Orthodox Biz Blog

One of the new and exciting advantages to the computer age is the ability for people to join, meet and share common interest online. This has lead to the phenomenal growth in online forums.  
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site. From a technological standpoint, forums or boards are web applications managing user-generated content.
People participating in an Internet forum may cultivate social bonds and interest groups.
Forums are relatively inexpensive to build and no cost to maintain because members take the responsibility for monitoring the content. A good example of a forum is action can be found at http://www.corshops.com/Support.html
Forums have proven successful for e-retailers that sell products to people with a passion. Pet owner are a fine example of people with a passion.
Before the Internet, people looking for others with similar interest had limited options. The Internet made possible discussion boards, forums and social networks that attract like-minded people from around the world. This ability to bring people together is at the heart of the online forums.
To build a forum for your website is inexpensive because the structure of an online forum is inherently uncomplicated. “The price range for a forum to be added to you site is between $100 and $1500 depending on the platform you are using.” says Olan Chancy, president and co-founder of Corfun   “As a e-retailer, when you are helping people find what they want and understand what they need to know also creating an opportunity to interact with other of common interest, you have created goodwill that you can not measure.”  Corfun specializes in dynamic Websites that are easy to mange and update.
When you are ready to launch your forum’ there are ways to “prime the pump” to elicit participation. First promote the forum on you website. Second would be to do an email blast to all friends, family and past customers. Third post it to and social networks you may be a member of. Forth you or your in-house staff “seed” the forum with questions, content and comments. Fifth reach out to industry pros and experts asking them to be an active member and post a topic. This will only help them because it gives them more of an audience to show there expertise.
Now that your forum is up and running the only thing left to do is monitor it so you can answer questions, delete inappropriate content and harvest insight into what your customers like and dislike.
As the owner of the forum you have the power to delete post and ban users. Most forums require members to provide a valid email address linked to the users name to become a member.

When was the last time that your image presentation in Virtuemart actually wowed a client? Okay, the default image handling isn't too bad. You get a thumbnail, which pops up into a lightbox. If you need multiple images, then you get a stack of thumbnails on the product details page - which also pop up into lightboxes.

Frankly, it's all a little ho-hum to say the least. Much of what we sell on our CorShops site is actually software, so we don't need the images so much. After all, we can demo the software and that helps sell the sizzle. But most of our development clients sell physical products, and they need to put these in the best possible light. And that light is usually not a 'lightbox,' which is why we created the FlyTabs Virtuemart Theme.

Virtuemart is a great shopping cart, but the core system has three big problems when it comes to handling images. First, the default option on a Category page is that clicking the product image thumbnail pops up a bigger image, instead of leading to the product details!

That just makes people mad. Online shoppers normally expect to get product details, not a bigger image. That is why our FlyTabs Virtuemart Theme has the option to link product images to product details.

I first started working on Web projects for the Orthodox Christian Network (myocn.net) in late 2006. At the time, OCN had one program – Come Receive the Light. Come Receive the Light was primarily a traditional radio broadcast, airing in many key markets once a week. OCN’s Website was important, but had always been considered a secondary delivery channel compared to terrestrial radio.

Virtuemart is the best shopping cart solution around for Joomla CMS. Joomla, of course, just happens to be the best content management system around, so the combination of the two is a serious powerhouse. Joomla requires a template to operate. Virtuemart uses a theme, but since it runs inside Joomla, it works with the template also. That causes a lot of confusion for more novice users, so we would like to help clear that up. New online shop owners need to understand how they unique and look and feel of their sites will be generated.

Obama's stimulus plan won't help the economy, and might actually sound the death knell of the dollar. After all, the whole thing is predicated on the idea that you can borrow and spend your way to prosperity. That is just plain nuts, of course. You don't borrow your way to wealth - you produce your way to wealth. Americans are tapped out and swimming in debt, so producing for the domestic market is a tough slog right now. Good thing there is a big world out there, and a good way to sell what you produce is to target it.

Content Management Systems are growing in popularity as a framework for running Websites. A Content Management System (CMS) automates many of the repetitive tasks associated with running a Website. Using a script framework and a database, a CMS lets organizations sponsoring Websites focus on publishing content to the Web. A CMS framework also comes bundled with all kinds of capabilities such as interactivity (discussion forums, comments, blogging), membership, syndication (RSS feeds), podcasting, and a whole lot more.

I'm often accused of being something of a Joomla Content Management System Evangelist. I'll admit it. I am a little passionate. But I think with good reason. This blog is actually a reprinting of a case study I did concerning Maryjean Zarick and her Paradise Music site. I wrote it up to highlight some of the great stuff Joomla can do for a small business person, and I decided to share it as a blog here to help spread the word.