AgoraCart & E-commerce News, Updates, and More

(One of the most inspiring clips on what our country and it's citizens can and should be - Ronald Reagan)

Plato once said: "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men". I now realize this to be true. I've spent most of my life thus far ignoring political issues and rolling my eyes at the claims of politicians. I joined the Republican Party initially to anger my family and grandmother, as they were strong and dedicated Democrats. Yet I was excited to vote. I felt all grow'd up casting my vote the first time. As time passed, I would vote for a candidate I thought was most enlightened. Most of the time it was a Republican. When I didn't know the issues or candidates, I voted for some third party wannabee.

2008 is yet another election year where opponents from various political parties square off on various issues and what they believe is the best solution or path to improve the great country known as the United States of America. For most Americans, politics holds very little importance in their lives. They go about life excited for the next winner of Dancing with the Stars, or some other mindless alleged reality show, engaging in a never ending consumption of mindless entertainment that holds no real worth a week later. Others are so involved in taking care of their families and living paycheck to paycheck that to take their nose from the grindstone could be catastrophic. So, for most Americans, who can be bothered with politics when life is in the way and the government seems to grow bigger and bigger with no interest in listening to it's citizens? Well, now I can be bothered, and I am.

The last 2 years or so, I have awakened to the need to be involved in the political process. I have awakened to find the ideals I was taught in my youth, constitutional values, have been trampled upon, sometimes before I was of legal age. The Democrat Party of my parents and grandparents and beyond has been hijacked by fabian socialists cloaking themselves as "saviors" of the poor and creating victims of anyone they can spin it upon. If you aspire to be wealthy, they wish to redistribute the success of those that can manage money to those that cannot, including to the federal guberment. The Republicans spend and bend. They waiver in the wind instead of standing strong on the values that founded this country and that have proven true over time. America is in jeopardy of becoming tribal in nature as each party becomes more and more partisan and in one case more socialistic by forcing compassion upon the masses. Being awakened recently gives the one advantage of seeing the distraction techniques of the press and politicians, mostly the democrats in my not so humble opinion. You know the trick, where they say look at this (a meaningless sock puppet) and then with their other hand they are reaching around your back and robbing you of your wallet. Then you have the media, brand names we all grew up with and thought we could trust, covering up and pretending to be objective. In some cases they seem so convincing, yet when you dig into the facts they omit and backgrounds of those involved, you find stuff that makes Hollywood spy conspiracy plots look like childs play. The issues with the politicians and the media are so deep and disconcerting that you could write volumes on the connections to corruption, journalistic and political malpractice, and their greed for power and wealth.

Lately I've been noticing movement in the idea that all the problems will dissappear if we abandon capitalism, if we allow the government to decide how to help the poor and needy, if we allow the government to determine how patriotic we are by taxing us and businesses (large and small), and how just handing out money will satisfy us to the point we are blind to their mistakes and ambitions to usurp power from the people. But this is the key that people do not seem to remember, The power belongs to the people and not to the government. As President Reagan said: "If no one among is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else". So when you hear soundbites and various political pundits on TV that are pretending to be experts that know what's best for you or make you feel guilty or frustrated for feeling otherwise, that perpetuate the myth that government knows best or props up someone that believes in more government as the default winner, such as Barack "Hot Air Balloon Ride" Obama, you need to remember what our founding fathers said and warned against in the case of the government gaining too much power. You need to learn what other great US Presidents have said and done in the past in regards to protecing us, we the people, from growing government and over taxation in the guise of helping the less fortunate. Government's job is to provide protection of the opportunities, not equalize opportunities to bless one group of people and to punish another. It's job is to ensure personal responsibility and the opportunity to pursue happiness, not guarantee it through forced compassion or via the spreading of wealth.

Socialist and Marxist ideals that many high ranking democrats embrace and implement have failed time and time again. So those that embrace it must be aware of this fact and therefore must be desiring the destruction of the United States as we know it. If not, then they are emotionally invested and no longer practice common sense and are not fit to lead the rest of us.

