Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook

Development in Magento

I would have to say that I chose Magento in the first place because it would have a lot of the features we would need available without writing or editing code.
It turns out, that wasn’t so. There will never be a platform you don’t want to tweak, and Magento code may be some of the most complicated PHP code you have seen. It was when I first dug into it.
There were no books at that time and I depended on forum posts to get my answers and I made many mistakes long the way.
I love cookbooks. Telling me how to write the code, documentation or giving me a toy example may help a bit. But a cookbook with real code is something that gives me ideas. And that’s just what the Magento Development Cookbook is.

Finally A Magento Cookbook

Yes, with Magento, you do need at least a VPS. The Magento Development Cookbook starts by walking you from setting up your VPS, setting up Subversion (another important tool), setting up a Magento development project in Netbeans (a great free IDE) to Magento coding conventions and style. The EAV pattern is not a widely known pattern and can leave you at a loss when you are looking for the location of data in the Magento database.

After the first chapter, the first half of the book covers some intermediate level modifications to your Magento store. Not the normal pages of screenshots to fill space. The book goes straight to the meat like a code cookbook should. In 100 pages, the Magento Development Cookbook covers:

Chapter 2: CMS and Design
Introduction
Adding a home link to the menu bar
Changing any page title in Magento
Customizing a Magento error page
Adding AdWords tracking code to order confirmation page in Magento
Adding a custom CMS layout template
Adding an RSS feed (last five tweets!)
Placing the trusty old contact form in CMS
Integrating JW Image Rotator 3.17 in Magento

Chapter 3: Adding Extra Functionalities
Introduction
Integrating WordPress in Magento
Creating a new page
Adding jQuery support
Adding Lightbox2 in Magento
Adding an accepted payment banner at the footer

Chapter 4: Customizing a Store
Introduction
Creating a custom “Twitter handle” field in a registration form
Deleting orders in Magento
Using Google Website Optimizer
Creating a custom variable and using its own e-mail templates
Using Google analytics for Magento
Creating Catalog and Shopping Cart Price Rules
Creating a featured product and showing it in the home page
Creating a custom admin theme

Chapter 5: Playing with Products
Introduction
Setting up the Catalog defaults
Adding a Facebook ‘Like’ button in product page
Setting up Table Rates shipping
Adding a product to the cart through Querystring
Creating a configurable product
Embedding a YouTube video in product details

Chapter 6: Adding a Professional Touch to Your Site
Introduction
Installing Magento 1.4 in PHP 5.3.2 (without mcrypt)
Optimizing Magento store for search engines
Implementing PayPal Website Payments
Pro and Express Checkout into Magento
Preventing a CSRF attack in Magento

Then the next 6 chapters get into the code intensive part of working with Magento. This is where I got stuck for a few months. I had just moved from osCommerce and had just got used to its weird idiosyncrasies and Magento was complexity squared.

Remember I said I chose Magento because I thought there would be less development time because of the extendability. Well, when I was done with Magento, I knew more about code then I eve did before…because I had to. After Magento, I went on to learn a bit of C#, Flash and Python in a few months time because I was no longer scared of any type of code except maybe Java. I guess things work out in weird ways.

And this book will save months of hunting down answers. It covers:

Chapter 7: Database Design
Introduction
Resources and database connections
Magento database replication using Master Slave setup
Using the Magento’s Singleton method
Repairing the Magento database
Working with Magento’s EAV design

Chapter 8: Creating a Module
Introduction
Creating an empty module with a Module Creator
Creating the required directories
Activating a module
Creating a controller for the module
Creating a configuration XML file for the module
Creating a helper for the News module
Creating models for the module
Setting up SQL for the News module
Designing a template for the News module
Adding required blocks for the News module

Chapter 9: Creating a Shipping Module
Introduction
Initializing module configuration
Writing an adapter model
Adding a module in backend
Adding a module in frontend

