Network Solutions buys MonsterCommerce - Computerworld
Web services provider Network Solutions Inc. said it will acquire e-commerce software maker MonsterCommerce in a bid to improve the online business needs of…
Web Host News | Network Solutions Buys MonsterCommerce
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This is exciting news! For more information, go to the MonsterCommerce Press Release or Network Solutions.
At MonsterCommerce we’re constantly searching for better ways to serve our clients.
If you are experiencing any difficulties managing your storefront, or have questions regarding any aspect of your service, we wanted to make you aware of every available resource to get the help you need.
As part of your MonsterCommerce package, you have free access to our expert technical support representatives 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Additionally, we offer the easy-to-use ticketing system, which you can access from your MyMonsterCommerce account. If you’re not familiar with either of these avenues of support, feel free to contact us anytime at 1-800-353-6582.
This is a comprehensive collection of our most frequently asked questions, quick guides to almost every aspect of our system and a version history of our software. You can reference all of this information from MC Knowledge Base.
We have over 5,000 clients at MonsterCommerce and at some point in time, there’s a good chance that one of them has faced the same difficulty that you may be facing now. Many clients have realized tremendous benefit from our MonsterCommerce Forums. Use the Forums to get answers to your questions or simply share experiences with other MonsterCommerce store owners. Feel free to review previously discussed topics or post your own topics or questions at the MonsterCommerce Forums.
If you’ve tried one or more of these avenues and are still having difficulty managing your storefront, consider a MonsterCommerce consultation session. This service will give you a dedicated time slot with one of our top-tier support representatives. You can lead your session to cover specific topics or we can lead you through a full review of your administration panel functionality, DataPort or MonsterBooks. Every client who has completed one of these sessions has come away with a wealth of knowledge that empowers them to manage our programs more efficiently and confidently.
If you would like to find out more about this service please visit our TechServices page at MC Knowledge Base: Technical Services.
We hope that this information will help you through any of the difficulties that you may be experiencing with our service. Making your storefront a success is our number one priority, and every effort that we employ is geared toward that goal. If there’s anything we can do to further the success of your storefront, we’re only one call, ticket or e-mail away. We hope to hear from you soon and wish you the best of luck!
Thank you for choosing MonsterCommerce!
-The MonsterCommerce Team
You, too, can decide to cross-market your product, using someone else's ecommerce site. You can also use a service like Monstercommerce.com to help turn an existing Web site into an e-commerce site.Thoughts for Food: Key Ingredients for Selling Food Online
A MonsterCommerce client, on the MonsterSmallBusiness Forums, added one of the most heart warming post amidst heated discussion about the recent Hurricane Katrina and the treatment of FEMA and other criticism of the government within the media.
I've been really busy lately, but wanted to take time to throw some hopefully heartwarming insight into this discussion.
Our wholesale company relies on the gulf coast for a large part of our market. Many of our suppliers are from areas along the gulf coast as well. I was deeply moved by the response after Ivan from all of our customers (and even competitors) who offered to truck down generators and supplies to us. We received a generator from Texas and one from Pennsylvania.
After Katrina hit our friends to the west, missing us (if 90 mph winds are a miss), we felt compelled to help out in return. We sent 2 of our delivery trucks over to Long Beach with goods gathered from several local churches (the outpouring has been really amazing considering that some of these folks don't even have their own homes rebuilt yet). Our drivers stayed and worked out the rest of the day helping to hand out toothpaste, baby formula, feminine products, cans of veggies, and more. They were then given the opportunity by the National Guard and military to help unload helicopters bringing in other supplies. The scene was both somber and uplifting at the same time. Its a feeling thats hard to describe without going through something similar.
They described the handout procedures to be very well organized and obviously well received.
I can tell you from experience that the most immediate and most heartwarming assistance from Ivan came from those surrounding us, even those living right amidst the devastation. I have seen folks helping to tear out drywall from a friends house, when you ask them how they fared, they tell you, 'oh, my house is gone, so there's nothing to work on there.' By the way, the most common greeting for a year after this type of storm is 'How did you do?'
