Pakistan Web Development Consultant

How to add reminder to Outlook from a web page

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:20:43 +0000

Have you ever felt the need of buying an item or service while surfing the internet? The answer to that would obviously be YES but maybe you felt that you would like to buy it at some other time due to some constraint like out of money, broke, waiting for special occasion etc. This happens to nearly everyone of us but the other thing that happens as well is that we tend to forget about the item and the event for which we had chosen not to buy in the first place and finally end up with nothing. Ahh! the human mind.

The above scenario happens to most customers while shopping online and this ends up as lost sales for the business owner which is a loss loss situation for all parties. So, how to get out of this situation? The best option for the business owner (in this case a website owner) is to setup a reminder link on his website which will allow the customer to create a reminder on Google, Yahoo, Bing or Outlook (the visitor may use anyone which he/she uses on a regular basis). We will be discussing Outlook here. For the others there is a lot of information on the web. I will discuss them too in due time.

Setting up a reminder on Outlook from a web page may sound complex but it's really very simple. Just follow the steps below

1. Go to the ICalendar page and copy the code from there.

2. We will make some changes to the code that has been copied to tailor it according to our requirements. Following is the code

BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 METHOD:PUBLISH PRODID:-//hacksw/handcal//NONSGML v1.0//EN BEGIN:VEVENT UID:Enter a unique id to represent this reminder DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE:20100826 DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20100831 (the start date of the event) DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20100831 (the end date of the event) SUMMARY:Give the name of the reminder here DESCRIPTION:Describe the reminder here. Mention the URL of the page as well END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR

3. Copy the code into notepad and save it with .ics extension

If you double click the file it will open up Outlook and let you review the reminder text and make any sort of changes by which you would like to remember it by. Once saved, Outlook will remind you of the event.

You can also use a script to make the reminder text dynamic and therefore allow you to generate reminders for each product and service on your website.

Hope the above helps. If you need my help then do let me know and I will be more than happy to help you.

Now my blog number 1 on Google as well :)

admin — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:57:55 +0000

As things would have it August seems to be my lucky month. First my blog went number 1 on Yahoo and Bing and now it is on first page on Google.com. I was nowhere on Google for some time now and with some work I have been able to get the results.

Here is the snap shot of the results on Google

My blog number 1 on Yahoo and Bing for Pakistan Web Development Consultant

admin — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:32:35 +0000

I just checked results for Pakistan Web Development Consultant on Yahoo and Bing and my blog was ranked at top position on both search engines. It has some way to go on Google but I think I will be achieve it in a few days.

Please see the results on Bing

Please see the results on Yahoo

Importance of a coming soon page for a website

admin — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:27:32 +0000

A Coming Soon page is an important if not a necessary step during website development. The coming Soon page usually comes at the end of website development when the website has been developed and is in the testing/quality assurance stage. Depending on the progress at this stage the client can ask the development team to setup this page on his hosting server. Most clients are very eager on the launch of their website especially if it's their first one and some clients even place ads in the daily newspapers to attract visitors to their website.

A Coming Soon page is a one page HTML which comprises of the website logo, brief introduction of the website, "first to know when the website launches" email input box. If the website is to come up for SEO after its launch then the content is tweaked further to include some content rich keywords and phrases so that if the crawler comes about then it will index the page with those keywords. It does help with future SEO.

People tend to think of the Coming Soon page as just another HTML page however in the light of the above this usually serves as the last step before the website launch and provides good boost to the website upon launch.

Let me know your thoughts. It's always nice to hear what others have to say.

How to consume WSDL in PHP using NuSOAP

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:03:52 +0000

I recently got a requirement from a client for a facility to display products/categories prices in real time on his website. The client's website was related to home interiors, blinds and curtains and as he was short on staff he wanted the website to fetch the products, images and prices without any human interference.

He signed up with a major blinds and curtains supplier in the UK to use their API on his website. The API provided information on products, product prices, product images and additional images etc. I had consumed WSDLs in ASP.NET countless times but this was the first time in PHP.

As expected it was not going to be a problem in PHP as well. NuSOAP is an open source package which allows us to consume WSDL online. I downloaded the package from SourceForge and went about my work. After unzipping the package I found that there are 2 folders within it the Lib folder and the Samples folder.

After going through a couple of files in the Samples folder I coded a script which would fetch all the active products in a category. I have not listed sample request data on purpose as it is confidential. I believe the following code would be enough for anyone who has just started.

