Gingerweb Blog

Ramblings on the Ginger Web

Blogging for the benefit of our current and prospective clients

Increase your WIFI speed in Windows

wifi speed increases

This is a really easy fix if your wifi download/upload speed on your Windows Laptop/Desktop isn't giving you the speed it should be.

Your Windows device is set to automatically select your wifi connection in the Network settings when it could give you your 5GHZ much faster setting. It is possible of course that your router is an old one and doesn't support the latest connection speeds in which case I recommend you call your ISP and ask them to send you a new router. If they want to charge you for this then tell them you have a much better offer and will be leaving them asap and have a look at the latest packages from Plusnet who we have used for many years.

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New website launched - Why isnt my website on Google?

google search your site

Well, Google isn't a magician and contrary to popular belief doesn't "own" the Internet.

However it is definitely the lead search engine and to get your website onto page 1 there are a few tips and tricks that will help this happen, although nothing can be guaranteed, so if you are promised "Page 1 of Google" - start running !!

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How to add a YouTube video to an article page

youtube share

There are lots of way to add a YouTube video to a Joomla webpage and this will apply to other Content Management Systems and HTML pages. This way is also required to ensure that 3rd party sites like LinkedIn will properly display the thumbnail of the video in shared posts instead of an untidy "placeholder" image that no one will click!

I am using the popular JCE editor but most wil work the same.

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Update Joomla to 3.8 error 1054 - Lost Admin?

zip

There is a "bug" in Joomla update if you try to upgrade from a Joomla version prior to 3.6 straight to Joomla 3.8. This results in your Admin (backend) showing a white screen and there is no way back without some very complex MySQL adjustment which are way above the many mortals who just want to update their Joomla website!

The first time i tried this i ended up with an Admin section white screen with a title tag error saying "error 1054 Unknown column 'client_id' in 'field list"

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PDF to "Flipping books" on your website

We have a few clients that have asked about this capability so we looked into it in detail and eventually after trying various plugins/components and modules for Joomla settled on a conversion process that takes place on your local machine and then the final product is uploaded to your website.

I am not going to link to "Flipbuilder" here because their after sales service was absolutely abysmal and I wouldnt recommend spending well over £300 with this company unless you are prepared to fix multiple issues and complications yourself! A simple Google search will find them, dont hold your breath if you need them AFTER you have paid for it though.

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Multi Variants in Virtuemart 3 with Joomla 3.5

This is actually a massive improvement on the variant system with Virtuemart and as you can see from the video clip below you can easily achieve setting up a complex product with "multiple variants" in ten minutes or so.

A few things to remember:

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Generic Child variations - Virtuemart 3

new

So you have a product with variations and you want to show a different image for each variation, maybe with a different price but definitely on the same Virtuemart 3 product page?

This is quite simple to achieve, just follow the direction below bit by bit, don't skip anything because "I don't need to do that" !!

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Migrate from RAID to SSD and changing to AHCI

I had to achieve this for a customer and it proved to be a little more of a challenge than I thought it would be but in the end when I stumbled across this fix it took just a few minutes to finalise plus of course the cloning time of the hard drives which takes a couple of hours!

The important factor here is - My RAID hard drives are performing fine I would just like to change my system to a single hard drive (SSD in this case) and when i remove one drive and try and boot the system wont boot and i get all sorts of errors.

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Sale prices on a Gingerweb shop

sale price before

If you would like to reduce a few prices to have a sale in your shop then follow these steps, its really simple and looks effective too!

Login to your Administrator area : www.yourdomain.co.uk/administrator

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Related products setup in Virtuemart 3

Custom Fields

Related products is a killer when it comes to up-selling your products and should never be ignored. Think of the spotty teenager behind the desk when you buy a Mars bar: "As you bought this Sir would you like to look at our range of Twix's?"

When the customer clicks "Add to cart" they are immediately shown your choice of perhaps similar of maybe totally different products as something "they might like as well".

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Setting Meta Descriptions & Title tags in Joomla 3

meta description and title tag

When you are surfing the internet you invariably use Google as the starting place and Google much like any other search engine will show you a "Title Tag" and a "meta description" of each of the search engine results:


As you can see the title of the website followed by the most important keyword or keywords, and then the meta description.

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Be realistic about SEO

bifold doors surrey

There are just some websites and some businesses you are never going to compete with and its best to be realistic about this from the start. There have been times however when we have been asked to try and compete with the really big boys and occasionally it pays off, more often than not of course using a brand new domain with no Page Rank is not going to get you noticed by the big Google in the sky so lets look at your options.

 If your product is locally based or you sell a service primarily in your area then you have a head start.

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Virtuemart 2 - How to create "child" dropdown product variations

virtuemart-product variations

Most Ecommerce shops will want to sell variants of a product, maybe a different size or colour, even weight, all is possible and it is surprisingly simple although there are a few steps to go through. Just follow the below steps and you will have some nice drop down variations in your web shop !

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Instructions for Blogging on a Gingerweb website

editor

So the chances are if you have got to here that we have set you up with your own shiny new blogging system on your website and you are wondering how to start or what to even blog about !

The first challenge is to know how to write your first blog so please follow the instructions below and you will be off and running !

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Importing your iOS Calendar into Google Calendar

Ok so the new Android phone has arrived and I want my iOS calendars transferred to it. Turns out this is actually very simple to achieve, here are the steps:

1. Go to www.icloud.com and sign in with your Apple ID and password

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Switching from iOS to Android Part 1 - Comparing Iphone 6 with Sony Xperia Z3

As an Iphone user through all the versions since the original Iphone 3G I have always been a fan. I always liked the simplicity and the fact that it always "just worked". Years of Nokia connections to a PC that made me want to throw the whole thing out of the window made me jump to the Apple bandwagon and it was great, no really it was!

However the recent release of the, lets face it, very expensive Iphone 6 and 6+ has made me rethink before just jumping into the next upgrade.

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