Marco Steinhäuser

The 2012 season for OXID developer meet-ups started in Hamburg on January 13. Sigmar Kress from Rhinos Media organized the location and we set up a page on OXIDforge for gathering information about participants and ideas for talks.

Although we announced the event relatively late, more than twenty people came to the meet-up. I was glad to see partners and shop owners sending their developers and project leaders to the event.

As previously announced, Joscha started talking about his TOXID project and how it can be used to integrate Typo3 content with OXID eShop (and vice-versa). We also discussed integration with other content management systems like WordPress and Joomla using TOXID. If you’ve been using TOXID for this purpose, please feel free to share your insights, or write a tutorial about it, on OXIDforge.

Later in the evening, I spent some time talking about OXID’s development plans for 2012, including OXID eShop 4.6.0 beta, and we had an interesting and spirited discussion about this.

Another big topic also came up: the idea of developing another admin panel with the community, which was first born at the OXID Unconference in May 2011. Now, in Hamburg, almost everybody who was interested in this venture was in attendance, and so we agreed on a kick-off meeting and coding event between March 9-10. If you are interested in supporting this project and have some spare capacity, please contact me.

The bottom line: we held a very successful and informative developer meet-up again. If you would like to see a similar meet-up in your location, please talk to me about the date first. The rest is pretty simple: just reserve a table for enough people and help to spread the word.

A few days ago, I was attracted by a billboard advertisment at a tram station near my home. The poster is apparently part of a mobile marketing campaign by Christ Jewelers (German), one of the leading jewellery and watchmaker chains with stores in all of Germany’s big cities. Taking a closer look at the poster I found a QR code on it without any description and, as a curious person, I checked it out.

QR codes are a fantastic instrument in mobile product marketing… when they’re used wisely. What I found here, is a good example of an ill-conceived mobile campaign and a squandering of marketing euros.

First, you’ll be led to this URI: http://qr.christ.de/link/80ef6382f46050a15734b17f943cf4d. The trailing code eventually analyses which poster you have scanned… fair enough. After that, on your mobile device, you’ll be redirected to a landing page: http://landingpages-christ.de/jette_pure_passion/. This redirection didn’t work on a regular browser on my PC, it seems it’s only intended for mobile marketing

Although I doubt that landing pages, from an SEO point of view, are still of real value, this particular landing page is even less useful than others, because it doesn’t provide any meta or text information for search engines except of the URI. As a result, you won’t find it in any top-level position in a search engine even if you search for “jette pure passion”.

A boring embedded movie awaits you here, showing pieces of jewellery lying and hanging in a wood. The background music fits any 1970s film, and the movie itself cannot be skipped.

After a long wait (over 1:40 on 3G maximum speed – and remember, you are still at the tram station or in the tram already), you are allowed to enter Christ’s online store via the button “ZUM ONLINE SHOP” (even the font doesn’t fit well here and the letters are consequently cut off). Going further, you will realize that the storefront is not optimized for mobile devices. You will see the same user interface that you would access with your regular PC browser at http://www.christ.de… although with your mobile device, you sadly cannot even navigate through the flyout categories.

To be honest, I cannot even imagine how this epic marketing failure could have happened to a big player like Christ with an ocean of employees (of which at least some must be using mobile devices) and a large marketing budget. Christ should be able to afford a professional mobile marketing campaign without any of the problems I described above.

What do you think? Why do you think this mobile marketing campaign could have ended up so miserably? I’m interested in your opinion, so write in and let me know!

I am back at my desk and looking back on a very successful week, full of memorable impressions.

As you may know, OXID has branch offices in Halle, Saale in Germany and Kaunas in Lithuania while our HQ is based in Freiburg, Breisgau (Germany). Last week, all the teams came together when the Kaunas and Halle staff came to Freiburg for an entire week. Can you imagine how great it feels to come face to face with the men and women that you have been working with remotely for some time? Awesome…

… and outstandingly productive as well!

