Posts Tagged ‘social networking’

Adding Social Networking Buttons to Magento

// February 17th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Magento

I have been building a magento based site over the past few months for a new project I am working on with Ruth. The end product will be an online food store that sell Australian Gourmet Foods.

I spent a while searching around Google trying to figure out how to add social networking buttons into the products page. I basically wanted people to click “Share on Facebook”, “Tweet This” and more recently “Buzz This” and send the product name, the URL and any other text I wanted.

All you really need to know is

  • <?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName()) ?> – Product name
  • <?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>- Product URL

I have added the below to the view.phtml page, found in templates/catalog/product.

Twitter

<a title=”Send this page to Twitter!” href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=Check out the <?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName()) ?> at <?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?> @foodoAU” target=”_blank”><img src=”YOUR BUTTON HERE” alt=”Follow foodoAU on Twitter”/></a>

Facebook

<a href=”http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>&t=Check+this+out” target=”_blank” title=”Share on Facebook”><img src=”YOUR BUTTON HERE” alt=”Share on Facebook”></a>

Google Buzz

<a href=”http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>&title=<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName()) ?>&srcURL=YOUR URL&srcTitle=YOUR SITE NAME” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow external” title=”Google Buzz This”><img src=”YOUR BUTTON” ” alt=”Google Buzz This!” /></a>

Quick Way to Increase Hits

// September 3rd, 2008 // No Comments » // The Internet

A quick and easy way to increase your traffic and even backlinks is to submit your site to social bookmarking or social media sites such as Digg and StumpleUpon. I have been doing this for the past few posts now and have seen a quick rise in traffic to the blog.

A social media website in this context is a site that allows users and webmasters save, manage, organise and share their bookmarks with other users.

Users or webmasters are able to submit their favourite pages by submitting the link, a description of the page, category and tags so other users are able to find similar sites. Users are able search for a particular type of website or blog and find a list of similar sites that suits their search.

Webmasters are increasingly submitting their pages to social media sites in order to increase traffic and backlinks. Search engines crawl these types of websites so the more pages you submit that link to your blog or website, then the more chance you are going to have being found on the likes of Google or Yahoo.

Webmasters are able to submit their pages manually; otherwise there are various WordPress plugins you can implement to make submitting your pages easier. This option will also give your readers a chance to submit the link if they like what they see and want to share it with others.

You can share my pages below by clicking “Share This” and selecting your favourite network.

Tweet Tweet

// June 29th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Project Blogger

I have been resisting the tempation to create my own profile on Twitter over the past few months, however today I finally caved in. As a web designer, for some reason I am against all of these quick and easy fill out a form type websites – such as Facebook, Myspace, Bebo and the list seems to continue to grow.

If I look back a few years ago, I was resisting to sign up to all of those social networking websites at one point or another, but eventually was overcome by peer pressure and just had to sign up against my will. I actually started coding my own blog type website before I just decided to go the easy route and use Wordpress. Now I don’t even code my own theme – how times have changed.

I figured why would I want to jump on the social bandwagon when I can just create my own website that can host my own photos (Flickr), my own videos (YouTube), my own blogs (Wordpress), and my friend’s comments (Facebook) - and best of all it was designed by me and only me. Though if my own idea was so great and a few years earlier, I’d be typing an entirely different post right now. However I am sure I had an idea similar to YouTube back in 1998!

The reason why I decided to create a Twitter profile was purely to network in order to increase the traffic to my blog – just so you all know! It actually is a very good tool, and I love the fact that if I am too busy blog, I can just send an update via SMS. For example, I will be overseas for a week at the end of July, so you all will have to rely on my short and sweet updates for a few days.

Twitter – Social networking and microblogging service utilising instant messaging, SMS or a web interface.

As part of the registration process, Twitter asks you to enter your e-mail address and it will go through your address book to search for your friends who have a Twitter profile. It came back with one person – an old high school teacher of mine who taught my computer class and actually influenced my online and IT ‘career’. Now either I do not have enough friends or they just aren’t IT savvy enough to care or even know about Twitter – I think the latter and I made it my mission to at least help sign a few of them up.

So if you have not already created your Twitter profile, you should! It is a very useful tool to build online relationships with your friends, audience and other bloggers - and don’t forget to follow me!

 

 

Phishing Scams Exposed

// April 8th, 2008 // No Comments » // The Internet

I just read an interesting report issued by Symantec Australia about the current rate of internet fraud carried out via social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.

The report stated that for the last six months of 2007, there were nearly 90,000 cases of “phishing” found, which increased by more than 150% on the first half of the year.

What is a “phishing host”?

A phishing host is a fake website that is setup in order to fool people into thinking that they are entering their login or personal details into their e-mail account, bank account, etc. You all have probably come across a phishing scam telling you to confirm your bank account details or something similar.

Why are social networking sites dangerous?

These kind of website are dangerous because of what people enter into them. If you look on some people’s profile, they have their name, location, age, date of birth, school, workplace, relationship status and their list of friends. I have even seen some Facebook profiles with mobile phone numbers.

Organisations are collecting your private information and selling it on the internet black market for about US$1.

Most of the money made from stolen information is then put back into the organisation to develop new ways of creating attacks on users. Professional programmers are being employed to develop these new threats.

The new threats come in the form of viruses and worms, mostly being developed in the United States, Russia and China. The next generation of malicious code will be aimed at attacking portable media such as USB keys, MP3 players and even mobile phones.

So if you have a profile on a social networking website, don’t give out too much information as it may be stolen and the proceeds used to develop new ways of attacking us users.