For those of you who are following us and keeping up with our company history, you know that we’ve setup a remote work environment and that we don’t have a physical office space any more. We mostly work virtually.

We’re using technology to communicate, collaborate, and achieve a lot! In particular, we use a bunch of web applications to do what we need to do and share what we want to share – some of them we’ve developed ourselves, some we’ve bought, and some are free. Project management, task management, time tracking, file sharing, chat, are just a few examples of what we handle through web apps.

But sometimes all these tools and technology just defeat the purpose. It kinda gets in the way. When you have a bunch of things you need done, but you don’t necessarily need to cooperate on these things, or track the time you spend on them, or be particularly organized, then there’s nothing better than a good old quick text document you use temporarily and discard when you’re done. As an example, here’s my to-do list from last Sunday (08/07): (more…)

Magentist is cleaning its closet!

From now until Tuesday, August 24, 2010, you can get $100 off the purchase of any one Magento template! Find yours now at magentist.com

Or buy the Magento Template All-Star Pack for 50% off! That’s all 15 of our top-selling Magento templates for only $240!!

To continue providing our customers with the best Magento templates with cutting-edge design and up-to-the-minute coding standards, we’re cleaning out our closet and making way for a new line of premium Magento templates.

This sale is no-holds barred. All of our premium Magento templates are eligible for this sale, but only until Tuesday, August 24, 2010! This is your last chance to buy our current themes, so if you’ve been meaning to buy some of our templates, act now!

Find your Magento templates now!

When displaying new products in Magento (either on your store’s home page or anywhere else) the default number of new products that will display is 5.

To display more than 5 new products without modifying any core files, you can use the following method (here I display 8 new products):

{{block type="catalog/product_new" name="home.catalog.product.new" alias="product_homepage" template="catalog/product/new.phtml" _productsCount="8"}}

Where the “productsCount” number will determine how many new products will be displayed.

Related posts:

• Magento: display new products on any CMS page
• Magento: display new products – by categories

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Many people don’t know there is an official Magento user guide that is accessible online for free!

The thing is that the link to it is hidden very deep inside the Magento official website and it’s almost impossible to find it! If you search for it on Google you’ll only get links to the (paid) Magento User Guide ebook or some other pdf, or to some random wiki pages that belong to the online user guide but from which you will not be able to navigate to the other pages of the online user guide.

I don’t know if this was made on purpose to push people to buy the ebook, or if this is just some sort of navigation and SEO mess, but here is the link to the official (and free) online Magento user guide for you to enjoy:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/welcome_to_the_magento_user_s_guide/welcome_to_the_magento_user_s_guide

Dear Content Thieves,

I recently stumbled upon one of the recent articles I’ve written here posted on one of your sites. There was no mention whatsoever of the original author. My content was posted on your site as if it was your own. Like if you had written it yourself.

At first I felt pretty angry – couldn’t you at the very least link back to the source?

I started thinking… how much of our content are you guys stealing and publishing as if it was your own? So I searched on Google for short extracts from some of our latest posts. The results were pretty astonishing! There are tons of content thieves like you out there! Much more than I’d expected.

Now it’s one thing if you quote someone and link back to the original source. That’s totally fine with me. But steal my content and publish it like if it was your own? That’s ugly, ain’t it?

If you think about it though, you’ll realize that being a content thief doesn’t really benefit you. When you steal content, or in general when you use someone else’s work like if it was your own (content, design, code, etc), you position yourself one step behind your competition.

By always copying and looking for other people’s stuff, you’re constantly trying to catch up with your competition. You’ll always stay a step behind.

If you want to make someone else’s content available on your site – just include a link to the source! Your readers will appreciate you more for it. You’ll gain credibility and your audience will widen. People like transparency and appreciate being exposed to new sources. They’ll come back to you for more, hoping they’ll discover some new sites and authors.

It just pays more to be honest.

Cheers!
Noam.

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The Khan Academy is one of the most awesome and unique projects out there. One man with a mission, a computer, and a pen-tablet-mouse created 1400+ videos on YouTube.

“I teach the way that I wish I was taught. The lectures are coming from me, an actual human being who is fascinated by the world around him. The concepts are conveyed as they are understood by me, not as they are written in a textbook developed by an educational bureaucracy. Viewers know that it is the labor of love of one somewhat quirky and determined man who has a passion for learning and teaching. I don’t think any corporate or governmental effort–regardless of how much money is thrown at the problem–can reproduce this.”

From The Khan Academy FAQ page

One man can achieve a lot and have a significant and positive impact on many people.

It doesn’t really matter how much time you spend on something, right? The outcome is what matters. The results. Then why most service companies bill their clients by the hour? Is there a better way?

On the other hand, we know that businesses who charge their clients based on scope restrict themselves to working within stiff boundaries – which doesn’t work in a creative industry.

So is there another way? The solution we found here at Noam Design is to stop taking on client work and focus on our products instead.

So we’re not charging by the hour: it doesn’t matter how long it takes us to develop a Magento template or a CMS template! Time isn’t a factor when determining a product’s price. Quality, usefulness, and market demand are more important.

We’re not charging based on the scope of work either. Sometimes a product requires a huge amount of work, revisions, adjustments, etc while other products are developed in a breeze. All that is quite irrelevant though – only the end result matters. Is the product useful for our customers? Will someone get a good value by buying it? Do people need it? These are the questions that matter more. (more…)

How often did you send someone links to Google Search pages? We send and receive Google links in emails, chats, blogs, and other media. Usually the link will look something like this:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=noam+design&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=CTyO163X8S5iMIpTuzASs6pieBQAAAKoEBU_Qv5Gd&fp=754b7f73eb24aff

That’s pretty ugly. Of course the anchor to the link can be anything you want. Like “Noam Design on Google”. But the link itself will look like the example above: a long URL which contains many parameters you don’t necessarily want to include.

So what’s the URL structure to link to a Google Search page?

All you need is this… (more…)

When starting a business, you often have to juggle between tasks and roles. One day you’re the project manager and the next you’re the billing department guy. Of course that’s totally fine – and you should be proud of taking care of so many different things. If you’re a one man show – enjoy it while it lasts and promote yourself as such.

But as time goes by and your company grows stronger, you’ll want to focus on what you do best and enjoy the most while delegating the other tasks to people who are a better fit for them. (more…)

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Thanks everyone for the continued support!