theBohnen

Even todays cheapest ink jet printers are more than capable of printing decent quality product labels.. my experience suggests if you're getting crappy results with your printouts (and provided your printer is functioning correctly) your problem may be more SOURCE related than it is hardware. For instance, most graphics you clip off the 'net aren't designed for print applications.. they're usually designed to be "lightweight" so they download fast. They simply aren't real sutable for print.. and they get even worse when you start streching or changing the size. The program you use to create the label graphics is also pretty key to getting satisfactory results.. MS Paint really shouldn't be your top pic for serious image editing, for example.

It costs money to ship stuff.. packing materials, labor to pick and pack your order, etc and most large outfits just don't have the time to use multiple shipping methods. In the grand scheme of things, $14 dosen't sound like alot to pay to have something hand delivered to your door from Kansas to Alaska.. way cheaper than picking it up! $86 bucks to send a 60lbs box to California sounds mighty steep for ground shipping.. so does $9.10 to ship a less than 1 oz package. Were you people getting the stuff shipped next or second day air?

Important facts to know: 99% of statistics are made up on the spot. Most people buy candles based on how they look (packaging/label) and how they smell. You can rattle on about scent throw, wick composition, soy vs. panda fat wax or whatever.. they just don't care. They want something that looks good and matches their decor, and when they open the lid, they want to like the way it smells. Techno geeks can rattle on about all the latest features in their TV, but all most people care about is can I watch my shows on it? Does it look clear? Ok, i'll take it.. and in the case of men, there's the added question, "Do you make it in a 100" jumbo screen?" Computers are the same way.. there is a small segment that will ask for all the technical B.S., but most people just ask, "Can I get on the internet with it? Will it run my bookkeeping software? Yea? I'll take it." Specifics really only matter to the people making the stuff and that segment of folks who like to think they're "informed". Did you know that big leauge department store brands spend twice as much on marketing than they do actually making the stuff they put in the bottle? It's all about making the packaging look good,and making it smell great when the customer pops open the lid and takes a wiff.. because 70% of new customers buying decisions are based on how they feel about the packaging and the scent.. 20% are infulenced by TV/Magazine advertisments for the products, and 10% by whats actually in the bottle. My advice to anyone bringing a product to market is to make a product that YOU feel good about (because it's way easier to sell something you believe in yourself) then make it look fantastic! Put a cool label on it, make the product LOOK as good as it is, and you can't go wrong.

I don't think you have to warn them of every specific danger, just put instructions for use, remind them that hot wax is.. uhh.. hot.. and even tho it smells like yummy apple pie, don't eat it. People in general are either just too busy to bother reading instructions, or just plain stupid.. I mean, why else would they have to put "do not dry hair while sleeping" on hair dryers or "do not bathe with this product" on toasters?

You wouldn't be charging your state sales tax on an order shipped to another state anyway, would you? So what difference does it make? Most companies ask for a biz licence or tax ID number to prevent cheap people from trying to get the wholesale rate, but like prarieann said.. if you require a minimum volume purchase to qualify for wholesale pricing, and they're out of state, why bother?

Frames websites are really nothing more than multple "little" webpages loaded into one page, with each of the "little" pages exsisting in a "frame". The idea behind frames was in the early days, slow connections made even simple webpages take awhile to load. Also very tight bandwidth limitations were imposed on web hosts, and even alot of ISP's would limit your amount of bandwidth per month. Some information, like the navigation bars are the same for all your pages, so with frames, you only had to load the stuff that was simular to all pages once.. which greatly improved load times, and reduced bandwidth expendatures. With most folks today, even in rual areas, connecting at 33.6 or faster, and bandwidth limits set very high (or removed all together) it really isn't much of an issue anymore. Some eStore hosts with online page editors still promote the use of frames in their available templates, but that's mostly to take advantage of the bandwidth savings I mentioned.. dosen't really mean much for a single site, but when you multiply that savings by 3 or 4 hundred (or more) it adds up. What it all really comes down to is what YOU like on your page.. if you're happy with it, and it's working correctly (i.e. not trapping the visitor in a scrunched up frame or something) then leave it alone. I personally don't care for a site with more than one scroll bar, and prefer not to have to scroll much at all.