Chapter 10: Writing a Social Widget
Introduction
Creating an empty module and an enabler file
Creating a config file and declaring the widgets
Writing the default module helper Data.php
Creating a source model for services multi select in widget configuration
Creating frontend block for our widget
Creating templates

Chapter 11: Performance Optimization
Introduction
Measuring/benchmarking your Magento with Siege, ab, Magento profiler,
YSlow, Page Speed, GTmetrix, and WebPagetest
Optimizing Magento database and MySQL configuration
Optimizing Apache web server configuration
Tuning Magento configurations
Using APC/Memcached as the cache backend
Accelerating PHP: php.ini configuration
Applying YSlow and Page Speed rules

Chapter 12: Debugging and Unit Testing
Introduction
Installing and configuring Xdebug
Using FirePHP with Zend Wildfire plugin
Installing PHPUnit and necessary PHP CLI binaries
Writing your first Magento test case

This book will save you a lot of time if your chosen ecommerce platform is Magento. And I don’t blame you. If you have the server power and know how to tweak Magento, it will perform well and look good doing it.

But if you are an average PHP developer or are coming from osCommerce, WordPress or Drupal, your first reaction to Magento might be “who the hell put Java in my PHP” or “did a JAR file explode on my site”. There are thousands of PHP files in a Magento installation. And this book will help with that.

I have to admit that cool tools like these will eventually make certain types of programmers worry about job security. But I see it as a tool. I have an idea about the movement of data that will make me money and then I have to figure out the way to get that done. You see, I deal with masses of data for the most part. They make me money.

E-Commerce sites and affiliate sites based off of entire product catalogs. Some of my ideas about that are in this post. You have to find a way to automate when your smallest product catalog has over 3000 products. You have to save data, analyze that data and use it to pick winners from losers. And the winners, you do SEO work, which, at times can be automated also. With that simple concept, I have seen $1,000,000/year sites become $2,000,000/year sites within the space of a year and $100 week affiliate sites top $1000 a week within two weeks.

I have used PHP for the most part, which is great, because you can run in on a server with almost constant uptime and schedule the server with “cron jobs” to run a script when it needs to be run. And to tell you the truth, if you are running a one person show part-time and want to get stuff done, there are quicker ways to build the framework to do the job, especially if all you are doing is moving data around on the internet. There are macro tools and scripting and desktop software. But running a scheduled task from the computer you do work on sucks, especially if it is a laptop. I know mine is not always on and I don’t really want it to turn on by itself.

That’s where my two friends come in. They are designed to make the job a bit easier. It did touch on software for transforming and moving data and I used Jitterbit for a while but there was a learning curve. It was not very visual. It might be better now, but I ran into these two once more which I also checked out back then and stopped. These tools have improved greatly since the last time I used them. They are Java based and use a client-server configuration. That means I can install the editor here on my laptop and the server somewhere on a host that can be cronned. Of course, now I have to venture into Tomcat, which I have always seen hanging around but never found a use for.

I never used flowcharts for the same reason I never wrote “Hello World” programs. I believe in real world exercises. But, after using these two tools, I am not so sure of that. If I am planning software that would be useful to others as well as myself, then I can write the idea with one of these tools and not only test it quicker in the real world, but have my job running. Then I can use the results to map out the software I would write for others. Look at the user interface below to see what I mean. This one is from Pentaho.

Of the two Pentaho seems to have more of the scripting, regex and programming like features I need, but it did not come with an installer. Extract the folder and run the Spoon.bat file to run the designer. Apatar came with an installer for those of you who don’t know what a batch file is and here is a look at designing a data job in it’s interface.

I have picked Pentaho for the features, but have yet to install the server. You don’t need it to run the scripts. You can run the scripts from the designer. The server is a big dog, 142 MB still in the tar.gz file and will run on Tomcat which I have never installed. But I have tested some of my scripts and they work and they will do work for me. And like I said, if any part of what I come up with is commercially viable as desktop software, a php script, an online service or a WordPress plugin. I have the idea in front of me, with all the data kinks and twists and turns worked out. I just replace those icons with functions in whichever code I choose.