Most of the time together was spent on meetings that we’ve been looking forward for a while. For example, we did a review of the next-to-last sprint before the release of OXID eShop 4.6.0 beta. The core developers introduced the implementation of the new features, their default appearance in the store front and their operation from the admin panel. The guys from support, sales and marketing took part to understand the new features.

We also defined new and improved information flows: what information is needed from the development team and how does it get to the marketing, sales, support, community communication and documentation teams. We also discussed about the theory of the scrum development method and how we can use it (more about this soon on our official blog). Additionally, the developers took part in a workshop with Kore Nordmann from Qafoo and discussed rough plans for OXID eShop 5.0.

Lots of work…so at the end, we thought we deserved a Christmas party! On Friday, we took a walk through the night with torches in our hands to St. Ottilien, had a perfect dinner there (the meat and the seafood were overwhelming, no vegetables were needed) and continued our party until late in the night.

The climax of the party was definitely the game played by four of our Lithuanian mates: they auctioned their hair off, hilarious! But instead of going completely bald, some hair was left to display the letters O – X – I – D on their heads. That’s what I call “commitment”. I just hope those guys got back home without being killed by their wives

The only thing left to say: It was good to see all you guys personally. Thanks for the very funny and very productive week in Freiburg!

In the recent months, I attended all of the main trade fairs of the e-commerce industry in Germany and France:

• dmexco (Digital Marketing Exposition & Conference) in Cologne
• Salon E-Commerce in Paris
• MOW (Mail Order World) in Wiesbaden

I joined the OXID eSales crew at our booths and I would like to share my very personal take aways of the events with you.

Don’t just ask me what the software can do for you – also ask what you can do for the software

A main part of my job as the Community Guide at OXID eSales is to help spreading the word about OXID eShop and to ultimately help grow the open-source community. Thus, I am very happy to talk to booth visitors and agencies interested in our product range and the community. In particular, I enjoyed a lot of very interesting conversations to folks who knew what open source software is about; people who came up with really good ideas, being excited about new challenges to enhance OXID eShop and committed to sharing some very interesting extensions.

Yet, there have been visitors at the booth who made me feel cheap because they were just interested in free as in free beer. I could smell their greed and selfishness. In such cases, I will kindly ask you to download, install and check for yourself. Also, I will not walk you through all the implemented features and I will not help you find modules available for no or very low cost.

If you want e-commerce software at no cost and don’t want to get involved in an open-source community at all, that’s perfectly legit, but don’t waste my time. If, on the other hand, you ask questions on our forums, I and other community members would be happy to help, because the answer to your question will help others.

To make a long story short: Free riders are welcome as long as they don’t waste the time of those in our community who want to build something together.

There are many ways how to contribute: Your translation to another language is as welcome as bug reports, module and core contributions. Even with the purchase of a commercial license you foster the development of our open-source edition.

What does open source development mean for a product also sold under a commercial license?

At the booths, I often got asked about how the OXID eShop open-source community influences development of the Professional and Enterprise Edition.

The short answer is: The community would kick our ass if we developed and communicated badly – and it did so in the past.

By going open source in 2008, we deliberately self-imposed community pressure upon OXID eSales. Since then, the community influences our product development.

For example: Instead of hiding security issues, we are forced to fix those issues in a short time, in fact until another developer will come up with the problem. On the communications side, we inform solution partners and support contract owners beforehand by distributing a private security bulletin to them, given that they still need some time to implement the fix we provide, before we make the bulletin publicly available.

Dear potential partners, get to grips with your channel concept

I have also been approached by potential partner companies at the three events. Most of them would like to join for just one reason: to have us forward leads to them. Of course, this is totally fine from a business perspective and OXID eSales is happy to negotiate such agreements. Yet, such a one-sided approach neglects the benefits of the open-source community for our partners.

So, at the booths, I always advised potential partners to consider how they can tap into the OXID eShop community or related open-source communities to promote their products or services. For example, the payment providers we partner with have developed interfaces or modules for connecting OXID eShop with their infrastructure. That way, they provide something useful to the OXID eShop or related communities and get word-of-mouth marketing going.

