PhxStorks

I love the "Localization" that you can get for your ads. Whenever I'm searching google, the ads along the side usually have my city or state in them 1st, and then other ads afterwards. Helping me to find local companies to do business with, which I prefer to do if at all possible, instead of having to pay for shipping.So people in another state might possibly see different ads than I do, because they can be targeted to a specific location, either state or major metro area. Since my business is local-delivery only, I use this feature in my own line of work to promote my small business. It's not terribly expensive either, if you're not going after the very generalized keywords. I use more specific keywords, which keeps my costs down, and the customers who do click through are more likely to buy instead of just being lookie-loos.Just my 2?.

I am a small business owner who sells and delivers products LOCALLY only. This is a SEVERELY overlooked market as far as shopping-carts & webhosts are concerned. I would LOVE to have an option to set-up my site with LOCAL DELIVERY options WITHOUT having to MANIPULATE my shopping cart to handle it. This cannot possibly be as difficult as these programs make it out to be. I mean they have integrated these things with Fed-EX, UPS & USPS, but they can't allow me the option of putting in specific zip-codes or zones and adding the price to my cart?!?! It drives me crazy! I have been trying to work with zen-cart (which I know has a module to let me do this) but I have to manipulate the "skin" to make it match my site, which just adds even more frustration to the issue. These shoppingcarts are UGLY! Think about it, what other businesses could use a website with a LOCAL shipping or delivery option? Florists, restaurants, grocers, printers/copyshops, and many more I'm sure. What options would you like to see available to your website, that aren't currently available with your webhost or shopping cart?

For those who say that you should never use a WYSIWYG website editor, NOT EVERYONE has time to learn how to html properly. I'm not saying that you shouldn't bother to learn basic html, but using a WYSIWYG gets your site online much quicker than PAYING someone else to do it for you the "right" way.I've never used a free one, so I can't comment on any suggested, but I used one to build my site online over the course of a weekend. I know there are errors on it, and it's probably not viewable in all browsers but it's a start and as I get time I plan on correcting things as much as possible.I got a call from a company that wanted me to PAY THEM $850 to "fix" my site for me. Pu-leaze. I could pay someone to build me a custom site for that much. And all the errors they mentioned are a result of having to use the "template-based" online website builder. Once I get it transfered over to Trap I should be able to fix most everything on my own.Anyway, the WYSIWYG website builders were not made for "professionals" to use (though I know many do to get things started quicker). They were made for people who want to have an online presence, but cannot justify the cost of hiring a professional web-designer to create it. Much like how there are now "programs" and "websites" that will create a "custom logo" for you, for cheap. The people who use these services WILL NOT PAY a graphic designer $$$ to design a logo for them, and I would much rather see them use these services to have a half-way decent logo, than something they threw together in WORD. YUK!I think if you want to avoid having a web-designer FLAKE OUT on you, and not get the job done on time, or to your specifications, the BEST option, is to use a WYSIWYG website builder and DO IT YOURSELF! But if you have all the time in the world, and plenty of money and PATIENCE for people who don't listen to what you want, by all means, hire a designer to build you a pretty site, that is no-where to be found in the search engines. Myself, I like my google PR4 and being #1 for my keywords on multiple engines, thank you very much. But hey, that's just me and my "little old WYSIWYG editor".

They do it by showing you only the last 100 page load/visitor statistics. If you want more than that you can pay a small monthly fee of $10 or so. They still show you your graph/chart back for 30 days, but the details you get are only for the last 100 visitors. My site is still small so I find no need for that though. I personally love Statcounter and reccomend it highly. I haven't looked into any statistics stuff that may be provided directly by the cpanel. If that is available, I am definately interested in using it, as I hate having to paste code on everypage I want to track. But again, luckily for me, my site is small and doesn't have very many pages I need to do that for. brandice or somebody: Could you explain (to this newbie) how to get to these stats so i can see how they compare to Statcounter?

I am looking to set up my Trap site with Zen-cart which I BELIEVE is done in PHP (I could be wrong though). Mainly I need to be able to modify the template to make it flow better with my own site. ie, change header image, navigation bars and columns and such.Is this something that can be done by a novice with PHP Designer 2005 or is there another (hopefully free) program that would be better suited for this purpose? Not sure if it helps, but I have The Adobe Creative Suite with Go-Live, but I have never used it. I am however familiar with all the other Adobe programs included, but have only recently got into working with websites & html.Thanks for any input/direction you can provide.