Great tools.

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This is the third Magento book I have reviewed at this blog. The first book took a beginner through the basics of adding products to and running a Magento store and not much more. The second book was for Magento Developers interested in extending Magento’s functionality. So both of those books covered the “build it” part of running an online store with Magento. And this book covered the “and they will come” part of running your store.

And believe me the work has just begun once your store is up and running. Now you have to make sales. The great part about having an online store is that you can market it quicker and more cost effectively than a brick and mortar store. The bad part is that it is hard to know where to begin. But you have to begin.

The most common issue I run into when someone is wondering why they aren’t getting any sales is that they just aren’t doing anything to promote their sites, get links to it or interact with their customers. And Magento 1.3 Sales Tactics Cookbook gives you the tools to get started on a marketing plan for your ecommerce site and hopefully with them, you can stick with it.

The SEO Part

One point brought up in the book was you optimize a page and not a site. The Sales Tactics Cookbook goes over the basics of fleshing out your product pages completely from product title to meta tags. Magento has a lot of places to add your keywords and the product pages have a lot of options. Don’t just skip through them. Use them to your advantage.

The book also goes through customizing the title of pages throughout your site in the Magento configuration menu. Every store owner’s first thought is to put the name of their store on every page title. This is definitely a good practice, but the importance of your store’s name depends on whether people search for it by name and whether that name is descriptive of the products you sell. Page titles hold valuable keyword real estate and if you can find common search terms to fit in there with your store name that describes what you do, you may be surprised at the results.

You will also learn how to create and submit your sitemap to Google. A sitemap is a file that tells Google where every page on your site is. It doesn’t really help with SEO but it does help Google pick up and index your newly optimized pages quicker. With Magento, you can cron your sitemap generation so that your store automatically generates a sitemap for Google and the other search engines every day or every week.

The Sales Tactics Cookbook also walk you through adding your products to Google Base and a few things you can do to make your products more visible there. Google Base and other shopping sites can bring you a lot of customers if you do it right. You are not going to be an SEO master after reading the book but you will know where to go and what to do in Magento to edit the data that will affect your rank in Google. After all, books 3 times this size have been written on just SEO.

The Landing Pages

I have shopped online for a long time. I do compare prices and tend to find the best price on things. But I also pass judgement on the sites I buy from. It doesn’t take long. A few seconds. If your site is inviting, well laid out and up to date graphically, I hang around longer and don’t second guess checking out. If your site looks like it has needed a design update about 10 years ago, then I go into security mode. Anything a bit off in the store and I am looking elsewhere first.

If you are selling online, look like it. The Cookbook will walk you through making your online store an inviting place for your customers. It will walk you through adding videos to your store, optimizing product images and using all 4 of Magento default page layouts. You will also learn how to use Magento’s CMS system to create landing pages, linkbait pages and customer service pages. Even if you are using one of the default Magento themes, you can still create an attractive store and there is no end of customizations you have available.

The Social Media Part

The internet is full of buzzwords like social media that make you think you are dealing with a whole new form of marketing. I don’t see it that way. You need customers in your store whether it is online or down the street. To get those customers to your store, you need to advertise and market it. The tools may be different but the concept is the same. This guide introduces you to social media and how you can use it to increase traffic and sales at your store. This book will walk you through setting up Twitter, Facebook and Posterous accounts and then show you how to effectively use each of your accounts to bring even more customers to your Magento store.