Now, what I'm about to type is not a shot at FEMA (I dont believe that talk of that type is in the least bit constructive to the people without a home right now), but we experienced a realization from Ivan that FEMA is there to collect funds for generators purchased, kick in the extra $5,000 toward home repair that wasnt covered by insurance, help pass out blue tarps from the Albertson's parking lot. They were not there pulling people from buildings or rescuing neighbors who clung to a tree during the night praying for survival. The real heroics were performed by your everyday average neighbor. I dont know all of the stories from Biloxi, or Gulfport, or New Orleans, but Im sure they will be similar to, if not eclipse some of what we witnessed. One neighbor went out into chest deep flowing water in the middle of the night becasue he new a woman was staying in her home next door and would likely have difficulty surviving if the water were any higher. He was able to get a lifejacket from a boat that was slamming against the side of his house and make it to her place and save her life that night.
It is the individual person that defines our nation. Its not the current government officials, its not the current head of FEMA, its not the current Chief of Police, its the guy that lived quietly next door to you all of his life, who when faced with a sitaution so extreme it would test anyone, and suddenly, without any precept or false agenda, becomes a hero to one elderly lady, or a young child next door.
So, when I read that our counrtry is floundering, I think, you need to open your eyes to the folks around you. Ive never seen more heroism or caring for one's fellow man than Ive seen over the last year and am seeing in response to this storm. Lets just please stop the poitical rhetoric for a while and talk about what matters to those who will soon be browsing through water stained belongings and then piling them up on the roadside for the weekly FEMA trucks. Its a sight I dont ever want to see again and am full of sorrow for those who dont even have a clue as to what they are about to go through over the next year or so. The worst is down the road. And when the news stops focusing on things in New Orleans so much and well-meaning friend from the north call and ask, 'things back to normal now?', thats when they will need the full support of everyone else in the nation who may be focused on the next national crisis.
If you haven't given, please donate to a reputable charity, if you can't afford to donate, pray fo rall of those impacted, pray for your local government, pray for our national leaders. Pray for those impacetd by the storm, that they have the wisdom to see God's will for their lives and the courage and strength to walk in it.
Read more hereChannel: WebmasterRadio.FM Combined Show Podcast
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Description: Pt. 1 A light overiview of MonsterCommerce from its inception to present. Included in this overview are some of the products and services currently being offered and supported by MonsterCommerce.
Here are some Cascading Style Sheet tricks that can be used to good effect in the MonsterCommerce software. You don't have to be familiar with CSS or HTML in order to use all of these, but it will help.
Some clients have requested the ability to put small grey boxes around each product thumbnail. Whereas there is no setting that can do this in the admin panel (yet), if you add the following lines of code to your 'custom.css' file from the file manager -
/* Border around product thumbnails */
table.prodvieweven td {border-color: grey; border-style: solid;border-width: 1px;}
table.prodviewodd td {border-color: grey; border-style: solid;border-width: 1px;}
- OR add the following to Site HTML > Top of Page HTML Editor -
<!-- Border around product thumbnails -->
<style type="text/css">
table.prodvieweven td {border-color: grey; border-style: solid;border-width: 1px;}
table.prodviewodd td {border-color: grey; border-style: solid;border-width: 1px;}
</style>
- then this will add a solid grey border around each product thumbnail on a category or search page. If you want, you can alternate colors OR leave off one of the lines to have the borders alternate.
This one is an interesting trick which requires the use of CSS and MonsterCommerce proprietary function calls. Some clients have asked for a way to take the Main Category list Horizontal as opposed to Vertical. This is difficult to do without manually coding it, since the cart generates each category in it's own HTML 'paragraph' tag (<p>), which usually adds a new line after each paragraph. However, if you use the following code, with display: inline; applied, then these do not wrap to the new line. If you were to put the following into your top of page or bottom of page editors, then this will put the full list of main categories in a Horizontal list across the full width of the table, at which point it will wrap to another line if you have that many. Add the following to your 'custom.css' file -
/* Horizontal Category List */
#horiz p {display: inline; padding-right: 15px;}
- or add this to your Site HTML > Top of Page Editor -
<!-- Horizontal Category List -->
<style type="text/css">
#horiz p {display: inline; padding-right: 15px;}
</style>
- and then add this code at some point BELOW it -
<table id="horiz">
<tr>
<td><%DRAWCATEGORIES%></td>
</tr>
</table>
- you will have Horizontal category lists! Feel free to adjust the amount of padding-right: as you see fit.
