentrate on other things and will help you deep link your most important pages.

Branding your website with Simple Favicon plugin is also easy, as well as adding a sitemap to your blog for easy indexing. But WordPress is not just about automating things and putting them on auto-pilot via plugins you can get from the WordPress Plugin Database. Yes it saves time and is easy to use, but there are other benefits of using WordPress. For example clean URL structure you can set via permalinks section to show only the post name. Not to mention the fact that WordPress has a clean code, now if you experiment with your themes you might get burned, but most of them are well made.

Navigation is much easier with tags and categories; it is very easy to optimise images, and you don’t have to worry about URL canonization issues any more. With all this great usability you shouldn’t think twice about the benefits of WordPress for SEO, and yeah, don’t forget to add the Link To Me plugin to make your content more linkable.

How to Use your Blog to Get Backlinks

This is also a frequent question when it comes to owning a blog, how do I use it to get backlinks? Well, a quality blog will get backlinks on its own; so to begin with, if you just concentrate on producing quality and useful content you will be sure to score a few links. But to give you more insight into how to attract or use your blog as leverage to get links here is another useful list:

• Blog Commenting – maybe not the top level of link building but it doesn’t matter, not only do you score a link but there is an even better thing involved, you get people to notice you by leaving insightful comments.
• Guest Blogging – It is far easier to score a guest post when you own a blog of your own. This way you will be able to offer you expertise to new eyes looking for info regarding your market. You can exchange blog posts the same way you exchange links.
• Offer Guest Posts on Your Blog – By offering guest posts on your blog you will sure score a good number of links. Most bloggers will link to their content to strengthen their links coming from your blog.
• Link Baiting – Although not explicit only to blogs, link baits are easier created today in the form of content, so by creating a great post, list, a resource or something like a giveaway announced on your blog you will be inviting free links.
• Offer Something Free or Amazing – Giving free products, discounts and promotion material you will be sure to attract some attention and get links for your blog.
• Offer Market News – If you offer news regarding your market to your audience first you will sure be on your way of becoming a one stop resource, which also leads to new links.

Utilizing Social Media for Backlinks

Spending an hour a day to manage your social media profiles is not too much. If you are a company you should have a designated person managing your social interactions. Think of it as customer support, but more in the terms of customer information, or even user control. This is the best way to spread the news and your blog content, the best way to make it go viral. The days of emailing webmasters are almost gone, we have switched to an interactive web that relies on social media to drive traffic and get links.

When someone mentions social media and backlinks people automatically think of creating user profiles with links to their sites, or spamming their stream with links, this is not what we are talking about. The way to use social media is to connect with the right people, engage them in conversation and form alliances that will last not for a week, but for a long time. Each of those alliances can bring your traffic and links. You can use social media to ask for links on Twitter or Facebook, form strategic partnerships via LinkedIn or simply promote your quality content and get it viral and linked at.

Twitter is a gold mine for market leaders you want to follow and engage, so here is a nice new Twitter tool to help you get the idea of what a user’s profile is all about. This is a great tool to see what a user is talking about and to use that info to find and connect with new people to help promote your website and get some quality backlinks.

Both blogging and social media are powerful tools for link building. Not using them in this age means that your online presence is outdated, so get on the wagon, it’s not hard and you will see the results very fast.

You could write a song, scream at the top of your lungs or blog about it…so I’m choosing the later! So it’s rant time in regards to WordPress updates and why they are a good thing! Because other CMS seem to think frequent updates are a bad thing…plus this rant will make me a healthier person cause I’ll release the negative energy and hopefully get my point across!

Image Credit Link

We all love paying for insurance don’t we?

Oh no, wait, we hate paying insurance because it’s based on paranoia!

• What if someone crashes into my car?
• What if someone decides that my house is the house to rob?
• What if I die trying to catch a bus?
• What if my house gets flooded? (I’ll not rant about this one…seeing it’s not WordPress related #thebigwet)

I’ll change those locks for free!

Imagine a world where your insurance companies found out about a flaw in your deadlocks on your house and they popped over to upgrade your locks to negate the ability for a thief to break in. That’d be awesome right?

After all, you are paying the insurance company to insure you so it’s the least they could do! Oh no wait, the least they could do is direct debit the same amount as last month from your account and do nothing. That’s some awesome service right there! We’ll take everyones money then if something happens then we’ll deal with that after the event.

You get FREE WordPress insurance!

So how does this little rant tie in with insurance companies and WordPress?

Well you know that lovely little yellow update bar?

This little yellow bar is the same as your insurance company coming to your house to update your locks so you’re secure!

Frequent updates are a good thing! Any time a security flaw is found the WordPress team will update the flaws within hours. There are loads of other Content Management Systems (CMS) out there who are proud about their lack of updates because they think they are secure. I actually tested out a couple of security holes that were found in WordPress on another popular CMS last night and surprise, surprise I logged into their systems using the holes that have been sealed by the awesome WordPress community…and I’m not even a hacker!

WordPress updates are a freaking awesome thing!

WordPress updates keep your website safe. You can sleep at night without any paranoia thanks to WordPress and the community behind it. There are many reasons why WordPress powers over 13% of the entire internet but the updates are one of the most important reasons!

So don’t get annoyed or rant about a new WordPress update on your website!!!

Think of it as your best mate tapping you on the shoulder and saying “Hey dude, I just noticed you forgot to lock your car and started wandering off to the shops so I’ll lock your car for you!“