// URL is the WSDL url where the request would be sent and received from // $params is the array which would pass the request parameters to the URL // SomeMethod is the name of the method where the parameters woule be passed


require_once('lib/nusoap.php');

$client = new soapclient(URL);

$params = array();

$result = $client->SomeMethod($params);

print_r($result);

?>

Hope the above helped.

How to fetch categories from eBay using GetCategories method

admin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:34:30 +0000

While developing a module for Zencart where the user would be able to list his products on eBay using the Zencart admin panel the client requested that he wanted the list of categories on eBay available in the admin panel so he can list the products into the category he wishes. This would allow the client to set the eBay category against the product from the add/edit product page in the admin panel.

Fortunately eBay provides this facility in their SOAP API. They provide a method called GetCategories which will return the category related information to you. Each eBay site i.e. eBay USA, eBay UK has it's own set of categories so you need to specify the location in your input to receive the related categories to that location.

GetCategories take an array as input. The array is made up of the following

Version
RequesterCredentials
CategorySiteID
DetailLevel

and returns an array of objects which contains the category information as

BestOfferEnabled
AutoPayEnabled
CategoryID
CategoryLevel
CategoryName
CategoryParentID

Here we are concerned with CategoryID and CategoryName. If you would like more information on the above you can view the information here.

If you would like to view the code for fetching the categories and saving it into the database then you can download the code from here

Hope the above helped.

How to display current date and time on a webpage using JavaScript

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:27:04 +0000

I make a habit of displaying the current date and time on website backoffice panels I develop for clients. The reason being that time is money for clients and they need to always know the time so they can manage it better and prioritize their work accordingly. I use JavaScript to display the date and time on the website backoffice panel.

You can download the JavaScript code from here. Hope this helps. If you have any questions/comments then please let me know

How to send product details to SagePay from Zencart store and safeguard against abandoned carts

admin — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:29:55 +0000

Some times I come across issues which are very frustrating for me as well as for the client. It happened like this that a client had decided to spend £1000 via Google Adwords in order to promote his website and try and get some orders. As the website was related to wooden furniture it became all the more important as this was an expensive product line and there are not many buyers especially when the recession is in full swing.

The campaign bore fruit in a just a few days and the client received an order worth £600. Unfortunately, even though the customer paid online via SagePay, the order was not registered on the website and the client made his frustration well known. As the website was in Zencart the order does not get saved into the orders table till the customer pays for the products. In this case, the customer did not return from Sage Pay so the order was not visible in the admin panel. As the order details such as product information were not sent to Sage Pay the client had no way of knowing what the customer ordered and the client had to contact the customer to obtain the product details. You can understand how that would have felt for the client as well as what the customer would have thought of the website.

The default Sage Pay (formerly Protx) payment module does not provide the option to send the product details to Sage Pay even though this option is very much there. So, I went about writing a payment module which would allow the system to send the product details to Sage Pay so that the details are logged there as well. In case the customer did not return from Sage Pay after making the payment the client would still have the option of viewing the product details on Sage Pay.

I also installed the Zencart Abandoned Cart Module which would display the products in the admin panel if a customer did not proceed to purchase the order from the website.

What I (and probably you) learned from the above event is that you can never be safe and you must do all you can to prevent any sort of mishap which would affect the credibility of the website.

If you would like to download the Zencart payment module for Sage Pay form which allows you to send product details to Sage Pay then you can download it from here

What is the eBay Platform Notifications API?

admin — Fri, 07 May 2010 13:27:35 +0000

eBay provides a host of APIs on its website. You can browse the complete APIs on the eBay Developer website on this page.

I will be discussing about eBay Platform Notifications API in this post. eBay provides this API to notify the buyer and/or seller regarding a particular event occurring on the eBay website. eBay notifies in two ways

1. Email

2. XML post to website

eBay provides the first option by default to the user however you have the option to disable this notification. The second option is useful in cases where you wish to capture product inventory or order information and take appropriate action.

You can setup notifications for particular actions on eBay using the SetNotificationPreferences method. The method takes the following arguments

1. Notification mode
This can be email or xml post or both. There is no restriction. However, it should be noted that in case of xml post the web page should respond with the HTTP 200 status otherwise eBay will keep sending notifications to the URL till it receives a HTTP 200 status response.

2. Notification type
Notification types are events which when triggered are notified by eBay using the notification mode set above. Again these notifications can be related to the buyer, seller or both.

Once you have set the notifications using the SetNotificationPreferences method you can check whether they have been set correctly or not using the GetNotificationPreferences method. Of course you receive a success or error message in response to your SetNotificationPreferences method request but it's a good idea to check.