Right now, my son is sitting next to me watching Spongebob Squarepants. And yes he also watches Fairly odd parents. I love them all. My husband can't understand HOW/WHY I will turn on the TV and CHOOSE to watch cartoons (even when my son is not around )I used to love ren & stimpy, now it just makes me nauseous, so many references to boogers... I get enough of that from my 3 year old. The rugrats are still cool, but I hate the new "all grown up" it's just irritating. And I hate just about every cartoon on the "cartoon network". Half of them are some sort of "anime" picachoo fighting with imaginary creatures bullarky. ARGH! I can't STAND those stupid cartoons! Did you see the episodes with "norm" the genie? Those ones were really funny.

ummm... they have a lot of s*x. Nope I'm not kidding here. I'm sure not EVERYONE who lives there, but my husband has told me that if a girl wasn't married by 18 or so, she already had kids anyway. I've never heard they get money JUST for living there. Maybe in the old days... but the money most people get nowadays is actually from the EXXON fiasco. Alaskan residents get a "stipend" every year because of it. Not sure if it's from the government or EXXON, but my husband used to get it before he moved down here permanently. My husband actually helped with the cleanup efforts too. They also got paid good money to help. If you owned a boat, you got boo-koo bucks, just for loaning it out to them to be able to use. Owning a fishing license in Alaska is somewhat like owning a Liquor license here in the rest of the states. They can be sold for BIG MONEY because they are so hard to get from the goverment. Like a few HUNDRED THOUSAND dollars. You can also rent them out to other people if you don't feel like fishing and still make tons of money. Since most of the place is unihabited, and is HUGE, most earthquakes aren't even noticed by the locals. Though my husband wasn't surprised about it at all. He said you felt them, they just weren't a big deal. Now if I felt one here in AZ, I'd probably have a heart attack!

hahaha nothing like seeing porn online with your parents. That kindof thing has happened to me too. I can't stand the uselessness of search engines nowadays. When you search for something, find *EXACTLY* what you're looking for, click on the link, and... it's a PAGE FULL OF LINKS. ARGH! I hate that! Useless trash/entry pages that should never get into the search engines AT ALL! Oh and pop-ups without FRAMES! Lots of big companies have started using these, because there not "boxes" and they are transparent in areas... They look "cooler" than normal pop-ups but it's still just a flippin AD! Oh I can never find the stupid x on those ones to be able to close them. Oh and my mom would probably say the BANNER ads that INCLUDE a "X" close box in the upper-corner of the ad, and then when you click it it takes you to the ad anyway... I have tried to warn her about those... but she still always tries to close them...

I saw a TV show about Alaska and it mentioned the large number of earthquakes they have every year. I had never even heard about Alaska having earthquakes and so I thought I would research it a bit. Here's what I found: Did you know... The most powerful earthquake in the US's history was recorded in ALASKA? And was a 9.2! It happened March 27, 1964 and is called either "The Good Friday Earthquake" or "The Great Alaska Earthquake" A total of 131 people were killed. Considering how few people lived in Alaska at the time, it's no wonder there was so little Total life lost from an earthquake of that magnitute. 9 were killed in Alaska, FROM the earthquake, however 106 people were killed in other places in Alaska, from the tsunami's that were created and 16 were killed from tsunamis that happened in others states, like California. Alaska now has a rule/law that states no building is allowed to be taller than 2 stories, so their "down-town" is more "sprawling" than what most people would think of as down-town. (This information is from the TV show as well as my husband who grew-up in Alaska.) Alaska has about 5000 earthquakes a YEAR! That's an average of 13 a day. But since most of Alaska is uninhabited by humans, it goes mostly unreported. On average Alaska has 1 level 7 - 8 earthquake every year! In more recent Alaskan Earthquake news, Alaska was hit by the strongest quake of the year in November of 2002. It was rated a magnitude 7.9 quake. No casualties, but a number of highways were damaged with foot wide cracks ripped through them. Additional Information: en.wikipedia.org http://www.uaf.edu/ news.bbc.co.uk

Ummm.... wrong. Their trying to be just like everybody else... who wears all black clothes and white makeup and pretends to be so "intense." HAHA yeah right they're sooo scary... OK here's a little TIP... Trends like goth and gangsta where a "particular look" is trying to be achieved... is just plain STUPID. How many people above 30 actually dress like this? I can't think of any except maybe music stars and they certainly aren't brilliant... They are just trying to make money off these poor dumb schmucks who see them and think they are sooo great. All they want is their money from buying all this crap & trying to look like them. I feel sorry for kids/people who feel they have to "look different" (which they don't because everyone else in their click looks just like them) to think they are special or unique. The good news is that most of these people will wise up sooner or later and drop this "act" they have going and move into the real world were the rest of us live. It's a matter of growing up, maturing and taking responsibility for your life, and not just going with the crowd...

