In order to set or reset the email address, to which all shop-generated emails are sent, use Master Settings > Core Settings as seen in below screenshot.

OXID Shop Owner Email-Address Settings

Although OXID uses a standard authentication mechanism for protecting the /admin area, it is advisable to additionally apply .htaccess protection.  This will keep hackers (and maybe unscruplous competitors) out of your OXID-Admin area.

This quick howto helps you setup .htaccess authentication on Linux environments

2 files are needed for applying .htaccess protection to your shop:

• The .htaccess file itself
• A password text file in which the username and encrypted password are stored

OXID Owner Admin .htpasswd, .htaccess File

Step 1

Create a .htaccess file using touch or vi and place it in your OXID-Admin area.  This file should contain following contents.

AuthName "OXID Admin"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /full/nonweb/directory/.htpasswd
Require valid-user

Step 2

At any location which is not exposed on the web-server, create a file called the location /full/nonweb/directory/ create the .htpasswd file, using the command-line htpasswd tool.  The exact command is:

myshell: htpasswd /full/nonweb/directory/.htaccess admin_username

admin_username can usually be left as admin.

You will be prompted after the above shell command to provide a password, and then verify it.

That’s it!  You may now try this out at http://shopurl.com/admin/

To change the Admin-Password of OXID, please select any user, ensure that the user’s Access-Level is set to Admin and then scroll down to the user-editting form to input a new password.

Changing OXID Admin Password

Please note that more than one administrator account may exist in OXID.

According to the Web Browser Grand Prix 2 pulished on July 13 2010, Google Chrome is a faster web-browser than Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.  Since it’s launch in year 2008, the browser has grown to capturing almost 10% of the browser-market worldwide.

Best of all, unlike Internet Explorer, Google-Chrome is Open-Source, which means there are literally 1000’s of extensions already available for expanding the functionality of the browser.

One such extension we regularly use at euroblaze for our e-Commerce optimization projects is the PageRank extension, which helps you never lose sight of the PageRank of a  web-page you are currently browsing in your browser.

Occupying a small space next to the browser address-bar, the PageRank gives the famous, and useful, 0-10 rating for websites and webpages you visit.

If you want to add speed to your daily Internet-browsing, get Google Chrome for Windows, MAC and Linux!

For customizing the text included in Order-Confirmation-Emails sent to end-users after a purchase, CMS Pages under the “Emails” folder can be used, as seen in below screenshot.

Since OXID is a rapidly developing system, it is a good idea to think about optimizing your upgrade processes from both within minor-versions and major-versions.

In order to make image URLs within article-descriptions and CMS-content as portable as possible, use such notations as:

<img alt="" src="[{$oViewConf->getImageUrl()}]my_picture.jpg" />

for inserting pictures in your WYSIWYIG-Editor.  This will ensure that the dynamic system-generated path to pictures is applied for display in shop front-end.

On product-detail pages, it is possible for the shop admin to show which other products , other customers of a particular product also purchased.  The number of such “suggestions” could be very large, especially if there are a group of top-selling products in the shop.

You can limit the number of such suggested production on a product-detail page under Master Settings > Core Settings > Settings > Products, as seen below:

Many Tweeters post messages just for the sake of the passing on information that they have found interesting or userful, in very much the spirit of sharing the information with their “followers” .  On the other hand, most business-users of Twitter use the social-media platform for a specific marketing purpose, for example making an announcement or announcing a micro-event (such as product sales of xyz product reaching 100000 units).

The former category of Tweeters can be called selfless-tweeters and the latter selfish tweeters.

If you are an online product seller, it is a good idea to pass on as many selfless tweets as possible into your micro-blog.  This will result in your community members to make sure not to “filter-out” your tweets and infact keep a close eye on messages coming from you.

Of course, your social media strategy is not about passing on information to the world just for the sake of it, but rather to

Hence it is definitely purposeful to include selfish tweets on a regular basis; which include messages, promotions and announcements related only to your business.

Selfish Tweets, the Spice on your Twitter Feed

If the majority of your tweets which are selfless manage to capture the attention of your users, a steady and moderated inflow of selfish feeds will help you present your marketing messages to a more attentive group of users.  While they consume your selfless information regularly, they would be A) Open to recieving a few marketing messages from you and B) Pay attention to them, hence increasing the chances of following your calls-for-action.

In other words, from the marketer’s perspective, if the base of your Tweet-feed are the selfless tweets, then the regular stream of selfish streams will work as a flavor for the overall Twitter-feed.

Facebook Usage for e-Commerce

According to a recent survey of 476 marketers conducted by the e-Commerce Optimization company SeeWhy, 76% of them plan to use Facebook for driving sales as part of their Social Media Strategy.

The exact split of statistics is:

• 76% plan to use Facebook as part of their Social Media strategy
• 2% have no plans at all
• 20% are not sure

The 76% of marketers planning to benefit from Facebook will be using it for the following:

• Drive Traffic to existing e-Commerce site – 67%
• Intend to use Facebook-Apps, instead of micro-sites for specific promotions and launches – 44%
• Plan to build e-Commerce Apps on Facebook – 26%

If you are interested in knowing about the benefits of Social Media Marketing for your online-business, you may avail this EUR 100 coupon for a free hour of SMM coaching and consultation.