If you’re relatively new to Zen Cart, or even if you’ve been using it for a while, one of the wonderful discoveries is learning that the entire storefront layout is customizable, from the header, and the footer, to the sideboxes, and even all the text that’s displayed. It’s all customizable…you just have to know where to go and what to do.

In this video, which is pulled from chapter 3 of the full-length Ten Ton Zen Cart Customization Fundamentals, we’ll take a look at a fairly straightforward aspect of customizing the storefront, and that is how to move the sideboxes within the left and right columns. Fire open your store, press play, and get ready to follow along!

So as you can see, controlling the positioning of your store’s sideboxes, and even turning off the display of specific sideboxes, is relatively easy — although the first few times though might seem a bit tricky, you’ll quickly catch on to how Zen Cart “thinks.”

And here’s a few pointers related to working with the admin console’s Layout Boxes Controller screen, as seen below: First, remember that any sideboxes that appear above that thick, black horizontal line dividing the screen appear in the left-hand column, and sideboxes below the black horizontal line appear on the right. Also, to help you along, be sure to make use of the columns that appear onscreen, too. They give you a bird’s eye view of your store’s layout and sidebox behaviour. For example, at a glance here, we can see that search, languages, and currencies have all been disabled in the header, and we can see the sidebox sort order, too. And for more advanced users, all the sideboxes are just PHP files which you can, of course, go and edit to customize things even further.

Pretty cool stuff, huh? If you have any tips related to working with sideboxes, be sure to share ‘em in the comments. And if you’re up for learning more about how to make your Zen Cart store your own, be sure to check out Ten Ton Zen Cart Customization Fundamentals!

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Ten Ton has made an agreement with Total Training to add twenty of their top training titles to our monthly subscription service. These are the first five…so as you can imagine, there’s a huge amount of content still to be added!

Over the course of the summer, we’ll be adding some great titles covering Flash, ActionScript, Photoshop, Office, and more. And these titles will only be available online, not on DVD, so if you’re not a subscriber, be sure to sign up today! Click on the box graphics above to get details on each of the five new titles, and stay tuned cuz there’s a lot more on the way!

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Did you ever eat dirt when you were a kid? While a mouthful of soil isn’t so appealing, looking at some of the cool textures that form on the ground all around us can be pretty inspiring — and quite possibly exactly what would push your next design project over the edge. Below, you’ll find 4 high quality dirt textures, which were shot just as the last of the snow melted away. Lots of cool textured patterns were left behind, so I grabbed my trusty Lumix and fired off a few shots for you.

Click on each photo to get the full quality version from Flickr. They’re completely free to use, either in commercial or non-commercial projects, and feel free to chop ‘em up, manipulate ‘em, and do whatever the heck you want with them. They’re yours, so have fun!

Of course a link back to tentonbooks.com is always appreciated!

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I stumbled across a promotion on FaceBook, where texture blog Lost & Taken would give away a grab bag of high quality textures if they hit 4000 likes on their FaceBook page. Well, they passed the 4000-mark and immediately posted this: “Hey everyone. Today we crossed the 4000 member mark here on the Lost & Taken Facebook group. In celebration I put together a little texture grab bag for you guys…”

Wanna pick up the textures? Sweet. All ya gotta do is head over to their FaceBook page and give ‘em a Like and they’re all yours! So whatcha waitin’ for? Get clickin’!

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For many, working from home may seem like an impossibility. But with new services and software becoming available at such a rapid pace, and with employers becoming more open to work/life balance, it’s getting easier and easier to work in our jammies. Whether it’s accounting and book keeping services, graphic design, or even things like day spas and hair salons, more and more people are seeing the advantages of working where they eat and sleep.

Of course, not all businesses are suitable for running off your couch. I’m sure your wife wouldn’t appreciate a chicken slaughterhouse being run out of the dining room…especially when she has her parents over. Seriously though, some businesses require showrooms, warehousing, or specific setups in order to work, which can be tricky to do out of your home. But with some creativity, you very well may be able to pull it off.

As someone who has been working from home for over two years, I love it, and wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’m a homebody anyway, so it works really well for my personality. There are some downsides, which I’ll get into next week in Why Working From Home Drools, but in the meantime I thought it would be cool to put together a short list of reasons why working from home is so awesome. Let’s check it out…

Set Your Own Schedule

I think this is the big one that most people think of — and if you’ve worked from home before, you realize just how big it is. Having the ability to schedule work around life rather than life around work is huge. And you know, life happens. Kids get sick, cars need repairs, laundry needs to be done. Then there’s doctor’s appointments, banking, paying speeding tickets (in my case!), and on and on. I quite honestly don’t know how people who work regular 9-to-5′s handle all of life’s extras.