Don't expect venders at a show to be real upfront and honest with you regarding their sales.. just observe the customers. That will give you a good idea about who's selling what, and how much. For a large market, high traffic show, a 10x10 for $850 seems about right.. altho they can usually be convinced to cut you a break on the price if it's getting close to the show date and they have booths to fill.. they'd rather fill those spaces at a discounted rate than to let them sit empty. If you're just going to the show to scout it out for next year, wear a shirt with your company name and website address on it, stuff some of your samples in a backpack, and bring plenty of buisness cards with your website address on 'em to leave in other peoples booths. :rolleyes2

... if you cant get a responce from them and don't already have their @sbcglobal.net contact eMail, message me and i'll pass that along to you.

If their eMail is them@theprimmarket.com they probably won't get it till after the 1st of the month when the outfit that they lease the server space resets their bandwith.. unless they contact their provider and upgrade their account between now and then.

Judging from your URL, http://www.theprimmarket.com/shoppe/sites/PollyannasAttic/index.php theprimmarket.com is apparently the place that has exceeded it's bandwidth limits, so it's probably not your specific site thats hogging up the bandwidth, but one or more of the other sites it hosts. Looks like you probably just have your domain forwarded to a folder on their server. I personally feel if you're going to do real buisness on the web, you should have your files on your own domain instead of a re-direct to another domains folder.. it just looks a little more professional. As an outfit providing hosting, doing things that way allows them to allocate bandwidth to each account, so the other users are not penalized when another site racks up the bandwidth (as has apparently happened in your case)

I think it comes down to implied saftey. For instance, if somebody buys a Smith & Wesson .357 and plays Russian Roulette with it, the company really isnt liable, but if Smith & Wesson were to sell their revolver in a "Russian Roulette Home Game" they'd be in for a lawsuit.. because they're telling the customer it's OK to do. State law varies, but in most cases if you sell a product, and the customer uses that product in a manner inconsistant with it's labeling or instruction, your not liable.. but if you say, "Yea, go ahead and dump this hot wax all over your lovers genitals.. they'll really like it!" and they end up turning their BF/Hubby/Neighbors Wife into Quazimoto, expect a call from somebodys attorney. But other than that, your site looks great!

"Perl (let's face it, that's all PHP is if you read the syntax) and it doesn't offer any more security. There is nothing wrong with Perl, if there was Ebay and the library of congress wouldn't be using it." First, let's make clear that Perl is not a website/web application specific programming language, it's what was available at the beginning, and the best option at the time.. in fact Perl has been around since 1987. It was written by a man named Larry Wall, because he wanted a language that had all the features of sed, C, awk and the Bourne Shell. It got an overhaul in 1994, adding many features and updates, but it still isn't a web specific programming language.. which in all honesty has it's benefits, but also has disadvantages. PHP evolved simularly, but from the very start was designed and intended to be web specific language, which makes development fast. While earlier versions of PHP weren't all that great, PHP5 (released in 2004) has come quite a long way, and is the preferred language for hundreds of thousands of web designers.. mostly because of it's web specific and built in database capabilities, which mean less lines of code to produce the same result. I don't maintain that Perl is bad, I just contend that it's old, non Web specific, and in most web applications (on shared servers), PHP sucks less resources and runs faster. As far as eBay using it, i'm not convinced eBay's core has been running anything Perl based in some time.. and the Library of Congress uses it?? Have a look at a bit of code from their search page (search.loc.gov/query.html) <h2 id="more">Of Interest</h2> <ul id="res_links"> <li><a href="http://www.loc.gov/today/index.php">Library News & Events</a><br /> News, events, and features from America's library</li> <li><a href="http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/index.php">Webcasts from the Library of Congress</a><br In fact, browsing thru the loc.gov website, it's clear they use a combination of languages, including PHP, Java, and (on americanslibrary.gov) Perl. PHP's stability and speed on sites just like the message board you're reading this post on now speaks for itself. If a phpBB message board (written in PHP, and arguably one of the more clunky PHP based message boards) can handle 459,389,738 articles posted with 2,912,735 registered users and has had 41,319 users online at once reading, searching, and posting as GaiaOnline.com has, i'm confident PHP can handle most eCommerce applications without breaking a sweat. Now if somebody is going to have 50,000+ customers browsing and buying at the same time, i'll conciede that maybe PHP isn't the ideal language to use.. but I wouldn't pick Perl, either.

It takes 5 seconds of bare skin exposure to 140 degree water to cause a third degree burn. a Third degree Burn (Full thickness) Destroys all layers of the skin May involve fat, muscle and bone Will require skin graft for healingI'd probably think twice about instructing a customer to dump hot wax on people unless you're related to the likes of F. Lee Baily.