The Customer Relations Part

Magento was built for customers. Most of the features the average online store would need are available without adding extensions and for added functionality, you can choose from free or commercial plugins in Magento Connect. The Sales Tactics Cookbook shows you how to use these tools to bring in more sales and satisfied customers. In the book, you’ll learn how to:

• Entice customers to add more to their cart with Upsells, Crossells, Related Products and Free Shipping
• Create promotional pricing in the cart, with coupons or by amount of sale.
• Build a clearance category to liquidate old inventory
• Give your customers a voice with Reviews, Ratings, Polls, Public Wishlists and Tags
• Set up Email to a Friend on your site
• Create an international store or multilingual store to expand your market
• Build a wholesale customer group, set up bulk tax-free pricing for them and setting your wholesale policies
• Keep in touch with your customers with a Newsletter

All these features come in the free Magento Community version and I am sure most store owners are only using a percentage of these tools. This book is a must for anyone who is working to get their Magento shopping site more traffic and sales and have yet to learn any SEO or social media marketing techniques. It is also a great help for SEO’s that must work with Magento. It shows you where to go to make tweaks in structure and content.

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Let me guess. You’re an in-house ecommerce developer. About a year or so ago you heard about this slick ecommerce software called Magento. You’re skeptical but you see a large community and free extensions. So you think you can make it work.

Yeah, you can start with that default Magento theme. It’s better than that crappy table driven one you are currently using with osCommerce anyway. So you start with the default theme. And all is well until you try to get that stupid dog picture off of the sidebar. Some of you might have just stopped there and I can’t say that wasn’t a wise choice. But for those of you who stuck with it, this is probably only the first WTF moments in a long line with Magento.

I have developed in WordPress, Drupal, phpBB, ZenCart and on and on. And it didn’t take me long to learn any one of these when I was a newbie. Enter Magento. Magento is a different creature all together. I am at a point now where I understand how Magento does what it does, but up to this point I have bypassed using modules to change things. If I couldn’t find an extension that suited my purpose, I would go to the theme files and create a custom theme to do what I want.

If only I had the Magento 1.3: PHP Developer’s Guide before I started on my long trek across the continent that is Magento. I already have learned a lot through Magento’s forums but this book added a few missing pieces to the puzzle, modules. Some of the chapters I skimmed, because I had already been through a few Magento installations:

• Installation – This part of the book will take you step by step through multiple ways of installing Magento. Magento has a massive amount of files and the quickest install process is through SSH. I learned this after uploading all the files manually once through FTP.
• Core API – I have used this a lot. Some things are just quicker through the API. In fact, there are some things that you can do through the API that you can’t even do through the backend. The book provides a complete reference to the Magento API and all the functions available.
• Import and Export – This was actually what I became an expert on first and one of the reasons I chose Magento was it’s flexible import and export process

But since I jumped into Magento with both feet with a site that was taking sales I didn’t quite learn enough about Zend and the book was good enough to give me a brief overview on the role that Zend plays in Magento. It is good to know the core structure so you know how everything else fits and works.

And despite all the theme hacking I have done with Magento, I still have yet to write a module and this book covered that topic in depth with a step by step tutorial. I now think I have everything I need to write modules for some ideas I have.

• Shipping Module – This chapter walks you through creating a module that gives customers custom shipping prices for orders over a certain amount touching on everything you need to know to create your own custom Magento shipping module.
• Payment Module – The payment module has to be one of the most important links in the chain. Something I have never tackled in any platform, because I would rather not make a mistake when it comes to money handling. But I think I have enough information now to write my own if I ever have to and I have been thinking of an affiliate module that would do things a little differently.
• Fully Featured Module – This chapter takes you through every step of creating a module that has a frontend pages with their own urls, a backend menu item and a backend form to edit the data.
• Third Party CMS Integration – Luckily there are extensions available to integrate Magento with WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Typo3. The WordPress integration extensions is one of the free ones, but it is not necessarily click a button and done like many Magento extensions. This chapter steps you through installing this extension and touches on the other CMS integration extensions available.

I will be referencing this book a lot in the future. Magento can be a monster but it can be worth the trouble. There are features in Magento you can’t find in any other shopping cart software. And this book will help you as a developer push Magento to it’s potential even if you have a PHD in Magento forum searching by now.

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First, let me tell you that I will soon be receiving the Magento 1.3 PHP Developer’s Guide to review. Magento has an architecture link no other software. Hopefully this  book sheds some light on developing with Magento and beats hunting a pecking through the forums. The last book I bought for a CMS was one for Drupal. With WordPress, I picked up everything I know online.