When working from home, you can keep the laundry moving and get dinner going at a reasonable time, all while you’re firing off that email proposal or handling your books. Or if you need a break, go cut some grass or take the dog for a walk. The big thing for me in the middle of the day is sitting down to play drums. Often times I think to myself, “Man, it’s 11am and I’m playing drums!” After fifteen years of commuting, that still jazzes me.

But, just because you’re at home doesn’t mean you’re not working. You’re still getting your stuff done, you’re just getting it done when it works for you (and at a much more efficient pace). It took me a while to figure out what works for me, my rhythm, and my lifestyle. For example, it took me quite a some time to discover that I am, to my great astonishment, not a night owl but in fact an early riser. When I discovered that, I realized that I could get more done between 5am and 7am than I could between the hours of 12am to 4am. In the early, early morning, my brain is percolating, ideas are flying, and I’m in total “go mode.” If I had to fit my life into an employer’s schedule, I’d spend my most productive hours getting ready for work, or stuck in stop-and-go traffic.

Low Overhead, Minimal Expenses

I love the cost-minimizing aspects of working from home, and I’m constantly realizing new ones. For example, if you’re an employee working remotely and seldom have to go into the office, you’d save a huge amount of money. Think about how much money it costs you to have a job; think about things like gas, wear and tear on your vehicle, lunches, parking, dry cleaning, and so on. Even if you have the ability to work even 3 days out of 5 from home, do the math on the money you’d save. It’s expensive to have a job!

If you run a business from home, the money you save versus having an outside office are even bigger. If your office is outside the home, you still have all the expenses that an employee has (gas, parking, lunches, etc.) plus you have all the additional expenses incurred in running an office, the biggie being rent. Even if you sublet office space, it can still be pricey.

I’m somewhat obsessed with seeing how little money I can run a business from home on. It’s a bit of a game I play with myself. Think about what you need at a minimum and what it’ll cost. How about starting with the staples: a desk, a computer, maybe a printer, a telephone line, and an internet connection. Guess what? Most people have these things already, whether they work from home or not. Beyond these staples, expenses are related to the type of business you run. So figure out what you’ll need. In the early days of Ten Ton, I discovered that a lot of the stuff I needed I already had lying around. I had a microphone, I had a lot of the software I needed, and I had some recording gear. Some of the other things I needed I found I could borrow from friends or family members, saving me from having to lay out cash early on. (See, when you’re just starting up, you don’t know if your business is gonna fly or not. And a common mistake in those early stages is to get caught up in the start-up euphoria, and run out and spend a bunch of money on “business expenses.” I know there will be some up front costs, but my point is that you can do a lot with a little. Ten Ton’s initial start-up was about $60 for some extra software I needed. If I had to do it again, I’m 100% sure I could do it for zero, after an initial $12 outlay for a domain name.)

Anyway, whether you’re an employee or self-employed, working from home can save you thousands of dollars a year. Again, just do the math and figure it all out. So if you can pull it off, the savings are huge when you work from home.

For employees looking to pull a disappearing act, Tim Ferris discusses how to achieve exactly this in The 4-Hour Workweek. He suggests a multi-step process to begin showing your boss the benefits of allowing you to work from home, like increased productivity, lower overhead for the company, and even outlines how you can suggest working remotely for a trial period. It all starts on page 227, so be sure to check it out, it’s pretty darn solid.

Increased Productivity, Less Waste

This is a big one for a lot of people. By cutting out  meetings, watercooler banter, and other unnecessary tasks, you streamline your time and your work. By trimming the fat, all that’s left are the tasks at hand, and productive time. To maximize my time, I’ve begun using a time-blocking method, which helps me stay focused on tasks that need to be done. I build it into each day, and since doing so my productivity has shot through the roof.

Gina Trapani from Lifehacker.com wrote an article on Fastcompany.com about this, which makes clear and solid points about eliminating distractions far better than I can. She says, “Being available to your boss and co-workers is part of your job. But the most creative and important work you do requires total focus and attention for an extended period of time. Your brain needs at least 15 minutes of uninterrupted time to dive in, concentrate on one thing, and get into the zone where you’re truly focused and doing your best work. Time blocking is a technique that sets the stage for that to happen.”

