Another project: last week I finalized a Google Maps integration with an overview of my client’s members and the status of their membership.

VSK (or the Vlaamse Scholieren Koepel) manage their member schools through a web interface and because they had addresses of each school, it was a logical step to show them on a Google Maps overview:

While the result will definitely come in handy for them, implementation is not spectacularly difficult. The fact that the hosting was fixed on PHP 4.x caused a bit more “fun” though!

This can save some time searching: to center a map on a set of markers (like with the county selection above) your must first center it on a set of fixed coordinates.

For Cited (Dutch) I created a dynamic quote request form (Dutch) which allows potential customers to specify exactly what they are looking for (of course limited to the options that are available).

Through a secured back-end, the site-owner can specify which configuration options are available in which order for which products and categories. You may notice a lot of different configurations are possible!

Within the existing site, the MVC of Zend Framework was used to build only the form and back-end. It’s not ideal, but yet again proves the advantage of the ZF use-at-will structure: almost anything is possible.

So you now know where to get your next shipment of USB sticks/braces/cards!

In an attempt to write more (short) posts about completed projects: a first case.

Last year I built this Bikini store for Bubble (warning: nasty browser resize) and this week a lot of changes were launched. Among them: a few fancy JavaScript effects, a lot of usability improvements and an altered delivery costs calculation.

Zend Framework got upgraded from version 1.5.3 to 1.7.6. Only major consequence was removal of parent directory traversal when including view scripts because of this fix.

Your instinct may tell you that the higher you rank on a search engine, the better the results will be.

But that is not always the case. If you’re not ranked number one for a broad keyword (e.g. for “widescreen monitor” – as opposed to “review samsung widescreen monitor”), this can give you higher quality visits than the magic top spot. When you look at bounce rates for instance you could get better results for lower (but of course still high) rankings. And it also applies to conversions.

This is explained by the broad nature of the keyword. People that are looking for something specific will (also) look further down the results and will thus have a higher affinity with your content as opposed to all visits the number one ranking generates.

It is certainly useful in light of PPC (e.g. Google Adwords) bids.
When you look at these bounce rates based on the add positions of a broad keyword, you get the picture:

It’s important to note that the Top1, Side 1, Side 2 and Side 3 all generated a comparable amount of clicks during a 2 month period. As you can see, the Top 1 position (in theory the best place) causes significantly more bounces.

So if you don’t bid for that number one spot and end up in the middle you may just be happier with the results.

The opposite is true for very specific (and/or localized) keywords.

So to conclude this post:

• Bid high for specific keywords (but highly specific keywords are usually inexpensive).
• If you bid for broad keywords, bid average.

Of course, every statement has it’s exceptions: use your analytics tool to find out what suits you best.

I try to enforce Zend Framework for every new project started. If not in the requirements section of my quote, it is not that hard to convince a client of its advantages.

Tell a client how Zend Framework

• improves stability,
• lowers development time

and in particular

• makes them less dependent on you as other ZF developers can pick up projects you started a lot easier.

Now, please don’t start to think about job security. Just don’t.

But, Zend Framework has a fairly high PHP version requirement. Since version 1.7 Zend has quietly changed the requirements to PHP 5.2.4. In respect of a client’s (shared) hosting, this can be the most difficult part.
This was probably a logical thing to do since the requirements mentioned PHP 5.1.4 until ZF 1.6.2 and pre-5.2.4 versions miss some great features and contain nasty bugs (in reality some ZF components didn’t even run on PHP 5.1.4).

In Belgium however, it is difficult to find a hosting company that supports PHP 5.2.4.

Last month I developed an online bikini store for a design company based on Zend Framework and some jQuery widgets. It wasn’t only a fun subject – the site also performs very well. Both on organic search and on conversions.

One thing that I found to be a life saver: use caching for Zend_Currency.

$cache = Zend_Cache::factory('Output',
                             'File',
                             $configFrontend,
                             $configBackend);
Zend_Currency::setCache($cache);

Or another caching mechanism of course – this will visibly speed up page loading.
Edit: also do this for Zend_Translate but you could have thought of that yourself.

Besides that the finishing touch is a local touch: Clickini loves your country (if they are shipping to you that is). Thanks to my flexible hosting company (who installed Maxminds PHP GeoIP extension) & the world’s favorite icons, that was easy to accomplish.