You're an IT person, and so am I.. coincidence we both weigh in on simular subjects, not at all suprising that with as many opinions as there are out there that we disagree.. especially on such an often contested issue as search engines. A spider crawls websites.. ohh here's a link, I better go check that site out too. It keeps track of keywords on both the linked site, and the site that linked to it. If site A has simular content to linked site B, it considers this new site to me more relevent to those common keywords as, say, a link to a site about ponies on a site about top fuel funny cars. So it seems that getting your link on RELATED sites is far more condusive to your ranking than just arbitrarally slapping it on any site you can find. I don't disagree with your advice to make sure you have relevent text within the site peppered with keywords.. too many and the crawler will dismiss your page as being littered with "seeded" content, too few, and it will consider it irrelivent. To test this theory, I did a google for 'soy candles' and came up with 3,080,000 hits.. the number one hit was an outfit called caterpillarscandles.com I then searched for 'caterpillarscandles' and came up with 863 hits.. some were pages on that site, but the bulk were mention of that particular outfit on other related pages.. message boards, other candle sites. The second name on the list was 'barnloftcandles' and when searched, resulted in 753 refrences on other pages. A few down, 'candlesbyclaudine' so I googled that name, and came up with 567 mentions. Now what about Meta information? We go back to the caterpillarscandles site and do a view source.. apparently some crack codesmith thought my putting a 'source code not available' at the top of the page would distract us from seeing the monster scroll bar at the side.. about 3 pages down, theres the code. They make extensive use of the META information.. <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"> <META content="Custom Soy Candles! Scented Candles :: CaterpillarsCandles.com :: Natural Soy Candles" name=TITLE> <META content="Choose your soy candles color scent and shape! Top Shelf Fragrances & Premium Colors specifically designed for soy! Fabulous natural candles!" name=description> <META content="soy candles, custom soy candles, create soy candles, scented candles, discount, spokane, washington, wholesale, private label, hand poured, handmade, hand made, soybean wax, soot free candle" name=Keywords> <META content="CaterpillarsCandles.com :: Soy Candles" name=abstract> <META content="Caterpillars Custom Scented Soy Candles Create Soothing Ambiance And Cozy Glows With Aroma" name=Subject> <META content=sales name=aesop> <META content="Jennifer Sherman - Caterpillars Soy Candles" name=author> <META content=1 name=revisit-after> <META content=index,follow name=robots> <META content=General name=rating> <META content=Global name=distribution> <META http-equiv=Expires content=0> <META http-equiv=ImageToolbar content=No> <META content=True name=MSSmartTagsPreventParsing> <META content="Microsoft FrontPage 6.0" name=GENERATOR> <META content="Copyright 2000-2005. CaterpillarsCandles.com :: Soy Candles All Rights Reserved." name=copyright> Which seems to lend some creedence to the use of meta tags to increase ratings, untill you consider the #2 hit on google for 'soy candles' is http://ask.yahoo.com/20030207.html ..and when you view source on that page, this is what you see.. <html> <head><title>Are soy candles really better than wax candles?</title> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Ask Yahoo!" href="http://ask.yahoo.com/index.xml"> <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="http://us.js1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/images/us/ask/gr/ask.css"> </head> .. absolutely NO meta tags.

It wasn't an attack, man.. I was simply defending my position on the subject. You stated something as fact, I disagreed, you retorted, and I just said, "Hey.. if you're right, and i'm wrong, then how come you don't have a decent rank on google?" I'm not the slightest bit upset, I thought we were having a discussion regarding the merits of search engine optimization.. a subject, I might add, that YOU brought into the thread in critiquing the OP's website. I'm sorry you consider someone calling you on your facts an attack.

We can agree to disagree.. since the meta tag debate can rage on like arguments about coke vs. pepsi and chevrolet vs. ford. Just to see how high a SEO/SOM guru could get his page listed in google (which most would argue is the #1 used engine) I did a google search for "search engine submission" as well as "search engine optimizing" to see how high your own pages would rank. Search engine submission results in just about 14,200,000 hits.. i gave up looking after the first 25 pages (first 250 hits). But thats to be expected, I suppose, since URL submission is next to useless with Google, and I just assumed you knew that. Well "search engine optimizing" results in only 3,900,000 hits.. I managed to browse thru the first 5 pages (50 hits) before I got bored, and didn't see any of your pages, either. I'm not saying this to bust your chops, i'm just saying this to illustrate a point: you can do whatever mumbo jumbo you want to your page, and it matters not to google.. what they're looking for is how many times your page is linked (or mentioned) on other sites. For your position on google to amount to anything, you gotta be on one of the first 2 or 3 pages.. people aren't buying from the guy on page 973. There are people out there who believe all this top ranking search engine mumbo jumbo crap and think they'll just slap a page together with FrontPage, "optimize" it for search engines, and start raking in the bucks with the flood of customers, and that just isn't reality. There is no magic bullet or secret to put you on the top (other than paying google to put you there) it's all about having relevent content, and traffic. So when you say, "It's not luck, it's not traffic, it's how relevant and optimized the site is" then I got some bad news for BOTH of us.. because none of our pages even crack the top 50. Which I could care less about, really.. but you.. man you're talking like the expert on the subject who ain't even in the top 50. Thats like buying a book entitled, "How to be a millionare" from a guy with $8 in his bank account.

