You need to charge GST to some Provinces, HST to others, with BC and NS having a different HST%. If you are in a Province that charges PST you’ll also have to charge PST within your Province.

Here’s a great infographic of Canadian Taxes by Province

Click to Enlarge

[Original Source: iGlobal Exports]

Here I’ll walk you through the correct setup for an osCommerce or WordPress WPonlineStore based in Ontario.

**UPDATE***

Plugin developer Martin Hurford took this information and turned it into a WordPress plugin! Once installed the Canadian Tax plugin will automatically set up the WP Online Store plugin with the correct sales tax configuration for eCommerce within Canada.

If you are using osCommerce and not the WordPress WPOnlineStore plugin then you’ll need to read on to configure Canadian taxes manually.

In the shop administration area go to -> Locations/Taxes. Check that the Countries and Zones have already been populated. Also confirm that there is a Tax Class called Taxable Goods.

TAX ZONES

In Tax Zones (note it’s different from just Zones) click Insert and create the following four Tax Zones.

1. Canada GST
2. Canada HST
3. BC HST
4. NS HST

1. Click on the file folder for GST and add the following Canadian Provinces:

• Alberta
• Prince Edward Island
• Saskatchewan
• Yukon Territory
• Manitoba
• Northwest Territories
• Nunavut
• Quebec

2. Click on the file folder for Canada HST and add the following Provinces

• New Brunswick
• Newfoundland & Labrador
• Ontario

3. Click on the file folder for BC HST and add British Columbia.
4. Click on the file folder for NS HST and add Nova Scotia

TAX RATES

In Tax Rates click New Tax Rate to add these four rates to the tax class Taxable Goods

• BC HST 12%
• Canada GST Zone 5%
• Canada HST Zone 13%
• NS HST 15%

Whew! Remember these instructions assume that your ecommerce store is based in Ontario. If you are a Quebec retailer you’ll have to charge Provincial sales tax on sales within your Province. Refer to the infographic above to adjust for your own Provice.

As a website owner today, you want to make sure that your website isn’t being left behind!

Where the Web is going ….

What this means for you….

is that you want a WordPress site. As the Web changes so does WordPress. WordPress automatic updates ensure that with the click of a button you can make sure that you are running the latest version of WordPress.

In 2010 Steve Job’s said that “HTML5 will kill Flash”. Flash isn’t dead yet but there are a couple of reasons you should move away from Flash now.

One: Flash doesn’t work on iPhones and iPhones command the largest market share for mobile devices.
Two: Flash images can’t be pinned to Pinterest.

A couple of our favourite Flash alternative gallery plugins are “jQuery Colorbox” and “Portfolio Slideshow Pro“.

Search the WordPress plugin repository for HTML5 and you’ll find that WordPress is already starting to take advantage of HTML5. I’ve used HTML5 for presentation slideshows but I haven’t played with any of these plugins yet. Please add comments below to let me know if you’ve found one that you like.

With WordPress you’ll be ready for whatever changes come to the Web.

[cross-posted to the Go WordPress Blog]

Search engines don’t understand the content of an image very well:

While infographics and other web images can convey a lot of information to people, search engines can’t read images. When indexing images, search engines take cues from the image’s context. The keywords used in the anchor-text of a text link tells search engines what a link is about, we need to help the search engines understand what our images are about.

How to optimize images on your website:

On-page website optimization includes adding keyword-targeted textual content around your images to tell search engines what the images are about.

1. Use descriptive key-word rich image file names (i.e. “my-keyword.jpg”)
2. Optimize the Title and Alt Tag of each image
3. Use captions to describe your image

Pinterest helps search engines understand images:

Pinterest is a social network used to organize and share online images linked to the source of the image. The goal of Pinterest is to connect people around the world through the images they like. Users create virtual pin boards of images they think are beautiful, interesting, and exciting. The significance for SEO is that the image itself is a link back to the site where the image was originally located.

Users can design boards around personalize categories (Home Decor, Art I love). Categories, tags and comments provide search engines with a wealth of knowledge. This user-contributed information helps search engines understand more clearly the context for pages on the Web linked from Pinterest.

Pinterest actively supports image categorization. If you visit an uncategorized board Pinterest asks you to help the person add a category.

Pinterest referrals are huge

At the start of this post, I said that “Pinterest has skyrocketed to the number three social network.” I’m referring to a Shareaholic study that showed Pinterest had surpassed Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined in referral traffic. Pinterest now drives more referral traffic than Twitter, trailing behind Facebook and StumbleUpon. Pinterest can also be linked to your Facebook account, automatically adding Pinterest activity to your Facebook timeline. Referral traffic that comes from Facebook may in fact be initially generated from Pinterest.

Encourage Pinning of your images

When blogging you want to create great content that others will want to bookmark and share. Thanks to Pinterest it’s valuable to also create beautiful and compelling visual content, images, infographics and photographs, that people will want to pin and share. The more interesting your Pinterest content is, the more likely it will be “re-pinned” and clicked through to your site.

Make sure that you add a Pinterest “pin it” button to your blog so users can share your images on Pinterest with a link back to your site.

