Sitting at a desk all day in front of a computer is not healthy lifestyle. This isn’t new news, but over the past year we’ve implemented some fun things at our office to help get us up and moving a bit during the day. From walking the hills of Athens for 15 minutes in the afternoon to stretching and some basic exercises, we’ve noticed health benefits to go along with a clearer more focused mind. This article reinforces what we’ve implemented and gives us some great ideas to in the future. Check it out for some suggestions that could improve your day at work and health as well!
Category Archives: Blog
Marketing is moving towards a dialogue between buyers and sellers. Instead of marketing “at” your customers, it’s become more effective to market “with” your customers. Today, the companies that win are closest to those who buy, use, and advocate for their products. The five trends demonstrating a shift to collaborative marketing will create the biggest changes and ultimately offer the most significant rewards for marketers can be found by reading the article.
The most exciting X-cart module out there! Speed up your site and optimize for SEO all in the same module! Also works with CDSEO!
Buy the Speed Booster mod Now!
With this module you can see page load time increases of up to 1,000 times faster or more! The more products and categories you have the more benefit this module is!
How is this different from the old HTML catalog?
It’s quite different in that you can have dynamic pieces in the cache (see holepunching below). This makes it much more flexible to work with your needs by combining static and dynamic pieces. It’s methods in creating these cache pages is totally different from the HTML catalog. You do not use the files directly like you do with the HTML catalog.
It’s also different in that you can use things like CDSEO or it’s own SEO friendly URL’s without using the HTML catalog way which isn’t ideal. You can even set the URL’s for even more ideal SEO.
What is ‘holepunching’? And how does it benefit me?
Our caching module has the ability to ‘holepunch’ certain parts of the cache to make only those pieces dynamic. For example, you may have a minicart that you want to keep dynamic (you want it to update when products are added to the cart). This X-cart Speed Booster module allows this! All you have to do is follow the holepunching instructions when installing the module and it will know to keep that part dynamic and always updated. Your site will still be faster though because the categories, products, and other data will be cached.
How much extra time does ‘holepunching’ add?
It takes about 150 milliseconds to initialize X-cart. So you would add that much time plus what ever query you need. If it’s something like asking for the current inventory amount for a product, that time is pretty negligible as it’s a simple query to the database. So to holepunch the inventory would only add around 150 milliseconds.
What does the module actually cache? Doesn’t X-cart already do template caching?
The module takes a compiled ‘snap shot’ of your pages when it runs. What this means is that there is little to no processing needed to be done when displaying your website. It’s like viewing an HTML website. X-cart’s template caching just caches the compiled templates. There is still a lot of processing done at this point.
What if I have inventory that changes frequently?
You have currently three options if you have inventory that changes frequently. You can have the cron run more frequently to update your cache more often, you can ‘holepunch’ the inventory or our best option is you can do a few optional install steps for Automatic Page updates! Even if you run out of stock on an item, if someone tries to add it to their cart, X-cart will check before adding it to their cart and will not allow them if you are out of stock. See the cron section below for more details.
What is the Auto Page Updates?
The Auto Page updates is a few extra install steps you can do when installing to make the cache update when needed. For example, if you modify a product in the admin, these optional install steps will refresh that product’s cache as well as any category pages that product shows up on with no interaction from you required! There are options for having auto updates for products, categories, manufacturers and static pages! These optional install steps are also run as a background task so you won’t see any slowdown by adding it in.
What kind of server is the demo site running on?
The demo sites are running on a small VM server. There is only 2Gb of Ram and 2Ghz CPU.
What is the difference between the cached demo and non-cached demo?
The demo’s cached vs non-cached sites are running on the exact same copy of X-cart sharing the same database. The non-cached site has all the cache files deleted so it’s doing direct calls to X-cart
I’m using a ‘Responsive’ Template, will the Responsive template still work?
Yes a Responsive template will still operate normally. Think of it this way, X-cart gives you an HTML page in the end after it does all it’s processing and calculations. What this module does is store that HTML page for quick retrieval. No processing involved (or minimal if you holepunch). So the HTML result is the same, it’s just a snapshot and all the processing is done when you run the cache to generate these snap shot pages.
What if I currently use X-cart’s built in Clean URL’s?
Not a problem. We have an import script to import the information into our module (URL’s and meta data). From then on you can use our module to manage your URL’s. You should find it easier and a more centralized place to manage URL’s
What if I use CDSEO?
Not a problem. We also support CDSEO. CDSEO will operate as it normally does and our module picks that up for you for the caching!
Does your X-cart Speed Booster support multi-languages?
Yes it sure does!
What options are available for the Cron ?
There are many options for the cron. These options are great for tweaking the refresh to your needs. So if you don’t add/remove products often but your inventory does change often, you can simply run the Product update more frequently than a full update. So you in this example would set up 2 crons. One to do products hourly and one to do the full site nightly.
- You can have the cron update all pages.
- Update the home page only
- Update Products only
- Update Categories only
- Update Manufacturers only
- Update Static Pages only
- OR any combination of the above!
What are the page limits?
The page limit options are the number of pages the module will cache. The more products and categories you have, the more beneficial this module is! Just view the demo with 100k products to see how much faster the cached vs non-cached pages are on a small VM server!
What happens if I run over my purchased Page limit?
Not a problem if you run over your page limit! The module will keep working. It just won’t cache any extra pages past your limit but your site will still function like nothing happened!
Can I purchase more page limits later?
Yes! You can always upgrade your page limit. We’ll create a link soon for that upgrade option. You’ll pay only the difference between what you purchased and the new page limit you need!
Buy the Speed Booster mod Now!
Why do your current customers do business with you? Understanding the answer to this simple question can help you expand your business and help you gain new clients. Read the full article here.
A Facebook page for your business is an easy way to reach your customer base. However, just like anything else, it requires some thought and preparation when setting up and maintaining the page. This article is about a year old, but still has some great tips on setting up your business Facebook page.
I always enjoy reading Elizabeth’s articles. She always has something insightful you can take from them. She has a recent article on Inc.com about how to change the way you work to better suit your goals and ideals as a person. You can read the full article here:
She also has recently produced a great book that we enjoyed about Effective Time Investment. Be sure and check it out!
In order to succeed as you climb higher in an organization, the more you must engage other people in conversations. Here are seven ways that the best bosses increase their effectiveness by the ways they communicate:
1. Bring the vision to life
2. Ask smart questions
3. Take time to read the room
4. Create a climate where things get done
5. Use stories to get your points across
6. Be mindful of what you don’t know
7. Make people feel they work for a winner
You can read the full article here.
Feeling stressed, overwhelmed and frustrated? Our friend Elizabeth of @RealLifeE has a new book to help you! We’ve implemented several of her suggestions in our daily activities and these ideas have helped us manage the crazy demands of business and life in general. We work in an industry that expects quick response and availability 24×7. Those expectations can tend to be overwhelming!
The section that focused on various personality traits and how understanding those traits and tendencies from a perspective of getting things done was extremely helpful. Our office may be small, but we have many different personality types and benefited from her insight and suggestions.
If your interested in some great ideas on the best way to utilize your time, reduce your stress levels and start 2013 off on the right track please check out her book :
To-Do lists can be a great thing. A lot of us use them but many times we don’t get the most of these lists. Research has found if you put some thought into the list and put the items in order, you will work through your list more effectively. You can read the full article here.
Great article on web predictions for 2013. Make sure your site is up with the times! You can read the full article here.
