Invosoft have designed and developed a new blog for the leading UK log wholesaler and distributor Logs Direct.

Logs direct are leading supplier of hardwood, software, kiln dried firewood and other carbon nuetral fuels. They have their own state of the art processing and distribution facility.

The blog will allow Logs Direct customers to keep up with company news and promotions, as well as providing a valuable resource for the renewable fuel industry. With regular updates, articles and tips and tricks on how to get the most out of using firewood of various types (softwood, hardwood and kiln-dried), wood pellets, smokeless fuels and other wood fuels.

The new blog is called "Burning Logs":

 http://www.burning-logs.co.uk/ 

The site is based on wordpress which makes it incredible easy to update and add rich media content including videos and pictures. Keep checking back for regular informative articles on the Logs Direct and the industry in general.

Also, checkout their direct to consumer online store at www.logsdirect.co.uk.

Don’t be too put off by the system requirements on the Magentocommerce website, Magento is surprisingly easy to install and run on Windows and IIS 7.

We are currently developing a new ecommerce platform for an online t-shirt business specialising in music t-shirts.  In the past, we have used dashcommerce with great success, for example on Logs Direct. Unfortunately, dashcommerce has ceased to be living open source project.  Also, we develop primarily using mvc.net these days so I wanted to find an ecommerce solution based around mvc.net 3. 

The best mvc.net solution I could find was Orchard.  This is a really great platform but it doesn’t have a mature shop or ecommerce component, which is unfortunate, and perhaps somewhat strange, as I believe the codebase is founded upon Rob Connery’s MVC.NET ecommerce Kona project.

So, despite numerous reservations about Magento (the platform has a reputation for being slow, overly-complex, unwieldy, unsupported on Windows, good at marketing itself but lacklustre at delivering what it promises), I decided to have a bash at installing it on Windows Server 2008 running IIS 7.5 just to see what would happen/how hard it was.  It was surprisingly easy.

These are the steps I followed:

• Prerequisites: We already have a Windows 2008 IIS 7.5 server setup running a number of PHP platforms (SugarCRM and CakePHP based web applications) so I think this helped a bit.  I didn’t have to install any extra components but these are the relevant ones I believe you need to install using the web platform installer:
  1. PHP 5.2.17
  2. IIS: CGI
  3. Windows Cache Extension 1.1 for PHP 5.2
  4. URL Rewrite 2.0
• Install MYSQL: Once you have IIS setup, you also need a working mysql instance http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/
• Upload Magento Install: Create a new website in IIS and copy/FTP the Magento 1.5.10 install files into the website directory.
• Setting up the URL re-write rules:  This step is the key to a smooth Magento install.  Create a new web.config file in the base install directory and then copy the following URL rewrite rules in:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 
   <configuration> 
    <system.webServer>
    <rewrite>
    <rules> 
     <rule name="Imported Rule 1" stopProcessing="true"> 
      <match url=".*" ignoreCase="false"/>        <conditions> <add input="{URL}" pattern="^/(media|skin|js)/" ignoreCase="false" negate="true" /> 
      <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" /> 
      <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" /> 
    </conditions> <action type="Rewrite" url="index.php" /> 
    </rule> 
   </rules> 
   </rewrite> 
  </system.webServer> 
</configuration>

• Permissions: I also encountered some permission problems which were a little tricky to diagnose as magento hides errors by default.  You simply receive a generic “There has been an error processing your request” message.  To print errors to screen, I followed the guide here - http://www.designersandbox.com/magento/fix-for-magento-1-4-install-does-not-work/.  

Invosoft client Logs Direct have recently undergone a number of improvements to their e-commerce system to compliment the company’s new and improved product range.  Logs Direct, based near Lancaster are already UK market leaders for seasoned firewood logs and kiln dried logs. They hope to expand their range with a number of chimineas,  summer offerings and wood coal. Their e-commerce system has been improved, to enhance usability, cope with demand for new forthcoming product ranges, and their ever increasing customer base. 

Further improvements to improve the usability of the website and to upgrade the payments system are to follow shortly.

Invosoft has been commissioned by a leading Cumbrian property maintenance firm, based near Carnforth, Cumbria to create a website following its well publicised merger with a local landscape gardening firm. Together, Select Property Maintenance and A & A Garden Services (going under the banner of Select Property Maintenance) will provide their customers with over 15 years of expertise from an expanding range of craftsmen, all experts in their fields.