Now, before I finish, I'm not happy with Republicans either. If I could find a party that truly embraces the constitution, our founding values, personal responsibility, limited government, helping the poor by encouraging compassion from it's citizens instead of mismanaged guberment programs, protecting the environment without buying into whimsical data like that of man-made global climate change or forcing everything to be studied and litigated to death, as well as embracing religious freedom - not freedom from it; then I would join that party. But for now the choices are where we have are: socialists, renamed as progressives as if their idears are new and unheard of, posing as democrats. Then we have goof balls with holes in their wallets pretending to be conservatives. Then a bunch of so called independent parties that have nothing of substance to offer but wastes of time when looking at their platforms/candidates - think Green party and the gal they nominated as their candidate for President ... she slapped an officer for inconveniencing her as she went through security screening at a congressional building ... now that really instills confidence.

So when you go to the polls this year, think deep down in your heart and reflect upon what you know about history, and then think about which candidate will embrace the values our country was founded upon, even at a local level. Then ask yourself: Which one promises to do the hard things that need to be done? Which one is less likely to be buying off your vote with free stuff we all pay for anyways? Which one sounds like they will cost less to us as taxpayers? Which one will allow you to be free and make your own decisions with your money and not meddle in your private affairs? I know who I am voting for, after 2 years of research and study, even if I do not like all my choices. But I refuse to let my country become a socialist country and I will fight the rest of my days to keep this it free for us all, as best I can, and no matter how small I can assist in such an endevour. So, on a personal level, I ask you to please support those that believe in smaller government and those that will "fight" for you and what is truly important.

We do not need nor should we desire the guberment and our representatives to tell us otherwise nor to ignore us. Change is good, but only if we know what that change is and that it is soundly rooted in principles that are proven to work for us, not against us.

Remember this, Compassion can be exercised individually, but freedom can be taken from us collectively.

Budget Lighting Inc recently sponsored, with a financial contribution to the AgoraCart project, the development of a new add-on module for the AgoraCart ecommerce shopping cart system. The new module, suggested selling, will allow a store owner to suggest other items to a store visitor that compliment or are similar to the items being viewed.

Features of the new module include: ability to specify the use of an image in the suggestion either from a list of installed images or manually typing in the image location; use of a product identifier by category of products, an individual product ID, or a unique keyword used within any product range; selection of product page layouts form installed list, and a simple code snippet (agorascript - which is perl in html pages) inserted into the layout(s) of choice in order to display the suggestions.

All functions come from a single file, uploaded from AgoraCart's revolutionary update/upgrade modules manager, that performs all the complete install and directory setups dynamically while saving the initial suggested selling manager settings.

The new module will be available shortly to Booster Pack members / supporters.

Howdy,

Cpanel has enhanced the interface that installs and manages initial installations AgoraCart from within the Cpanel environment.

If you have access to the latest and greatest versions of cpanel via your hosting account, you will find the ability to upgrade your store as Cpanel updates their core files, the ability to move or copy your store to another directory (duplication and moving with the click of a link), and a cleaner interface.

All in all, it's very nice and adds more functionality in managing your initial AgoraCart based store installations.

Mister Ed

After a year of discussion and study, and in anticipation of the AgoraCart version 5.0.0 release, the manuals and documentation for AgoraCart, a ecommerce shopping solution, has been moved to a wiki format at AgoraCart.com . The new wiki format will allow users of AgoraCart to contribute to and improve, in meaningful ways, the much needed documentation.

Powered by MediaWiki, the existing manual pages and guides were converted to wiki format earlier this month. The new wiki format will allow users of AgoraCart to contribute to and improve, in meaningful ways, the much needed documentation for the Open Source software project.

The new location of the manual and guides is located at:
http://www.agoracart.com/agorawiki/

Experienced users of AgoraCart are encouraged to contribute to the manuals and/or make a request to become a moderator of the documentation to maintain it's integrity. Editors are standing by, so all skill levels of the written word are welcome if any person wanting to contribute needs assistance.

In the end, the new documentation format will be a giant step forward in making AgoraCart easier to use for those that are newer to online marketing.

A client of mine from the midwest sent this funny pic to ME in an Easter message. I just had to share it...