How to Work Locally

To develop locally there are a number of steps you need to take to get setup. I'm working on a Windows 7 PC. 1. Download Wamp or Xampp Whichever takes your fancy. Personally I work with Wamp, but I've heard good things about Xampp too. 2. Download all the files…

Git based development -> staging -> live workflow

I've been trying to get my head around a simple git based workflow for deploying from development to staging to live server environments. I found this post extremely useful in achieving a basic development -> live workflow, but adding in a staging step is very useful if you want to…

Changes to OpenCart payment’s controller inline with WorldPay updates

If you use WorldPay to process your payments on your OpenCart shop you may have recently received emails from them about updates to their system.For a client running OpenCart v. 1.5.1.3.1 I've just made the following changes to their WorldPay controller, so as to call to a different WorldPay URL.…

WordPress security alert!!

WordPress have been hit recently by attackers targeting the "admin" user account.The incredibly popular website software is used by millions of websites around the world and it's important to keep your installation of WordPress up to date.The people attacking WordPress currently seem to be aiming their attack at both stand…

How to get around Duplicate Content issues with Cloudfront CDN

Cloudfront is Amazon's Content Delivery Network (CDN) offering and provides web developers with an easy to use and cost effective way of letting people access content from a variety of regions around the world with the aim of speeding up website delivery. This isn't a guide to using Cloudfront -…

How to add special offers, discounts and vouchers in OpenCart

There are various ways you can offer discounts to your customers with OpenCart - you can do it via "Specials", "Discounts" or "Coupons" (voucher codes).Specials:Specials let you mark an item as being reduced in price - depending on your theme, this might show the old price with a line through…

Google’s semantic web needs to be careful

We've just had a conversation about Gilbey's Gin, after a client of ours did some work for them.So, the first thing I did was Google "Gilbey's Gin", which brought back a result showing me a photo of Sir Walter Gilbey, along with a photo of him and some info about…

Using Twitter Web Intents

We've just added some social media links to Poole Trail so that people can share the great stories and media on the City Insights route.As the design called for custom links rather than just social media icons / widgets, we discovered that the old way of doing things for Twitter…

Adwords conversion tracking in OpenCart

How do you add conversion tracking to OpenCart when it has a shared success page?A client asked me to add some Google Adwords conversion tracking code to their OpenCart website's success page that is shown after someone completes an order.However, OpenCart doesn't have one file for that - it has catalog/view/theme/xxx/template/common/success.tpl…

Duplicate domain invoices from 123-reg

During December we found we were charged for several domains twice by 123-reg.This happened with 2 different 123-reg accounts, so it's very possible it's happened to a lot of other people! And I'm sure 123-reg are having quite a headache dealing with the fall out of what was probably a…

Merry Christmas from 18a!

Merry Christmas to all of our clients - old and new - from 18a Productions!Woo - what a busy year! We've worked one some great projects during 2012 - lots we'll be adding to our portfolio shortly and lots we can't tell you about! We've worked with lots of new clients…

Adding categories in OpenCart

This is the first in a range of tutorials for getting started with OpenCart. As your business evolves and changes you may find you need to add / edit / delete categories in your shop.Step 1: Log into the admin of your shop, and from the menu bar along the top of…