Clean up your errors in CodeIgniter

In my last post I talked about how we use and benefit from Open Source software and how we were going to start giving back to the community with our own Open Source applications and scripts. Our first Open Source script was a very small library for the Picnik API, when we released that I wanted to set a goal of releasing as much Open Source code as possible. Well, we have been busy with projects and I haven’t had time to work on much outside of projects. Today however, I created something to help me deal with PHP errors displaying in applications, that I think you might benefit from.

Cut out the frustration and stop wasting time on jumbled errors with this library.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing 30 errors appear out of nowhere on a page when you hit refresh, you know that you can’t always read them. Some are covered by other page elements, some of them run into each other, and some do both. It always leads to either placing die/exit’s in your code to try and debug, viewing the page source so you can read them, or using CodeIgniter’s built-in error logging. Read the rest of this entry »

Homepages that work: Amazon.com

Amazon.com is America’s largest online retailer with over 50 million visitors a month. With so much traffic, how do they tailor to each user and convert them?

Goals: sell online & offline products, sell user’s content & items, sign up new users, extend website’s reach

Audience: consumers, sellers, writers, businesses, developers and advertisers

Clear, consistent navigation.

The header of the homepage features the logo that doubles as a home button, a left hand navigation bar, an expanding search bar, a shopping cart button and a login for returning users. All of the elements remain consistent throughout the rest of the site, even the left hand navigation bar which condenses into a drop down on subpages to allow for underlying content to fill the full width of the page. Read the rest of this entry »

How well does your website convert users?

Maybe you already have a website or maybe you are planning out a new one. In either case, you need to spend some time and thought on defining conversions.

What is a conversion you ask? A conversion happens when a user on your site takes an action that you intended. If you have an eCommerce site, and a visitor makes a purchase on your site, that’s a conversion.

Light vs Heavy

Now that we know what a conversion is, let’s talk about Heavy Conversions and Light Conversions.

A Heavy Conversion is an action that takes a lot from the user, such as a purchase, filling out a contact form, or becoming a member of your site. Typically, a Heavy Conversion requires the user to give something up, such as money. Read the rest of this entry »