I highly encourage you to read the full article, Avoid Office Distractions With Time Blocking.

With No Commute, You Get Your Life Back

Commuting sucks. I don’t care how much they want to pay me or how great the job is, commuting royally blows chunks. I suppose I’m so adverse to it because I did it for fiffteen-odd years. Back when taught in Toronto my commute was as follows: 25 minute drive to the train station, 1.5 hours on the train, then a 10 minute subway ride (or a 25 minute walk). One way. Up hill both ways. It really wasn’t fun, and although by 9am I’d been awake long enough to be ready for lunch, I did try to make the most of it.

I’d read or use the time to catch up on email, but you’re really limited by what you can use the time for. The way I see it, working from home has given me at least 4 hours a day that I can now use however I wish. I can make productive use of the time, or I can spend time having fun with the kids, going to the beach, or whatever. My commute is now, make a left into the kitchen to grab a coffee, head down a flight of stairs and take a right into the office. There are, of course, always some complications along the way, like stepping on lego bricks or tripping over the cat. But I manage.

Working from home saves a huge amount of time. So much time it almost boggles the mind. Let’s look at some numbers: If you work at an office from 9am to 5pm, that’s an 8 hour work day. But let’s say it takes the better part of an hour to get to and from your job. Now you’re up to 10 hours. But let’s not forget, you have to get ready for work in the morning (let’s say 60 minutes to shower, eat breakfast, etc), and what happens when you get home at night? You’re fried from the day — it takes another hour or so of chilling out just to make yourself human again. That’s a total of 12 hours. So, it costs you 12 hours out of the 24 you have to spend, to have that particular job.

Everyone can (and does) choose for themselves. There are alternatives to having your soul crushed while sitting in traffic. For me, that cost was just too high and I had to figure out a better way. When I was commuting to Toronto, it cost me a whopping 16 hours a day to have that job. Divide the amount of money you make per day by the gross total amount of time it takes to have your job, and you find out what you really get paid by the hour. For many, it’s shocking.

There are alternatives, it just sometimes takes a little creative thinking to figure out how to get out of your tin coffin and into your slippers and housecoat.

Now, whenever I ever hear a traffic report I think, “Those poor buggers.” And I thank my lucky stars that I’m able to work from home.

Minimize Dealing With Difficult People

I found back when I had a “normal” job that it wasn’t so much the job itself that was a problem (in fact, I often enjoyed the work), but it was fellow co-workers who made working a hassle. Some were demanding, while others would stand around and talk your ear off about nothing. Still others were nosy, while some were egotistical jerks. It takes all kinds to make the world go ’round — I get that. But can we hold hands and sing Kumbaya later, after I get my stuff done?

See, I’m a nose-to-the-grindstone sorta guy, and when I’m working, I’m pretty damn focused and don’t want to be distracted. When I’m not working, it’s a different story. But by working from home, you completely eliminate the distractions that come from people who otherwise want to gossip or waste your time. You’ll still have to deal with difficult people whether you’re running a home-based business or if you’re an employee working remotely, but you’ll be at arms length, which gives you the space and autonomy to get your stuff done efficiently.

Power Naps

This one’s a little tongue-in-cheek, but it definitely has merit. Back in the day, the boss didn’t care too much for me grabbing a wink while at work. Even though I’d do it on a break, hidden away from fellow co-workers, she said it didn’t “look right.” I was an efficient and energetic employee, but I was expected to be “on” and “professional” and “alert” from the moment I walked in until the moment I left. Sorry, but the simple biological fact is that energy’s cyclical, not linear.

I first discovered the magic of the power nap during Apollo 13. No offense to Kevin Bacon, but I was pretty confident they’d still be stranded in the capsule in ten minutes — they weren’t going to hit an iceberg and drown, or anything. Sure enough, I woke up and leaned over, “Still stranded?” “Yup.” “Cool.”

I feel so recharged after ten minutes of shut-eye that I had to work it into my daily routine somehow. In fact, I’m convinced there’s health benefits as well. Right after lunch is my ritual, and I gotta say, when I grab one of these short naps, I am out. Out! Often I wake up forgetting where I am! Then I’m up and feeling awesome and ready to kick the hell out of the afternoon. Again, this is all about figuring out what works for you. Some people don’t like mid-day napping, but are useless by 7pm. It’s entirely up to you, but my point is, when working from home you have the option!