Up to a few weeks ago, I was about done with Magento. I have a post I was working in in my drafts on suggested shopping carts. Magento is not in the list. Because anywhere attributes are loaded, Magento is slow.  Anywhere configurable products are loaded, Magento is slow. Anywhere products are listed in a collection, Magento is slow. You go to checkout and Magento is slow. This did not happen up to a certain amount of products and a certain amount of attributes, but at some point, the sites seem to hit a wall. But I have found a few solutions like html block caching in the meantime and think I can make this work for our sites using Magento. Not so sure I want to tackle another site using Magento yet though, at least not with the product complexity of Magento sites I have built.

And so yesterday I go and update our Magento installations to 1.4. Those who know Magento, know how well that went. But it’s working now and here is how I Upgraded to Magento 1.4, if you need that info.

The 1.4 version of Magento has custom variables, widgets and new cache and index system from what I can see so far.

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.zip
unzip latest.zip
cp -rf ./wordpress/* ./
rm -r wordpress
rm latest.zip
touch .htaccess
chmod 777 .htaccess
cd ..
chgrp -R web public
chmod 775 public
find . -type f -exec chmod 664 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;

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Reason Not to Blog #3: I just can’t find the right tool.

There is no killer application that will do everything for you. Quit searching. This is something I have to tell myself often but I forget.

I will start something new as a beginner and make great strides and I will always mess it up by looking for tools to help me do the work.

I will get just that close to a blogging schedule, then I will go looking for software to make it easy.

I will get into writing again and start writing every day. Then I will have to get a new pen, a new notebook, new software to organize my ideas.

I will just get to getting things on my to-do list done and go looking for project management software.

I actually wrote this post in the middle of writing another because I caught myself thinking I wish this software would post to my blog. So I had to tell myself, “No, it does it’s job well. This is how you are organizing your ideas more effectively. Posting them can be another process.”

And then I had to write this post. Because it is definitely one of the reasons that can stop you blogging if you are person like me.

My theory is that there will never be perfection in anything including software, but it will always be evolving. So, you should check often for better tools. The downside of that is that changing tools can take time.

Another downside is that my ideas quickly turn into missions if I don’t curb them quickly enough. It will start with looking for software. Then I will be on page 50 of a Google result asking myself if I should write the software.

Since I run a few product review blogs and do reviews of software here, I have the added excuse that I am doing research. So this one is hard for me to fight.

So another issue I have, you may if you geek out on tech shit and software. Looking for a tool to make things easy is just procrastination if it is not a planned part of your work. Chunking out specific time for tool finding will curb it. I have been trying first thing Monday morning.

And this is because every once and a while, I do find software, that in pure Deux ex Machina fashion does save me time and money, like the unlimited document hierarchy in the software I used to house this series as I wrote it.

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Image by Guido Jansen via Flickr

It is still my plan to create a subdomain to host all of my posts on ecommerce. I have a lot of material. It is what I do most of the day. But for now, I will continue to put them here.

Magento is software for running an e-Commerce site. Yesterday I wrote a post on Magento for Search Engine Journal. I mentioned in that article that I had about 60 threads bookmarked in the forums. These threads really helped me modify 4 Magento installations. I also have a few bookmarks from elsewhere. Considering that the only book on developing for Magento leaves a lot up in the air, I figured I would write this post. It may help a few people.

Ask Magento

Recently, Magento set up a community powered Twitter account where you can ask your Magento question and get it answered.

Sites Where You Can Learn More About Magento

• Blasted Thing
• CSS-Tricks
• Inchoo
• molotov.bliss
• WestWideWeb
• ActiveCodeLine
• ExploreMagento

My Bookmarked Magento Forum Threads

Image via Wikipedia

The Only Employee

It’s a slow cycle when you are trying to learn everything you can about the Internet, Search Engines, Social Media and all the rest that just creating a presence online entails.