The category list does not have little arrows or widgets in front of each category name and this has led some clients to manually add this character to each category name or use other tricks to get it into place, but the following use of CSS and MC function calls will accomplish it much faster. Add the following to your 'custom.css' file -
/* Arrows in front of Categories */
#arrows p {
padding-left: 11px;
background-image: url(images/arrow.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: center left;
}
- or add this to your Site HTML > Top of Page Editor, as usual -
<!-- Arrows in front of Categories -->
<style type="text/css">
#arrows p {
padding-left: 11px;
background-image: url(images/arrow.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: center left;
}
</style>
- and then add this where you want your category list to appear -
<table id="arrows">
<tr>
<td><%DRAWCATEGORIES%></td>
</tr>
</table>
- and you will see the small arrows that are already included in your /images folder centered to the left of each category name. Feel free to modify the style information to a different image. If you use a different size image (the provided one is 11 x 9) you may also want to adjust the padding-left: to make more space if it is larger.
Fair warning should go out at this point to everyone that some browsers interpret different CSS rules and applications in different ways, but this is always true even with straight HTML, so feel free to try these out in a custom page and then see how you might want to use them in your site. I hope this helps!
MonsterCommerce listed as an Exhibitor at the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo for 2005Search Engine Strategies Summer 2005
Read Gadgetopia's The Life of a Mule for more information about credit card fraud and a link to an article on USA Today.
Yahoo's Financial News section has a Press Release from LivePerson, Inc. concerning their outstanding partnership with MonsterCommerce. Read more at the following link - LivePerson and MonsterCommerce Deliver Advanced E-Commerce Storefront Solutions to Internet Retailers
MonsterCommerce mentioned on adBUMb.
After WebmasterRadio.fm's 1st Annual Search Bash sponsored by Moniker.com, TextLinkAds, MonsterCommerce, and InfoSearch, I woke up Friday morning ready to sit down with ...►►adBUMb The #1 Online Advertising Source
MonsterCommerce CTO Jen Heil was once again featured in a prominent 'net-based publication this past week. The article, The Going Gets Hot, deals with security issues and how businesses should approach them.
"Businesses need to be brutally honest about how they're doing. MonsterCommerce Inc., which provides shopping-cart software for 5,000 online merchants, conducts quarterly code reviews to make sure there are no holes in its software," CTO Jen Heil says. The company conducts semiannual audits and penetration tests, performed by third-party companies, a critical element of any security program.
Check out the rest of the article.
Why is MonsterCommerce so focused on security? Read more about Consumer Security - MSNBC.com
This web site has many webmaster tools, including a FREE Logo Creator. Visit the PCman Website.
This tutorial will explain how to set fonts on web pages using (X)HTML or CSS. You should have at least a very basic understanding of how to read source code and understand HTML and CSS syntax to follow along with this tutorial.
Font Tutorial
'The technology businesses in the market these days are built on really solid business principles, instead of the pie-in-the-sky concepts popular in late '90s,'said Stephanie Leffler, chief executive of MonsterCommerce, which came in at the top spot on this year's list.'Smaller business owners, which fuel a huge part of our economy, are becoming more tech savvy. As a result, any company providing technology services to small businesses is going to flourish in the coming years.'
CEO Stephanie Leffler and company president Ryan Noble were featured in an article by Rick Desloge, posted by St. Louis Business Journal to bizjournals.com.
...the two are working on a plan that they expect will double revenue this year to $12 million.The article played well to our features and strengths..
MonsterCommerce's niche is its one-stop shopping for businesses wanting to sell their products online. The company now has a staff of more than 63 providing Web design, search engine marketing and, through a partnership with RackSpace Managed Hosting, Web hosting on 255 servers based in San Antonio, Texas, and Dulles, Va. MonsterCommerce's shopping cart services start at $99 a month and go up, depending on activity at a site. MonsterCommerce's Web design and optimization services start at $1,700.... and also accurately mentioned the challenges ahead ...
... challenge now is to keep up with its growth, built on providing time- and money-saving services to clients. That means hiring qualified technical people.... I personally think that these are easily surmountable challenges and I am ready to do my part. And here, finally, was some fun personal news about the future that I don't think was company-wide knowledge:
Leffler and Noble are engaged and plan to marry Memorial Day weekend.Congratulations!
Time for us to toot a horn for one of our exceptional team members. Julia Dalton, MonsterCommerce Billing Specialist, was featured in the Business Section of the St. Louis Post Dispatch and her picture and story appear on their site and on the paper.