So as you can see, there are some really killer benefits to working from home. In fact, before sitting down and writing all this out, I hadn’t thought of a lot of these benefits — they just sort of “happen” by default as a result of bringing your worklife home. You don’t stop and think, “Hey, I don’t have to pay for parking anymore!” Or, “I can just make a quick run out to the store!” I’m sure I’m missing some benefits, too, so be sure to share your ideas in the comments!

And don’t forget to check out Why Working From Home Drools to get an idea of some of the drawbacks of mixing work and home.

Photo credits: cathyse97, ASurroca, pshegubj, yoshimov, banspy, craigemorsels

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Fungus. It can grow anywhere. Don’t believe me? Just lie still for the next 200 years! It’s immediately fascinating, but also creepy and sorta gross at the same time. And did you know that these organisms are a member of their own kingdom, outside of bacteria, animals, and plants? Cool! Kill an afternoon and learn a whole lot about this weird, almost alien looking life form over on the Wikipedia fungus page. A word of advice: Don’t do it on a full stomach.

Now once you’re all up on your eukaryotic organisms, download these cool fungus textures and put ‘em to use in your own design projects. Click on each image to get the full quality version from Flickr. They’re completely free to use, either in commercial or non-commercial projects, and feel free to chop ‘em up, manipulate ‘em, and do whatever the heck you want with them. They’re yours, so have fun!

Of course a link back to tentonbooks.com is always appreciated!

Nom, nom, nom…Fungus!!!

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If you’re a frequent visitor to Ten Ton, you’ve no doubt noticed the changes that have been happening on the site. We’ve been streamlining our layouts, adding in some social media buttons, and simplifying the navigation. During this process, I discovered a neat little WordPress hack for sticking shortcode outside the WordPress loop, dropping it directly in template files.

If you’re a WordPress user, you know that shortcodes are used as a fast way for inserting things like media files, social media buttons, and other types of content into posts quickly without a lot of hand coding. What I wanted to do though was add content, via shortcode, to every single post on the site. The typical way of doing this would have been to paste in the shortcode into each and every post, one at a time. But, this would have added the shortcode within the loop. Not what I wanted.

I got thinking about an alternative…adding the shortcode directly to the PHP template pages.

It’s actually really easy to pull off. You have your shortcode handy, square brackets ‘n all? Okay, open the template page that you want to add the shortcode to. For me, it was single.php because I wanted my shortcode added to every post, right?

Within the template file, find the spot where you’d like to add the shortcode, then do this:

Be sure to replace [SHORTCODE] with your actual WordPress shortcode, and you’re good to go. Save your template file and go check out your results.

Pretty cool, huh?

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The need for designers is exploding in a variety of arenas — be it building static pages, mobile applications, theme design, marketing pieces, and what has me so fascinated is that designers typically use same set of tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, CSS, etc), but they’re used in such radically different ways, depending on what current projects call for. To me, that’s what keeps graphic design juicy and fresh — there’s always a lot of energy and creativity happening…there’s always something new and exciting going on.

In addition to such strong demand, there are other great benefits to pursuing a career in graphic design, like the ability to express yourself creatively and the opportunity to either work at an agency or carve out your own freelance path. Over at Naldzgraphics.net, author Ronald Bien outlines 10 reasons why being a graphic designer is so great, in It’s Great to be a Graphic Designer. Here’s Why. Here’s my personal favorite:

What I love too is that you don’t need an expensive college education or spend a lot of money gaining skills and honing your chops. As Ronald says, “You really don’t have to spend money to learn. There are online tutorials that could help you learn various designing programs. You can explore the program and practice designing. This way, you are able to develop your own styles and techniques in designing.”

So if you’re considering exploring a career in the fast-paced and ever-expanding arena of graphic design, take advantage of resources like Naldzgraphics.net and Ten Ton’s online subscription library and get yourself rolling!

Image: purplemattfish

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Admittedly, I’m not really much of an “upgrade guy.” Seems I just get comfy in my software and workflows, and then a new release drops! Further, I don’t really care too much about “performance upgrades” or “enhanced interfaces.” To me, these should be expected on all upgrades anyway, and are hardly worth mentioning in the new features list.

I rant. I shouldn’t complain so much, it keeps me employed! Anyway, let’s move on to the subject at hand. Every once in a while a particularly cool new feature comes along that makes me stop and take a longer look. Well, Adobe recently released Flash CS5.5, and I quickly realized that there’s actually some really cool stuff in this new version. In particular, let’s take a look at three new features in Flash CS5.5 that are handy for developing Android apps. Yeah…Androids apps in Flash! Kay ‘dobe, ya got my attention. Let’s see what we got…

Resize Yer Content…Along With The Stage!