Sometimes, it is necessary to install a new version of OXID eShop quickly. Downloading it from the official download page, extracting the archive and uploading it again to your hosting provider can be a time-consuming and error-prone process due to CRC errors.

If you have SSH access to your server terminal or if you work on a local Linux machine or VM-ware appliance, there is a much smoother way to get the job done in seconds.

1. Go to http://svn.oxid-esales.com/tags/ and find the most recent release from the list. In my example, I will use OXID eShop version 4.5.2.

2. Open a terminal on your Linux machine, switch to your Apache document root and type

~$ svn export http://svn.oxid-esales.com/tags/CE-4.5.2-38481/eshop/

Using export instead of update ensures that you don’t have the .svn control files littering your installation.

Of course, an svn client has to be installed for this to work. If you don’t already have one, you can install it with apt-get install subversion on Debian-based systems. Also, check the rights you have to your Apache document root. For example, on Ubuntu, you might have to use sudo before the previous command for it to work correctly.

3. Create a new MySQL database by typing

~$ mysql -u[username] -p[password]

mysql> create database oxid_452;

Fire up your browser and go through the rest of the installation according to this manual.

There are many different aspects to consider when distributing a newsletter to clients of your online store: categorization, definition, content, legal conditions and technical facts. In this post, I’ll concentrate only on the technical aspects.

Newsletters are emails containing information or promotions that you, as a shop owner, wish to send to your registered customers. In some countries, the newsletter recipient has to explicitly agree to receive such information through a checkbox or the so-called “double opt-in” method.

Email Format: HTML or Text
As you may know from your email client, you can choose whether (newsletter) emails should be sent in HTML or in plain text format. Usually, you will use HTML to mark up your text content as bold, italic or underlined, to use tables or to display images. This is not possible in plain text emails at all and it also depends on whether the recipient’s email client is configured to receive text or HTML emails. Thus, the MIME format was created, which sends along both text and HTML formats in the same message. Plain text will be displayed for recipients who only allow text emails, and HTML will be displayed for everybody else.

Transmission Agent: SMTP or Sendmail
Sendmail is a standard email transfer agent (client) for Unix-based systems that can be triggered by other clients on the same system to send email messages. You can install it on any arbitrary Linux machine of your choice and send messages from this server. However, it’s important to note that these days, all messages sent via this method will typically end up in the Spam folder of your recipient’s email client or may not even be forwarded by the server in between.

SMTP as a server protocol, is supposed to be a more secure solution. In most cases, the SMTP server accepts email forwarding requests coming only from localhost (the server where your online shop is hosted). Using an SMTP server on another system is nearly impossible as this SMTP could be misused as an email relay.

Filter Lists: Don’t Think Only Black and White
To avoid email spam, many different mechanisms have been developed during the last few years. One of them is the black-, white- or grey-listing method. A blacklisted server or IP range on the recipient’s machine, for example, is barred from delivering emails to the recipient at all. In the past, providers for black, white and grey lists developed and these lists are used by regular ISPs and hosting service providers.

If the server of your hosting provider has been blacklisted, you can assume that none of your emails will reach their intended recipients. Most professional email marketing providers by the way, have contracts with these list providers to ensure they are whitelisted and can transmit large amounts of email .

Grey lists cover everything in between. If you are not on a blacklist or on a whitelist, a filter on the recipient’s Website will put your email into a queue and check for other spam indicators (like content). If this queue gets too many requests at a certain time, your email might take a few hours or even days to be passed through to the recipient.

Email Transmission Tools
Newsletter emails, even to a large number of recipients, can be send via various email client applications and servers. You have wide choice depending on your given circumstances in respect of the above technical facts. Let me introduce you to some of the options.

Standalone Client Programs
It is possible to send multiple-recipient emails via an email client like Mozilla Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook. For data privacy, you must ensure that none of your clients can see other email addresses in the message: add yourself to the TO field while putting a list of your newsletter subscribers in the BCC field. Avoid using CC (from my own experience ).