Yes, you need to send the INITIAL annual fee in the form of a check, it is a security measure to make it harder for people to create an acount with them to scam other people. Seems reasonable to me. It only took a week to get mine set up once I had sent in the check. And I just renewed my account for another year using the funds IN my account, (though you can also pay with a credit card, though why in the world would you bother?) Yes Paypal is free to set up. It is also very "small-time" looking to me. I wouldn't go to Sears and ask if I can pay with my Paypal account. (Yes I know they now offer a credit/debit card. Yippee.) That would just be silly in my opinion. Using Propay for the VERY REASONABLE fee they charge makes my business look more professional TO MY CUSTOMER AND I don't have to pay the minimum monthly/gateway fees that I would if I owned a TRUE merchant account. Don't get me wrong I do use my Paypal account to make puchases on Ebay and such. ONLY because I HATE having to remember my stupid credit card numbers and such and I don't always have my purse around when I want to make a purchase. I've already stated my reasons why I use Propay over Paypal in the initial post. As I've said before... It is NOT about the money, it is an inexpensive (ie NOT FREE) merchant account. I will pay a reasonable price to project the image that I want to convey to my customers. And a "free" payment processor like Paypal, just doesn't project the professional image I want my customers to see. FREE isn't always a good choice when you own a business.

A while ago here in Arizona we had a shortage because one of the lines from a refinery broke that supplied most of our gas. The prices & lines were just crazy. The governor talked about enacting a "No-price-gouging" law, but it never happened, and now with the THREAT of a shortage the jerks here jack up the prices. I know we don't have it as bad as some people in this country or the world but it just pisses me off that these companies can get away with charging so much to people who are already frustrated with the cost of fuel. And yes, we need it. And yes, we do depend on it WAY too much. Another issue I have is these stupid people who think they need a SUV to go to the SUPERMARKET. Excuse me, but when did a soccer-mom need to drive what amounts to a small HUMMER to get the kids to school? I have a small Hyundai and my husband does have a large WORK-TRUCK. I would love to be able to afford a "hybrid" car, but they are just WAY to expensive for our budget, and with the mileage I put on my car for my business, I would just kill the value of it in no time. Haha I do love seeing the car-companies SQUIRM because their sales of SUV's has dropped since the price of fuel has started to up so rapidly in the past year. They are doing all kinds of advertising to try to get more people to buy the stupid gas-guzzlers. Like saying how "fuel-efficient" they are compared to OTHER suv's. Yeah but they are still TWICE as bad a CAR!

Here I have the problem of not being able to understand the person taking the order because they don't speak English well AT ALL. I will ask questions about a new item (or one that is no longer on the menu but was my FAVORITE) and they have no idea what I'm talking about. Then someone with NO ACCENT gets on the line and finishes taking the order. It's just ridicules.I love the DRIVE THRU LIQUOR STORES. I mean really, if you are so wasted that you can't get OUT of your car to buy alcohol, should they really be selling it to you? Don't drink and drive my ***! I can't believe those things are even legal!

We currently only have one. But my hubby & I fight over it all the time. Any little problem that comes up (like ONE of our 2 cd drives has gone out) he wants to rush out and buy a brand-new one. If we do get another, were going to have to both be able to connect to the internet though.Where I used to work I had 2, a mac & a PC, both with 21 inch monitors. They were HUGE! (not flat-screens either) They took up all my desk space! --Jane

Here's an article on How do you distinguish between a business and a hobby? It depends on your CITY/STATE I believe whether or not you need a LICENSE to do business. It also depends on WHAT exactly your business is... It sounds like you would be considered "retail sales". This does not mean you have to have a retail location, it just shows you sell items to the public, as opposed to selling "wholesale" or renting things, or providing a service. It is a Business CLASSIFICATION. And one of the reasons for HAVING to have a license is so that you can pay TAXES on the profit you make. LEGALLY you need a business license IF YOUR STATE REQUIRES YOU TO. You also need to CLAIM the income on your FEDERAL income taxes at the end of the year. I'm sure a lot of people will say, oh you're small, don't worry about it... but if it is illegal then it is ILLEGAL, and you would be breaking the law. If they caught you, they would have everyright to arrest you/ fine you for back taxes that were due to the city/state. I'm not saying that you need to immediately get a license, but if you truly do plan on making this a "Business" (and not just a hobby) then as soon as you feel that it is past the "breaking even" stage, you should get one. Just my opinion, and like I said, it may depend on where you live whether a license is even necessary. Good luck!