This has been the bane of my Flash developing endeavours. The client comes back and wants the project to function at a different set of dimensions. Bahh! There goes the next twelve hours rescaling and adjusting content to fit the new stage size. Well, the Document Settings dialog box in Flash CS5.5 now sports a Scale Content With Stage option, which as you might guess, allows you to not only resize the stage, but also resize your project’s content along with it. Sweet!

I’ve just begun working with this, and so far so good. It seems to be about 90% accurate; but I notice that sometimes weird things happen, like buttons or other objects winding up way off the stage. But even still, it’s a pretty darn nice feature.

Next Up, Code Snippets For AIR And Mobile!

Do you know about Code Snippets? They’re like pre-packaged microwavable ActionScript meals — essentially you grab the object that you want to apply ActionScript to; then ya double-click on the Code Snippet you want to use. Pretty darn simple. And now in Flash CS5.5, we have a whole bunch of new Code Snippets, all related to developing for AIR and mobile platforms, which is obviously huge for building Android apps. Choose WIndow > Code Snippets to pop open the panel.

There’s a whole buncha goodies in there, so start twisting open some of the folders, like Mobile Touch Events, Mobile Actions, and AIR For Mobile. In these folders, you’ll find snippets like Tap Event, Pinch To Zoom Event, Move With Accelerometer, Show Geolocation, and a whole lot more. There’s lots of great stuff in there to get you started developing your mobile app!

What’s more, try clicking on a snippet, and on the right-hand side you’ll see two icons, one for a description, and the other to preview the ActionScript. To apply the snippet, just double-click. Voila! The Actions panel springs to life, and the ActionScript for the snippet loads in. Cool!

And My Personal Fav, Publishing To AIR For Android!

In the last version of Flash, we were given the ability to publish to iOS. Then Apple got mean and we had that whole HTML5 vs. Flash debate. I try to remain agnostic when it comes to such quarrels, but no matter where your opinion fell in all that, we now have the ability in Flash CS5.5 to publish directly to AIR for Android, which is pretty freakin’ cool.

To give it a whirl, just head to File > Publish Settings. In the revamped Publish Settings dialog box that appears (which is definitely a welcome change), pop open the Player menu at the top and choose AIR For Android. Next, click the Player Settings icon on the right side of the menu (the wrench icon). This’ll bring up the AIR For Android Settings dialog box.

I won’t go through all the options available, but here’s a few highlights: First, in the General tab, we can set the output file and the name of the app as well. We can set it to run full screen on mobile devices, and down at the bottom we get a list of files that’ll be included when we compile everything out of Flash.

Under the Deployment tab, check out the options underneath After Publishing…Install Application On The Connected Android Device and Launch Application On The Connected Android Device. Freakin’ cool, huh?!

The Icons tab is pretty self-explanatory, and Permissions is where you can go to specify which permission requests it’ll make during install. When you’re ready to rock, click Publish. It’s that easy.

So as you can see, there’s some pretty awesome additions to Flash CS5.5 when it comes to developing content for Android. Notice too that I didn’t once use the phrases “rich media” or “rich mobile experience” once! Geeze that marketing lingo kills me! Ya know, I’m gonna leave you with one more cool addition. Try choosing Debug > Debug Movie > On Device Via USB.

Sooo, you can debug your projects on your connected Android device, whether it’s a smart phone, tablet, or other Android device.

Anyway there ya go, three cool new features in Flash CS5.5 for building Android content, plus an extra one thrown in for good measure. I’m looking forward to trying all these new features out. If you’ve had a chance to mess around with these new features, let us know about it in the comments below!

Cheers!

Geoff

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The second annual WMC Fest is on this June in Cleveland, and Jeff’s got all the details for us, including what we can look forward to at the 2-day event, which includes designer galleries, live music, speaker showcases and workshops, and a whole lot more…

Tickets for Weapons of Mass Creation are just $5-15, and the event spans 3 different venues. For more information, including lists of designers, presentations, bands, and more, swing over to wmcfest.com!

As mentioned, the conversation spans another 15-20 minutes, which I’ll be putting into a future episode of Ten Ton TV, so stay tuned for more from Go Media’s Jeff Finley!

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