As far as I know, an Exchange server will accept 200 recipients with one dispatch. Also, under this method, it is not possible to enrich the content of your email with dynamically generated data.  For example, it won’t be possible to inform your clients about cross-selling products on the basis of their previous purchases.

Integrated Shopping Cart Solutions
This is differently handled in shopping cart solutions, as they usually provide the ability to send email newsletters to opted-in customers and also to enter product data with the newsletter. Using this option, you can define personalized content using the order history of each costumer. For example (independent of any legal requirement), you could ask Mrs. Meyers for a review of the suit case “Canoono I Pak Classic” she bought on August 16th 2011, promising to raffle off a voucher of 100 EUR for the most inventive review. It’s great technology, but you must be careful that you don’t end up on a blacklist somewhere…

The OXID eShop newsletter feature can help a little bit here as it sends out newsletters in batches (number adjustable from the admin panel).  But at the end of the day, every newsletter transmission could be misunderstood by your hosting service provider, by list providers as well as by the recipient’s servers. In short, if you have too many recipients with too much similar content, it is time to begin thinking about using a professional, whitelisted email marketing provider.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you the “magic number” of newsletters that will work properly from your shop server as I think it depends on your hosting provider, your monthly newsletter frequency and the number of newsletter recipients.

Open Source Scripts
There are a number of  scripts (some open source) that can apply to the same needs. However, they too will break down when faced with black- and grey- lists.

Summary

As your customers grow in number, you certainly will have to think about a professional (white listed) solution for your newsletter emails. This solution should ideally provide an interface to your shopping cart to compute the opted-in addressees as well as product items and order details. There are already a number of solutions available but there should definitely be more… right?

Please write to the email marketing provider of your choice and ask if they provide an interface to OXID eShop. Also, please feel free to contact me personally – I would be happy to support you from this end with contacting the channel marketeers of those services.

Due to my last post, you might have noticed that I was on holiday and didn’t check my email and neglected my telephone during this time. Furthermore, I didn’t configure an automatic email reply given that I am subscribed to various mailing lists that might have been playing ping-pong with my automated answers Now I’m back and thanks everybody for your patience!

Today, I’d like to head back to one of the most visited posts of this blog, “Should HLkomm Be Sold by Leipzig Council?”. Surprisingly, an Indian friend of mine, Vikram Vaswani, requested me to write a follow-up as he apparently found the original blog post interesting and even provoking.

So, here’s the update:

On June 20th, there was a deadline for application to buy into 49% of HLkomm. Besides other companies, not known by name, some of my former co-workers (managers I reckon) made an offer as well. Cool, isn’t it?
Read the story in German: LVZ Artikel Mitarbeiter bieten für HL komm_2011-06-21

Although I am a bit disappointed that the rest of the HLkomm staff hasn’t been asked for participating in the bid and haven’t been involved in the plans, I guess the reasons for this bid have to been seen in a political manner: those guys are allowed to have a deeper look into the selling processes as they usually would have been allowed. Smart, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, Leipzig’s municipal has not been dormant: Apparently, they want to get rid of the formerly established homes for handicapped people. This seems to happen without any press release nor any other official note. I just got this information unofficially from one of my best mates who worked for them and was threatened to be fired soon.

I’ll keep you informed.

Yeehaa! It’s summertime!

Just in case you miss me in the OXID forums and other virtual places: I’ll be on holiday from July 11th until the end of the month, back to business then.

I will not read my e-mails, I will not be available via mobile phone and I will have no Internet connection for three long weeks.

Cheerio!

As earlier announced in my blog post on oxid-esales.com, Friday, March 11th, was our first local developer meet-up in Leipzig, Germany.

I personally was really surprised to see 16 people attending, including developers from our partners D³ Data Development (Thalheim, Saxony), GN2 netwerk (Coburg, Bavaria), marmalade.de (Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt), dotSource GmbH (Jena, Thuringia) and Ontraq Europe (Augsburg, Bavaria). Dirk Senebald (Gera, Thuringia), Gregor Berg (Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia) and Alexander Thomas (Berlin) also took part, together with my personal friends and (former) co-workers Mathias Fiedler (Leipzig/Berlin) and Erik Kort.