There is no easy way to do it all at once on the job. The goal would eventually outsource some of these tasks, but if that is not yet affordable, you have to do it yourself.

I am not sure if being an early adopter helps, but it does allow you to guess the future trajectory of the Internet and better place yourself to be in its path. To do this, I have relied on various tools and I will give my new list as it always changes (see "early adopter" above).

Friendfeed – Everything people post, like or comment on.
Twitter – This instant, before blogs and news sites many times.
Feedly – I am still working on an article to do this feed reading system justice.
WebMynd – Search is more than just Google

This is the general process I follow.  Follow and subscribe to anything related to what you do, especially those sites that get the new stuff first. And listen. Eventually you will know everything you can about that topic and then you can start interacting and commenting, maybe even writing about it.

Downloading Employees

I watch for a lot of new tools, software and technology. I also look for techniques that speed processes up. And most of the tools I have found, I would have found no other way. I would never had searched for that specific software, but by listening to like-minded people, I happened to bump into it.

Searching tends to narrow your view in terrain you are unfamiliar with. It is much better to follow the stream of knowledge until you know enough to search.

I focus a lot on software because it speeds up what I do online. I found Jitterbit to move data for me automatically, the software above to keep track of news, LiveWriter to write blog posts among a lot of other things. I have also downloaded crap.

The decision to keep or ditch software has to be made quickly before too much time is invested in learning a new system, especially with software that stores data, whether online or on your desktop. These are hard times and a lot of internet companies that offer free services have no business model.

To put it more simply, what if you wrote 200 blog posts in blogging software that no longer will be updated and there is no easy way to export your posts? That’s a lot of lost work. Email software can have similar repercussions.

And I had to put an aside in here. Email brought it up. If you are writing new software and are going to compete with some big names, import and and export your competitors formats if at all possible. It makes the potential lost time nil.

I have used Thunderbird for years because I wasn’t sure how to get everything out of it. Then along came Postbox that made searching email more easy. By day two, it was my email software. I had been using Webnotes and Delicious.

Then I discovered Diigo and it’s toolbar. It imported my Delicious account and sends everything I bookmark to Delicious so I have a backup, but it as has highlighting and notes.

How Tools Evolve and Why Most People Do A Majority of Things the Hard Way

Back in the day, if you forgot the http:// part of a url, your browser went nowhere. It just took a while for people to ask why and a while for a few of those why’s to reach the few developer’s that were developing those days. And then there were those that thought it was stupid but said nothing.

And for a more recent example, we will go with Firefox. Until the most recent version, it asked if you wanted to save your passwords for sites before you actually knew if you logged in. I had sites that had two bad sets of logins for every good one. Now it asks after.

There are more people on the internet. There are more people developing. And there are better ways of getting feedback on software. Tools evolve faster.

Most post do not find these tools because they don’t know they exist.

Which Software?

When switch board operators were replaced with automated systems, many people complained that computers would take everyone’s jobs. If we used switch board operators these days, everyone in the world would be one. Some people just don’t like technology. Some think too much software is impersonal. And too much is.

Ebay used to email bills to users and they had to snail mail a check back. There is no way they could do that today.

There are things we like to call part of our job that could be done by monkeys and somehow we hold onto them like they are part of us. Any process or partial process that is monotonous or requires no thought can be done by software or will be soon. Don’t hold onto them. Analyze then and recognize the pattern.

• Why the hell can’t I just get a list of all my shouts on Digg emailed to me? That would be quicker.
• All these Twitter clients are pretty cool, but if one could add all these features, it would kick ass.
• Why can’t I find a listening client that can branch from one keyword to many and track everything from blogs to forums to Twitter, and instant niche based trend tool?
• Why can’t I connect Filemaker directly to Magento?

And then follow people and subscribe to blogs that relate to what you do and what you like. And your magically run into the tools you are looking for and more. Because as the internet grows, your pet peeves become less unique and chances are someone else is asking the same questions. And eventually a developer will pick up the idea or someone will like the idea so much, they will learn to develop like I did.

