Magento Demo Store and Admin

Magento was released today. You can view the demo store and admin here:

http://demo.magentocommerce.com/

http://demo-admin.magentocommerce.com/admin/
User: admin
Pass: 123123

Magento Demo Store and Magento Themes, Layouts, Templates, Skins and Translations

With the release of Magento Commerce Beta 1, I plan creating a Magento Demo Store that will run the Beta and will sell Magento Themes. The development team at Varien has not released the exact details on how Magento Themes will work, but they have stated that they are based on the Zend Framework.

The Magento Template structure has design packages that are easily uploadable in the Magento admin. Each Design Package has themes, with include layouts, templates, skins, and translations. The layouts are based on XML files that define the block structure. Templates are the HTML templates, and the skins are CSS and images. The translations have to do with the Zend_Translate class, which is part of the Zend Framework.

I'll post more once the Magento Forum and Wiki are opened to the public. The demo Magento Shop should be available in the next few days.

Automatic Keyword Generation

I posted a while back about the Automatic Keyword Generator PHP class by Ver Pangonilo. This works pretty well, but can only find keywords based on the text you input. It cannot generate related terms, synonyms, etc. However, the Yahoo Content Analysis Web Service can do all these things and more.

You can generate these keywords using the following function:

function implodeAssoc($array, $inner_glue='=', $outer_glue='&') {
$output = array();
foreach( $array as $key => $item ){
$output[] = $key . $inner_glue . $item;
}
return implode($outer_glue, $output);
}

function getKeywords($text) {
$baseurl = 'http://search.yahooapis.com/ContentAnalysisService/V1/termExtraction';
$params = array('appid'=>'YahooDemo',
'context'=>urlencode($text),
'output'=>'php');

$request = $baseurl . '?' . implodeAssoc($params);
$xml = file_get_contents($request);
$result = unserialize($xml);
$keywords_array = $result['ResultSet']['Result'];
$keywords = implode(",",$keywords_array);
return($keywords);
}

echo getKeywords("Bill Gates to Finally Receive His Harvard Degree. It's not like he needs it to beef up his resume, but the world's richest college dropout is finally getting his degree. Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp.");

This will output:
bill gates,harvard degree,microsoft corp,college dropout,resume

Interprise Suite v1

I've been following Interprise Suite for the last 18 months or so. I was a beta tester for a while, but I grew tired of waiting around for their release (originally scheduled for late 2005). They just unofficially put out their first release. You can get it here: http://www.interprisesolutions.com/Forum/Topic3911-57-5.aspx#bm3978

I haven't really messed with the software yet, but I hope to use it to start a drop shipping business.

Viral Marketing with phpList

I've been messing around a lot with phplist. It is a fullfledged newsletter manager with a double opt-in subscription mechanism, scheduling, RSS, click-tracking, attachments and bounce management. The plan is to create a viral marketing script that uses the PHPList database to control user access to the member areas of the site.

I'm also trying to incorporate the GeoLite City database, so I can capture a users region when they sign up for the newsletter. Since the niche I'm working in is very location oriented, I hope to be able to use PHPList and PHPadsnew to target them with location specific newsletters and banners.

I'm going to try the plan similar to the 15kchallenge. The plan is to offer something for free if they add their email address, and confirm using the link in the welcome email. Then offer something else for free if they sign up 3 friends (and they confirm).