From her St. Louis University apartment, Julia Dalton takes orders for Etch-A-Sketch and Nemo key chains, runs to her parents' house where she stores her inventory, and then dashes to the post office a few times a week to mail them to her online customers.And amazingly she still has time to do a fabulous job here part time at MonsterCommerce. Thanks Julia! Read more about how she does it here: STLtoday - Student entrepreneurs can dream, but they also have to study & graduate
I personally use Google news alerts to have any new information about subjects that interest me automatically sent to my email inbox. The following story showed up on Sun, May 1, 2005. The article is posted to PRWeb.
Read more: MonsterCommerce Live on WebmasterRadio.FM for TownHall MeetingThe WebmasterRadio.FM MonsterCommerce TownHall meeting is an hour long radio special airing May 4th at 6:00 p.m. EST.
Fort Lauderdale, FL (PRWEB) May 2, 2005 -- MonsterCommerce senior executivesDan Kennedy (VP Client Services) and Jen Heil (CTO) are set to co-host a live "TownHall" meeting on WebmasterRadio.FM scheduled for Wednesday, May 4th at 6:00 p.m. EST. To tune in, visit http://www.webmasterradio.fm.
The WebmasterRadio.FM MonsterCommerce TownHall meeting is an hour long radio special. Listeners will have the ability to either call into the show live or post questions or observations in the Lounge (formerly known as the chat room). The TownHall meeting is open to WebmasterRadio.FM listeners currently doing business with or interested in finding out more about MonsterCommerce. This program is a continuation of their strong outreach program to the webmaster / on-line business community.
"As e-commerce experts, we feel that providing an open forum for WebmasterRadio.FM listeners allows us to show our continued support of webmasters and the industry in general," Dan Kennedy explained.
MonsterCommerce is the industry leader in web-based e-commerce storefront systems, trusted by thousands of companies to manage their vital e-commerce operations. A provider since 1998, MonsterCommerce powers over 5,000 stores with their customizable and integrated services including domain registration, storefront systems, merchant accounts, Web site promotion, SSL security and e-commerce power hosting.
MonsterCommerce also offers Reseller Packages with deep discounts for webmasters with multiple stores. To meet customer needs in accordance with the company's dedication to exceptional customer support, promotion services and design are also offered.
About WebmasterRadio.FM
WebmasterRadio.FM strives to lift the "veiled curtain" of the Internet to bring the business community together through an interactive radio network. Its listeners are a global group comprised of everyone from corporate executives and decision makers to individuals who work for themselves, small and mid-sized businesses to those just starting out. The WebmasterRadio.FM listening audience has a vast appeal to anyone looking to learn industry-specific information from the most successful marketers and technology experts in the world. These Internet "influencers" create, learn and listen in a true community destination. Visit http://www.webmasterradio.fm to join in the MonsterCommerce TownMeeting or to check out the stellar lineup of programming.
Media Contact:
Brandy Shapiro-Babin
303-882-5246
# # #
Slashdot: How Google Can Make or Break A Small Business For those of you too young to remember the days before Google, there were other search engines, such as Altavista (the first big one) and Yahoo. The reason Google became the most popular is that they do a very good job of ranking the interesting items first, which is important when there are 39000 hits for your query. The Search Engine Promotion business, when it's not just a scam sold by spammers, is mainly about doing artificial things to make Google's robots think your page would be interesting to humans; it's much better to actually make your page interesting to actual humans, and hope Google's robots pick up on that.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Of course, every web site promotion company will tell you that is exactly what they do; 'make your page more interesting.' What I like best about our web promotion department is the level of dedication and research that goes in to improving the site's features, researching the specific company's industry and creating or placing relative content onto the site. They also stay away from so-called 'black-hat' tactics that inevitably get a site banned.
