Expanding on this post: http://www.amywilliamsdesign.com/cmsblog/2008/08/28/viewing-your-orders-and-sales/

The orders management system allows you to let your customers know the status of their order - On Order, Shipped, Back Ordered, Completed, Canceled; if you have it enabled for customers to look it up. It also lets you print packing slips - both with and without prices (for gift orders).

When you click on view orders from the Orders Panel:

You’ll see the list of orders your site has received….. you can click on the order # to view details of the order, print a regular printing slip, and a printing label.

When you click on the order #, you’ll see a page like this:

On this page, you can update the order status (don’t bother unless you have order tracking enabled for clients to view their orders!), update details of the order, print a regular or gift packing slip, or print a mailing label.

A gift packing list:

Regular packing list with prices:

1. Do limit Flash, and anything else that will make your initial page load slow. 50% of internet uses still have slow connections, and a lot of people with high speed connection lose interest in a new website if they don’t have immediate gratification. Leave the Flash for subpages in your website, allowing the visitor to choose to look at it or not.

2. Do have tons of related content. Content is King. And Queen, Princess, Prince, the whole dang court. Other SEO methods (meta tags, etc) are the peasants, still needed to run a kingdom but search engines don’t notice them as much. If you do a search for nearly anything on Google, you’ll notice one thing in common with all the top sites: lots and lots of relevant text.

3. Don’t do flashing, scrolling, required downloads, pop ups - anything that can be construed as annoying, or worse, not work on the visitor’s browser.

4. Don’t use music, or have it off to allow the visitor to play it. You don’t want a potential client to get fired when your website’s music comes blasting out of work speakers they didn’t know were on, nor would you want it waking up a baby. Music is very similar to Flash…use it wisely or not at all.

5. Do have quality design and coding - I can’t stress enough the effect of good design and coding to a business. Your visitors are more likely to come and stay if your site looks good (holds visual appeal) and has easy to find content. The back end coding (html, css, etc) is equally important - websites that use current standards are more favorably looked upon by search engines.

6. Do blog - and blog regularly. I highly recommend a self hosted WordPress Blog (like I’m using right now!) that can be customized to match your site, or BE your site. Google loves blog posts. Your site visits will improve dramatically if you post regularly and give readers and the search engines something to keep coming back to.

One of our computers was infected with a lovely gem of a product called “WinWeb Security” - not affiliated with winweb.com, this is a program the installs itself and pretends to be an antivirus program, telling you your computer is infected with a wide variety of issues. When you attempt to use the program, you are only able to if you pay $49.99. Unfortunately, this program does NOT clean up your computer, it actually installs vicious trogans, spyware and viruses and royally screws the computer and user up.

After spending 6 hours last night and 4 hours this morning fixing this problem (my personal/work computer is pretty darn secure so I don’t have a lot of experience with these things!), I am compelled to write a post to assist anyone else having this problem.

Symptoms of the problem: Unable to visit any spyware removal websites, unable to install or run any removal or anti virus programs, popups saying you are infected, pop ups that appear to be advertising pop ups (even using Firefox), Google search results not going to the actual website but to go.google.com/example, and the WinWeb “Security” program icon/window on your computer. There may be others but those are the main ones I experienced.

How this happened: Lax security on your computer most likely. The computer involved (not my own) had the Firewall disabled and someone who was not the normal user went to a variety of ….. bad ….. websites, without that without firewall in place, the program was able to easily infect many areas of the hard drive.

How to fix it: Basically, 3 main things: Firewall your computer, get a (free) antivirus program, and a (free) malware removal program. This isn’t going to cost you anything if you are a Windows user. 2 websites (listed below in references) were instrumental in assisting me get rid of this problem, and if you are infected, you won’t be able to view the websites, so I will link them but give the run down on how I fixed it, which will also streamline the process. Expect to spend hours on this, but it’ll be boring so have a book or knitting handing.