And software can become too much. It can waste time. So it is best to analyze your situation first and know what will solve your problem or save you time. Then you will have the chance to be picky when you try new software.

The End Result

I have made money online for 4 years now. Eventually I ran into a plateau and that plateau was time. I quickly had to recognize which tasks could be speeded up or automated. It was either that or hope that slow and steady would hold out. But wasted time is wasted time. I automated things like datafeed updates, affiliate Adwords campaign ROI tracking and the like to save time.

This time gave me enough to learn a bit about blogging. The internet was changing and I had to learn some new ropes. I had to get where I was comfortable with it. But since it was taking all the rest of the time and I wanted to explore social media, I had to let blogging schedule drop off a bit, at least at this blog.

Sometimes there are miscalculations and then drastic time has to be cut from one thing or another just to make money. And sometimes the internet landscape changes and you have to go back and fix something that you had semi-automated.

But the best case scenario is this:

• Learn to look out for what is coming next, because as technologies come in the front, other ones get pushed out the end. If you are not moving ahead, you are falling behind.
• The only way to gain more time to learn something that will help you make more money is creating more time, outsourcing that work, becoming more efficient or finding software to do the job.
• And hopefully in the end that is an upward spiral.

I’ve had a lot of setbacks lately. So I figured this is the best time for me to take a look at the past see how I’ve progressed. It’s a great thing to do when you feel like that you are getting nowhere or things are just not working out. Because something always is working, despite the doom and gloom. It is impossible to make progress in everything you do 100% of the time. So at those times when it looks like you’re failing, it’s probably the best take a look at what you’ve done and at the progress you’ve actually made. I decided today to take a look at how my writing progressed.

When I first started blogging, most of my posts were written in longhand first. This is how I learned to write. And I figured it would help with my blogging. I could find a quiet place any time of the day and whip out my notebook faster than my laptop would boot up and get a few paragraphs done. Many times I would only start with a vague idea of where the post was going and most times it ended up somewhere unexpected. I figured I was saving time by getting possibly a first draft done while I would normally be just staring at the TV. This technique lasted for a while. In fact I swore by it. I didn’t understand how people could write articles straight from the keyboard. I was too conscious of the keyboard. It was still a tool and my hands were still in the learning phase.

Now although to I do write in longhand sometimes, I most commonly go directly to the laptop now. And I’ve tried hundreds of ways to make this part easier. I tried darkroom. It was supposed to keep me less distracted by making my laptop screen black and hiding all the other software from my view. I tried having a few posts in revision mode at the same time, but this ended with a bunch of post in revision mode forever. I’ve tried writing about Google Trends just to get the juices flowing. And everything worked for a while, but in the end it came down to just writing. Writing had to be done. All these tools and techniques were turning into excuses to play with software.

But with the practice of writing a lot of posts for over a year has done one thing. I learned how to transmit thoughts to the computer. Now it is more natural for me to go directly to the keyboard and start typing. In fact the faster I tried, the better chance I had outrunning the editor in my brain.

And today I tried something different, Dragon NaturalSpeaking. I have tried speech to text at least four or five times in the past. I figured it would be an easier way for me to write posts, articles and various other things. But it never worked for me. Any attempt I made to write using text to speech eventually turned into an experiment in surreal poetry. I would say something and the software would type something else.

So now it’s time for me to give it a try again. And hopefully, speaking complete thoughts will become more natural to me. Because this software definitely beats the text to speech program that comes with Vista. We shall see. It’s going to take a bit of practice. There can be no stray sounds because the Dragon interprets them as words, but as far as the text speech to text does, it works pretty well. In fact I’m impressed. It can even spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, no kidding.

All I did yesterday after I installed the software was go through the first initial training session. I guess this post would have turned out better if I would have gone through all of the training sessions, but it’s pretty amazing that it did as well as as it did. In fact I definitely see this software being very useful in the future, even when I don’t have to spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. And this post took about 15 minutes to write and edit. I just might just be in the market for a better microphone.

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