If someone were to view the page with IE 2.0 they might have problems.. but on both IE 6.0 and FireFox/Mozilla 5.0 it looks great. I hear alot of hub-bub about Meta tag usage, and while use of them certianly won't hurt you, they don't help you with the big three engines.. but then again, with 21 million page hits for 'candles' on google, I wouldn't make trying to get on the top 10 pages of results a priority, anyway. No amount of 'search engine tweeking' will do more for your web site sales than pushing the site in 'real life'. Put your URL on your product labels, brochures, advertising, and buisness cards. Encourage repeat buyers to use the site to place orders instead of waiting around for the next show.. and always remember, the best advertising is a satisfied customer. I agree with perlgoodies about changing the buttons "Buy Now" to "Add to Cart".. somebody might sit there clicking "Buy Now" a dozen times before they realise what they're doing is actually adding the product to their cart up in the right hand top corner.

And for folks looking for enhance their stock PayPal buttons with accurate shipping quotes from multiple shippers (not just USPS) you might want to give ZippyCart a look. It's a single file install, and uses your exsisting webpage/paypal buttons so your current page won't change. (i.e. it's "template-less"). It's $49, available now, and includes lifetime licence (may or may not include upgrades/updates) http://www.zippycart.com I am in no way, shape, or form affiliated with this outfit.. just putting a straightforward answer to the original question in case somebody in the future has the same question.

You can certianly understand how one might percieve such a thread as a ruse, can't you? I mean, if I were dating a 4 star auto mechanic, I probably wouldn't post a question on a auto repair message board asking why my car makes a thumping noise. I was under the impression that you weren't really allowed to prop services or advertise products in any other thread but the Supplier Announcments section unless somebody specifically asked, "Hey how do I?" and in responce to that question you were to reference or mention that product. And since (for whatever reason) you aren't allowed to post in that thread, this was a way to mention it. ... but whatever. You're 100% right.. if someone wants to use PayPal in conjunction with a static HTML page with no (or limited) back end inventory control, and they want to calculate shipping to a specific area code.. a quick .pl/.cgi/.asp/.js/.xml or even .php script could parse the USPS API, and pass that value as a product to the PayPal 'cart'. Or they could download a copy of Xen Cart, Cube Cart, osCommerce, or one of the dozens of other free or low cost eCommerce solutions, (good hosts offer these programs to be automatically installed with Fantastico) tweek it a bit, and have it seemlessly integrated into their exsisting website and have a true eCommerce solution with an easy to configure backend with tons of features. I honestly haven't played with .cgi/.pl for years now, and it very well could be that .cgi/.pl offerings in that arena are limited or antiquated, necessitating a new script.. since most serious development has switched from the general purpose .pl/.cgi to the faster, less resource sucking, more database friendly, built specifically for dynamic web content .php.

There isn't anything wrong with coding from scratch if you can't find something that does what you want it to do, or if you're not happy with the way the 144 exsisting perl/cgi shopping cart scripts listed at cgi.resourceindex.com work. (and that's just the .cgi/.pl scripts!) He describes this module as "template-less" or "will work on any template/website and work properly".. well the truth is any decent programmer can make ANY of the currently available cart scripts work in any exsisting design.. so there isn't anything new there. Perhaps this new shipping calculator he's developing will allow the person who made their page with Coffee Cup or Frontpage to simply upload a few files, run the script, then VOILA! It will magically insert itself into their exsisting code in just the right places.. if so, that would be cool. But I suspect it'll be something that if you don't know what /path/to/perl means, you're going to need somebody who does to make it work.. or maybe installation will be included. I have to wonder, tho.. since your bf is the big scripting expert, why you'd even bother to ask the question here in the first place? Perhaps so he could publicaly answer with information about his exciting new product?