Optimize your website images and to encourage image sharing so your site will show up higher in search results.

Is it a hosting issue?
Did you forget to renew your domain name?
Is there an outdated WordPress plugin?
Have you been hacked?!!

Don’t Panic

Web servers are quite often momentarily inaccessible due to maintenance and backups. Just wait a fifteen minutes and try again. Take a deep breath and go make a cuppa tea.

Call the Host

If you’re site is still down after 30 minutes, check out the host company’s run-time blog where they list any known issues that might impact your site. If your server isn’t listed with a known error and your site has been down for an hour, contact the host company’s support.

Last week we talked about Owning your own Website and having all your website documentation at your finger tips by creating a Website Essentials document that you keep in a dropbox folder. Knowing how to contact the host company and what your account login credentials are will lessen your stress when your website is down.

Your host support team should be able to identify the problem. They will be able to tell if you failed to renew the domain name, if the problem is coming from a code error on your site or if your site has been hacked.

Check the Domain

If you didn’t renew your domain name on time your site will be taken down, but there’s no need to panic. There is a grace period. If the time between when you noticed your site is down and when your domain should have been renewed is not too long, your domain will be on hold allowing you time to renew. Once your domain is renewed your site will be restored.

Check for Updates

• Check for any plugins that have an update notice and update them. Some plugins may become outdated and no longer work with a newer version of WordPress.
• If you update a WordPress plugin that breaks your site, access the /wp-content/plugins directory on your server via FTP. Simply rename or delete the broken plugin and your site will be restored.
• If your site went down when updating the WordPress core files by automatic upgrade, try a manual WordPress update.

Scan for Malware

I highly recommend the premium WordPress plugin Backup Buddy. How much is your site, and the time to restore it, worth to you? The cost of a premium plugin won’t seem like much compared to that.

Not only does Backup Buddy take care of backing up your database and all files, it also has a malware scan option. Run the scan. If you find evidence that your site has been hacked contact your host company. They will want to clean any nefarious code from their servers as much as you do. Your host will be able to restore your site to a previous version, hopefully prior to the injection of code. If you have scheduled backups with Backup Buddy you can easily restore the site yourself. Knowing that you have regular backups will give you peace of mind when your site goes down.

[cross posted on the Go WordPress Blog]

If you decide to move to a different web designer, you’ll be glad that you have organized your website documentation. Do yourself a favour and create a “Website Project” Dropbox folder with the following files and information.

A Website Essentials document containing:

Domain registration – be sure you are listed as the domain registrant NOT your web designer. The email address connected with the registration needs to be yours, not your web designer’s and it must be an active email account. Don’t ignore emails from the domain registration company informing you that it’s time to renew your domain name. In your Website Essentials document include a link to the domain registration company, the email address and password used to login to the account, and the renewal date.

Hosting account – In your Website Essentials document include the name of your hosting company, the URL of your web-based control panel, username and password. Keep track of when your hosting is due for renewal. If you have it set to auto-renew ensure that you update the credit card expiry date when you are issued a new credit card.

Know your FTP (file transfer protocol) credentials, including your FTP host name, login username and password.

Hosting Support – know where and how to login or call to get support from your host company, put this information in your Website Essentials document. Your web designer may be away on vacation when the host decides to upgrade their servers causing problems for your site. You don’t want to wait two weeks to resolve your problems!

WordPress admin login credentials – If your website has been built in WordPress make sure that you have full administration access. Many WordPress developers don’t give the keys outright to the site owner for fear that they will break something on the site. If something were to happen to your web developer you would be stuck. It’s your web site, know what the full-access login information is, even if the username and password you regularly use has a paired down admin area.

Own your images

If you want to hire a different web designer to create a new look for your site you’ll need to locate original image files. Have your own copies in a safe place. Computers and external hard drives crash, files are lost. Make sure that you have backups of all important files off site. You can never have too many backups.

• Logo – have a full electronic version of your logo in the dropbox. It should ideally be in a vector format (like Adobe Illustrator or EPS) on a transparent background, to ensure the greatest design flexibility.
• Stock images – Any images that you’ve purchased (or that your web designer purchased on your behalf) for use on your site need to be backed up to your dropbox folder.
• Professional Profile Photos – Backup to dropbox any images that will be costly to replace.
• Font files – did you purchase a font for use in your logo or other promotional materials? If so back it up too

Take back the ownership of your website. A little organization can save you money, time and frustration.

The name “favicon” isn’t widely known, people are searching but not finding the right results. Clients have asked me questions like: How do I add an avatar to my url? How to add a thumbnail image to top of site? How to add an logo to my browser nav bar? Knowing the term favicon is important to a successful search.

Five steps to follow

1. Go to Favicon.cc
2. Import and image from your computer or create one on favicon.cc
3. Scroll down to Preview and click Download Favicon
4. save the file to your computer
5. Use FTP to upload the favicon.ico file to the root directory of your site

You may need to clear your browser cache to see your new favicon.

You can add this line of code in the head of your header.php file <link rel=’shortcut icon’ href=’http://yourdomain.ca/favicon.ico’ type=’image/x-icon’/ > but I don’t find that it is required.