Step 1. Make sure your Firewall is ACTIVE.  In XP with the classic menu, Start>Settings>Control Panel>WIndows Firewall. Make sure it is on, then go to the exceptions tab and uncheck anything you don’t recognize. If you are unable to get to a website or play a game (make sure it’s a honest site!), you can go back and recheck as needed. Then in the Control Panel, go to Add/Remove Programs and uninstall WinWeb Security if it is there (it wasn’t in mine)

Step 2. Go to downloads.com and download Avira AntiVir Personal Install, but don’t run yet (disable it if it tries to run, as well as any other virus checkers). Now download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. Install this program, and allow an icon to be placed on your desktop. Right click on the Malwarebytes icon and select Properties, then click on the Find Target button. A window will open with the icon highlighted. Right click on this icon and rename it to *anything* (I named mine lalalala), then launch it by double clicking it. WinWeb is VERY sneaky and makes these programs not work. By renaming it, it will run.

Step 3. With Malwarebytes open, select Quick Scan first, before anything else. It’ll take a while, get the book or knitting out. Let it quarantine the files it finds, delete them, then restart your computer. When it’s back up, run Malwarebytes again, but go to the Update tab and update the program. Do another Quick Scan, restart again. Repeat one more time.

Step 4. With the computer restarted, you’re still going to have WinWeb trying to get into your computer’s pants. Deleting virus ridden registry entries is next. Go to Start>Run and in the space provided, type “regedit” - without the “” quotes of course - and a window will come up with all your computer’s registry files. There are 3 to remove (I only had 2 of them, but make sure anyway):

1. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{D5DF7C9D-6069-4552-8B0C-D02A912FC889}
2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Browser Helper Objects\{D5DF7C9D-6069-4552-8B0C-D02A912FC889}
3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run “WinwebSecurity”

For example, to remove number 1, find and open the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT folder, then find and open the CLSID folder, the find the {D5DF7C9D-6069-4552-8B0C-D02A912FC889} folder (easiest way is to look for the D5D and make sure the ending is the 889). Don’t open this folder, just right click and delete the whole thing. Do the same with number 2 and 3. Restart your computer.

Step 5. Run Malwarebytes but do a Full Scan time, then run the Avira program. Update the program if it asks you to, then let it run. You need to stick close because each time it finds an infection it’ll ask you what to do with it (select quarantine). Once this program is done, go to the administation tab>quarantine and delete all the quarnatined files, then restart your computer. You should now be WinWeb free. If you aren’t, shoot me an email and I’ll see if I can help, but only if you’ve ALREADY done everything listed here, or are willing to bring me your computer and pay me to fix it!

References:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/malware-removal/remove-winweb-security

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6132_102-0.html?forumID=32&threadID=300720&start=0&tag=forum-w;forums06

http://www.download.com/Avira-AntiVir-Personal-Free-Antivirus/3000-2239_4-10322935.html?tag=mncol

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Getting your website seen in the manner you want it to takes a little more work then just putting it on the web. The very first, biggest, rule is to write good, and relevant content. The more information you can put on each page, the better. But it has to be good content. Wording that tells what you do, how you do, why you do it. But it’s a delicate balance to being wordy without annoying visitors with a lot of text to go through.

Starting with the Site Settings in the admin panel is where your part of the SEO for your website comes from. I’ve already done my part - starting with making a search engine friendly design with valid coding - now it’s yours - making your page’s content climb your website up the search engine’s ladders.

Here you’ll enter your default Title, Description, and Keywords. What is the title? This is often your business name or other 2-4 word descriptive text that shows up on the first line in search engine results. The description meta tag is for the descriptive text underneath your name/title in some search engines. Also keep this short and to the point. Enter 10-15 meaningful keywords (gasoline would have no use on a bakery website).