Christian Zacharias explains

Joscha Krug proudly shows off his OXID Commons shirt

These guys found something really interesting

Our host, Hannes from Geyserhaus, worked really professionally to ensure that everything was set up for us. The projector and the screen were already installed, together with the tables and power cords. Fortunately, there was no Internet connection; this allowed us all to concentrate on  Christan Zacharias‘ talk about the OXID eShop framework, the OXID eFire platform, how to write extensions, and news for developers in OXID eShop 4.5.0.

The entire talk took about six hours including interposed questions, laid-back discussions and straight comments to OXID’s (Erik’s and mine) point of view. We also had an interesting four-person discussion about the pros and cons of Open Source Software. Through the process, I picked up at least 25 points to be “injected” into OXID’s product management cycle. Thanks for all the comments, mates!

At the end of the day, I think the aims of a meeting like this – namely, getting to know the faces behind forum or mailing list posts, learning about the experiences of others and bringing coders together for collaboration chances – were absolutely fulfilled, and that it was an enjoyable and learning experience for all.

I’m curious now about upcoming meetings in other cities like Berlin, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Munich (in progress), Cologne and Frankfurt. Are any of you keen to take over the organization of such meetings? Drop me a line or post a comment if so!

Some of you might know that, before I came to OXID, I used to work as a Network Operator at the Network Management Center (NMC) of HL komm. HL komm is a local ISP/network carrier that is mostly active in the areas of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, Germany.

Although I personally don’t like their marketing strategy very much (Knut, where did the “Globish” = English HL komm website which we were talking about go?), I still feel bound to say a few words about my ex-employer after seeing the current discussions in the (local) press and municipal authorities. You see, once again, HL komm is on the sale block.

What is HL komm?

HL komm, founded in 1997, was spun out from Leipzig municipal public services, merged three years later with 3H (Halle) and TelSA (Naumburg), and then opened operations in Halle, Chemnitz and Dresden in 2005/2006. Today, they employ more than 100 people and own a network of 1.800 kilometers of optical glass fiber cable. Approximately 30 other carriers and backbone providers use HL komm’s so called “last mile”. Also, they serve a number of global players as well as SME clients in the region.

It is worth noting at this point that employees at HL komm are not working for the city council. They are paid and treated just like in a free enterprise company.

The biggest challenge I see in HL komm’s business development of the last few years is the “fiber-to-the-home” project. HL komm is mounting optical fiber to certain houses and homes to connect even private users to the IP broadband via Citylan. This is good for Leipzig, also known as the “Media City“.

To complete the picture, here is an image video (German) made by the HL komm guys:

Now for the news: HL komm is about to be sold by the Leipzig city council.

Why would they do this?

Rationale for selling HL komm

Let’s look at the numbers. The yearly turnover of HL komm today is about 40 million EUR, the profit comes to 4-6 million. In the past ten years, HL komm supported the City of Leipzig with 36 million EUR. Leipzig city council undoubtedly thinks that a highly profitable enterprise like HL komm could be sold quickly to any investor for a certain amount of money. There are already some interested parties like Versatel, enviaM and the German Telekom. All of them are internally called “grasshoppers”.

What is the likely result of such a sale? At the end of the day, HL komm might be restructured entirely. The present office could become a pure sales office, engineers  could be forced to go to another city and the NMC could simply be replaced by a call center. A lot of jobs could be lost.

Another perspective

Of course, the technology, the entire equipment and the business idea could be taken over by somebody else. But wait, isn’t a city council responsible for the entire infrastructure of a city? In addition to building streets, disposing of waste and looking after the public toilets, doesn’t it also need to provide high-quality Internet access? After all, this is a critical element of the infrastructure of a city that wants to see itself as a media-city in 2011.

Looking only at the figures, Leipzig should instead think about selling the zoo, or maybe the conservatory.

What do you think? Should HL komm be sold?