When you’re done add a comment below and I’ll check out your site to see your new favicon.

[cross-posted on The Go WordPress blog]

Registering a custom post type (by adding code to your theme functions file or using the Custom Post Type UI plugin) adds a new admin sidebar item. Instead of going to posts -> add new; go to the newly created post type Video Testimonials -> Add Video.

WordPress Custom Post Type Plugins

Thankfully there are a number of powerful plugins that take care of the heavy coding when it comes to creating custom posts.

1. Custom Post Type UI – Using Custom Post Types UI plugin is a easiest way to create custom post types and taxonomies in WordPress. With this plugin you create post types and taxonomies, the plugin registers the CPT for you so you don’t need to edit the theme functions file.
2. Advanced Custom Fields – Custom fields are a great way to extend the interface and fields of that custom post type. This plugin allows you to customize WordPress edit screens with specific fields. Field types include: WYSIWYG, text, textarea, image, file, select, checkbox, page link, post object, date picker, color picker and more. You can also purchase some premium add-ons such as a repeater field.
3. Custom Post Type Shortcode – “List custom post type posts using shortcode with any page or post.” It’s as easy as creating a page and entering a short code [cpt_list]. Additional options can be added to the shortcode to customize the output [cpt_list post_type="testimonials" category="classes" show_post_content="true" excerpt_only="false" use_single_blocks="true" wrap_with="div class='testimonial'"]. Walla! A page of testimonials for the category classes. There are a slew plugin options available.
4. Post Types Order – “Order Posts and Post Types Objects using a Drag and Drop Sortable JavaScript capability”. This plugin makes it so easy for the client to reorder their posts.
5. Simple Custom Posts per Page – “This plugin allows to configure the number of posts displayed for every custom post registered.” After activating the plugin go to your Settings -> Reading page. All your custom post types will be listed here. Set the number of custom posts to displayed on every page.

Custom Post Types are so powerful! With a little code and some new theme files, we can output and format both the custom post types and the custom fields in any way we want. If coding isn’t your thing, use the Custom Post Type Shortcode to display your custom post types.

Kudos go to Wes Bos and Ladies Learning Code for a great workshop last month that helped get me started.

[cross-posted on Go WordPress blog]

1. Login to your WordPress dashboard as admin
2. Create a new profile with a unique username and a strong password – you’ll need to use a different email address to do this
3. Make this new user an administrator
4. Log out
5. Log back in as the new user you just created
6. Delete the original “admin”
7. You will be prompted to either delete this user’s posts or attribute the posts to the new user. Attribute them to the new user. Then click on the “Confirm Deletion” button (as shown below).

Now you can change the email address for this new user back to your preferred email address.

Presto! You have just enhanced your WordPress site’s security.

[cross-posted on: Go WordPress Blog]

“Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your blog from comment and trackback spam. It keeps your site protected from spam even while you sleep.”

Previously, you signed up at wordpress.com to obtain an API key and then paste that API key within Akismet Configuration to activate the service. Now, you must register at the Akismet website and choose a specific plan before you get access to an API key.

Get Started with Akismet:

1. In your WordPress Dashboard click Plugins.
2. Then click on installed Plugins and then -> click “Activate” under Akismet
3. Go to the Akismet Website to sign up for an API key

A NOTE ABOUT AKISMET: You don’t HAVE to pay for Akismet. Until recently, it has been free. To choose whether you want to contribute, choose personal and slide the yearly contribution slider to $0 (or whatever yearly contribution you want to make). See the image below.

The Terms of Use state that “API Keys are free for personal use, and we offer paid licenses for commercial use” – Of course you are encouraged to make a donation to keep Akismet going strong.

1. After going through the checkout process, the API key will be emailed to you.
2. Go to your Akismet configuration page and paste in your API key.

Akismet is now ready to catch spam comments.

We recommend using the Fast Secure Contact Form plugin in conjunction with Akismet. This will protect your email contact form from spam bots in the same way that Akismet does with comments.

[cross posted on the Go WordPress blog]

If you are a Mac person you probably know and love Mac’s digital color meter, a utility for measuring and displaying the colour values of pixels displayed on the screen of a Macintosh computer.

If you are on Windows here is a great free colour picker tool that you can use. I’ve tested a few and Color Cop is the best I’ve found.

Five reasons to choose Color Cop:

1. The user interface is very compact, it takes up very little screen space
2. A color eye dropper tool is provided to drag and drop at any pixel of the screen, and RGB and Hex codes are presented instantly
3. There is a built-in magnifier
4. It has an active color palette. If you want to adjust a picked color, you can click the ‘custom’ button and call up Windows’ default color mixer.
5. Right click on the interface a menu pops up with extra features including: web-safe color, display color reverses, random colors, conversion to gray-scale, additional hex codes, application options and settings, etc.

» Download Color Cop

Once it’s downloaded (and unzipped if necessary) then right-click on ColorCop.exe, click ‘Send to desktop’ and drag the desktop icon into the bottom taskbar. Clicking on the icon will start Color Cop.

I love this little utility, and use it all the time.

[Cross posted on GoWP.ca]