The merger is set to create up to 15 new jobs also, and the company is set to deliver a high level of maintenance services to the hospitality, retail and commercial industries as well as private residences.

David Greensmith, director of Select Property Maintenance, said “existing customers of A&A with whom we are merging will now benefit from a wide range of additional services including painting and decorating as well as gas and electrical services.”

The website will have detailed listings of the wide range of services Select Property Maintenance now have on offer, which include ground works and construction, interior decorating, kitchen and bathroom installation, an emergency call out service and a carefully designed package of Service Level Agreement tariffs.

The easily navigable website is fully editable via Invosoft’s advanced .NET content management system (CMS). Full Search Engine Optimisation should give this brand new website a great start.

There are a few useful tricks we regularly use to market new holiday home sites. Invosoft recently blogged about holiday home SEO and the importance of having your own web presence. However, there are a few specific tricks I have learnt since then that I’d like to bring to your attention.

Get your past guests to write reviews

These could be on your website but are far more effective on popular travel sites like travelpod.com and ivebeenthere.co.uk. Both sites are really popular, ranked heavily in the search engines and let the reviewer leave live links in back to your site.

Sign up for Flipkey.com 

Not only do they have a great review service which allows you to send out review reminders to all your past guests, you get a listing on both FlipKey and TripAdvisor! (the FlipKey page has a link back but the TripAdvisor page doesn’t). There are also a host of cool widgets you can use to promote your listing and reviews (like the one on the right).  The only drawback is it’s a paid for service. However, at a current $1.99/month until December, it’s worth a shot – you never know, you may get a few extra enquiries!

Thanks to Tom Henry of YouPR - journalist-inspired public relations for contributing to this article. 

Invosoft have just completed construction of a new e-commerce website for national carbon-neutral fuel supplier, Logs Direct. The North Lancashire based company supply ethical fuel products to the likes of B&Q and the National Trust. They stock a range of softwood and hardwood fuel logs as well as kindling, firelighters and wood pellet fuels. They are also the main distributors for Blazers, an ethical and effective alternative to wood logs.

Not having a wood burner or multi-fuel stove myself (yet!), it was an area on which I knew little. One thing I do know is that wood burners perform best when burning very dry, seasoned wood. After chatting to Andrew Foulds, Managing Director of Logs Direct, it seems the best wood in terms of performance (heat output, efficiency and value for money) is kiln dried wood. Kiln-dried logs have a 10% to 15% moisture level which ensures they burn hotter for longer. We spent an afternoon in Andrew’s purpose-built production facility getting to know the products and the one thing that stands out from that day is aroma from the kiln dried stuff – nothing beats the fragrance of a real log fire!

The website is based on the 'dashcommerce' codebase –  kudos to the team there for all thier hard work! We found the platform very easy to customise, in both design and functionality terms.  We, however, added lots of custom features not present in the standard platform, such as our video guides section and delivery calculator based on postcode. The system is feature packed, user-friendly and easy to manage and maintain. You can view the results for yourselves at:

http://www.logsdirect.co.uk

and here are a few tips on using wood burning stoves and selecting the the right firewood.

Invosoft do not exclusively build holiday home websites. Recently, we developed Rehab4Life.co.uk, a site dedicated to helping those suffering from traumatic brain injury.

Rehab4life are two Preston solicitors, Andrew Lindsay and David Smith, who have brain injured children themselves. They have launched this pioneering scheme to maximise the recovery chances of brain injured adult and child victims of no fault accidents. Andrew’s daughter Tracy, 26, has quadriplegic cerebral palsy and can only move her right arm. David’s son Peter, 20, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at four months and was later found to have autism.

Cerebral palsy was prominent in the news this week because of the very sad news of the death David Cameron’s son, Ivan.

Andrew and David have won millions for clients over the years, but were concerned that not enough was being done for traumatic brain injury patients between injury and final settlement and so launched this scheme to increase the access to quality rehabilitation.

We are very proud of this site, not only because it’s a great cause but because we have worked hard to include some great functionality. As well as using the Invosoft Content Management System, there is a custom-built document and case management system helping the referral process behind the scenes. Partner law firms who sign-up to the rehab4life scheme can login and submit new cases for review and then manage their cases throughout the rehabilitation process.

You can keep up to date on Rehab4Life by reading Andrew's blog here.