For each website page, you need to repeat the process. The more important the page, the more important it is to use quality meaningful descriptions in your meta tags. Each page should have much text content as is reasonable to use. (2.62 does not have a character limit)

And the same for each category and product, except the product description is enough (again 2.62 doesn’t have character limits)

In the very least, fill out the meta fields in Site Settings. The descriptions listed there will apply to any page that does not have it’s own filled out.

I have a few “preferred” plugins for WordPress…most are recommended for anyone’s blog. You can install any of these onto your blog by using an FTP client like FileZilla and uploading them into you plugins folder (wp-content>plugins), or inquire about having me install them for you. After installation, just go to your WP admin area, go to the Plugin page and activate them. Some plugins require additional settings modified, make sure to read the documnetation that comes with them.

• All in One SEO Pack by http://semperfiwebdesign.com/
• Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator by http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sitemap-home/
• Lightbox 2 by http://www.m3nt0r.de/blog/lightbox-wordpress-plugin/
• My Link Order by http://geekyweekly.com/mylinkorder
• WP Google Analytics by http://xavisys.com/wordpress-google-analytics-plugin/
• Custom Smilies by http://goto8848.net/projects/custom-smilies/
• Feedburner Feedsmith by Google
• Post Sticky by http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/
• Post Rating by http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/
• Did you pass math? by http://www.herod.net/dypm/

I’ve also used the Configurable Tag Cloud by http://reciprocity.be on a few blogs.

A record of past and current Orders and Sales can be found on those links, under E-Store. You can edit your packing slip information here to include your information with each shipment.

Under the “E-Store” heading, the first link is for the Products section. Here you can add, edit and remove products (including downloadables and other intangibles like services) from your store. Items can be edited individually or in groups.

This is a basic product entry page. The item’s name, description, images, price and other details are entered here and it can be placed in one of the categories you’ve already created. If you forgot to create a category, you can still finish adding and saving this product, then go make the category and return to add the product to it.

After clicking on continue (2.62 has a slightly different process), you have the option to add product options (such as size or color, as well as text fields that the customer can enter personalization information, such as a name or birthday…the possibilities are nearly endless)… this process is made even easier with a attribute wizard.

If you have no options to add, just click on continue. The next page gives you the option to add inventory if you only have a few of any item, and select other items this product might be related to. Clients have the option of showing the “related items” on the product pages to help boost visibility and sales. If neither of these options are needed, just click on continue.

v2.62 also has a one page “quick inventory update” which can come in handy for clients who also sell their products in person and need to modify the available inventory quickly.

Under the “E-Store” heading, the first link is for the Categories section. Here you can add, edit and remove your main product categories. Each category has it’s own main page where you can add images and descriptive text before the product listing. Subcategories will also show on the main page.

You may also view a list of items in each category and edit them from that page.

Under “Web Site” in admin area, you can view and edit your Images, and Pages. Here you can add and remove pages (and edit any existing ones) and they will automatically show up on your website. Pages can be moved up and down and put into groups to show up in specific areas of the website depending on your website’s design/template.

Version 2.5 offers a WYSIWYG html editor for Internet Explorer, while 2.62 offers one for both IE and Firefox, for editing your pages, including adding images, links, and more.

Mals-e calculates tax, shipping and handling and works as a gateway between your website shopping cart and your payment processor.

When one of your customers places an order, they are shown their shopping cart which is hosted on the secure Mals-e server and integrated into your store. Here they can choose to edit their order, delete items or move on to the payments section. Credit card and e-check details are collected using an SSL secured server. You can also offer the ability to pay by paper check or money order. The standard free account saves credit card data (encrypted) for you to pick up from Admin and process how you like, it also supports card payments by PayPal.

If you want to have credit cards processed in real time using your own merchant account then you need to use a third-party Payment Gateway. Mals-e supports all the major gateways but you will need a Premium account which costs $8.00 per month. The choice is yours.

Once a customer completes an order you will be notified immediately by e-mail. It is your responsbility to ensure payment has processed/cleared before completing/shipping the order.