For more information, check out our team's work at MonsterWebPromotion and prepare for more qualified traffic!
| The following is a copy of an email sent out from our CTO, Jen Heil, to all clients concerning security updates and other exciting changes at MonsterCommerce. "Dear MC Storefront Owner, |
|
| I would like to thank you all for your warm responses to our first security update email. Many of you took the suggestions seriously and have already improved the security of your online store. This email is the second email aimed at informing you about how you can ensure the complete security of your storefront. In this letter, I will cover the details of PCI standards, CISP compliance and what this means to you. The credit card industry has joined together to help fight credit card theft and fraud. In response to the growing occurrence of these illegal practices, the PCI (Payment Card Industry) data security standard was created. This was developed to establish a 'minimum security standard' with regards to the protection of cardholders' credit card account and transaction information. MonsterCommerce will be releasing a software upgrade that brings our software to the PCI security standard in early May. Our next security update will contain complete information regarding this upgrade. Although the four major credit card brands are all concerned with security, Visa has taken the lead in this effort and has developed a program entitled CISP. This stands for Cardholder Information Security Program. This program is built around the PCI standard but additionally requires businesses to certify and file proof that their company is compliant with this standard. The depth of the certification process and the required documents to prove compliance vary based on the number of transactions processed by a business within a calendar year. To learn more about the merchant levels, visit Visa's CISP site. Regardless of your level, all merchants who collect, process or store credit card information are required by Visa and MasterCard to meet the new PCI security standard by June 30, 2005. At a minimum, Visa recommends that you submit a ROC (Report on Compliance) and undergo a vulnerability scan. Whether required to submit or not, it is a good idea to do so as it shows Visa and your customers your commitment to the security of credit card data. Through an alliance with ScanAlert, the world's leading web site security certification service, MonsterCommerce has become the first full service ecommerce platform provider to provide easy one-click compliance at no additional cost. This new program will allow you to undergo the required vulnerability scan and complete the ROC in a few easy clicks. In the next few days, you will receive a welcome email from Scan Alert containing a login link. Once logged in, you will be able to answer a preliminary set of five questions to help Scan Alert understand your business. After these five questions are answered, you will be asked any necessary follow up questions and then will be prompted to print a PDF document that is a fully completed ROC in the proper format. All you have to do is print this document and send it to your merchant service provider. In the coming weeks, you can expect to receive letters from your merchant service providers informing you of these requirements. With MonsterCommerce and Scan Alert, you will be well ahead of the curve as the MonsterCommerce platform will be certified against the standard by mid May and you will be able to complete your ROC beginning in just a few days. The next step in gaining your compliance is to look for the welcome email that will be sent to you directly from ScanAlert within a few days. Simply click on the link in the welcome email and you will be just minutes away from achieving your compliance. |
|
Sincerely, Jen Heil CTO, MonsterCommerce.com" |
Here is a useful link to a brief tutorial file covering how to add a background image or color to your website using CSS. MonsterCommerce storefront software uses CSS automatically as part of the Site Layout menu. This menu controls the layout as saved in a file called "/style.css" in the root folder. Clients can add additional rules or overriding rules in the file named "/custom.css" from the file manager.
Disclaimer: ABS is host to a lot of information such as this tutorial, as well as video files usually created in flash. Not all of them are very funny.. or suitable for a family friendly audience. Albino Blacksheep » Text Files » Background TutorialThis tutorial will explain how to set backgrounds on web pages using (X)HTML or CSS. You should have at least a very basic understanding of how to read source code and understand HTML and CSS syntax to follow along with this tutorial.
- Background Tutorial
- 1997 Overview
- CSS Background
- CSS Background Color
- CSS Background Image
- CSS Background Image Position
- CSS Background Image Repeat
- CSS Background Image Attachment
- CSS Background Shorthand
- CSS Multiple Backgrounds
MonsterCommerce shopping cart software powers online stores. MonsterCommerce offers small business information and a comparison shopping marketplace. MC's e-commerce software solutions include shopping carts for building your e-business, website promotion to earn top 10 placement in search engines and logo design. MC also offers merchant accounts for accepting secure online payments, e-commerce web hosting and a cheap domain name registration service.
E-commerce shopping cart software
This is the inaugural post for this blog. Though the company has been around for awhile and I've been blogging for awhile as well, this is the first MonsterCommerce team member blog.
. However, this blog is not an official property of MC nor our parent company Network Solutions. I'm simply testing out a few things. My goal is to distribute information that should be helpful to small business owners and ecommerce web developers and to share new ideas I learn on a daily basis.
encourages its team members to maintain personal websites and respects their right to self-expression via blogs and other forms of online communication. Of course, employees are still bound by certain terms (including confidentiality and avoiding conflicts of interest) whenever anyone discusses Company-related issues such as our product and service offerings, sales campaigns, current and former personnel, corporate strategies, etc. The views expressed on this site are this employee's alone, and they do not necessarily reflect the views of Network Solutions, its management or its staff.
