For those familiar with our taste in films, you’ll understand why every new visual created at Jigowatt HQ will now be adorned with some new sample text.

Take a look at this http://www.deloreanipsum.com/ The Back To The Future Lorem Ipsum Generator is a jQuery plugin that generates sample text using the actual BTTF scripts. Genius.

Our friend Iain at http://www.polevaultweb.com/ – fellow WordPress disciple and also Jigoshop plugin author devised this gem, apparently when he fell off his toilet seat (BTTF in-joke).
Head Honchos at Jigowatt have now made standing on toilet seats part of their daily routine to see what occurs.

The post “If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.” appeared first on Jigowatt.

One of our most popular scripts on CodeCanyon, PHP Login & User Management has received quite a few substantial updates in it’s latest v3.0 release. As a result, the price has been increased from $15 to $25. The main new features are listed below.

Public profiles

This long promised feature has finally arrived. Guests or other members are now free to visit anyone’s profile through the profiles page.

Only the profile fields an admin has configured visible will show publicly for all users. Admins have full control on what to show and what to hide!

Sign up fields

Customize which fields are presented to the user on the registration page. You can either have a field be required or allow the user the option of filling it out.

Captcha

As an admin, you can decide whether you want to use PlayThru, reCAPTCHA, or neither.

Personally, I instantly fell in love with the PlayThru captcha system. With PlayThru, you can stop spam with fun! Have your user play a game instead of deciphering words.

Mass email

Now you can send an email to all users in a level, instantly!

Don’t worry, we don’t send an email for each user. We utilize PHP Mail’s multiple BCC header to send it all in one go! This saves overhead on your servers from potentially running the email function for each user you have.

Control registrations

You can now disable registrations completely through one checkbox. Optionally, you can also choose to receive email notifications each time a new user registers.

Check it out!

The full changelog can be viewed at the bottom of the item page.

SQL Spy & Documentation

Jeffrey Grey has written two wonderful articles relating to our script.

1. Browse through his documented functions and database structure for our script.
2. Or learn how to add an SQL Spy to our script by following his excellent tutorial!

The post PHP Login & User Management is now v3.0 ! appeared first on Jigowatt.

We’ve started holding a “Monthly Roundup” meeting which will provide an overview of the company’s finances, team additions, up-coming social events, and a chance for Jigowattians to voice their opinions and get involved with the running of the business.

I’ve personally never worked in a company that’s done this so openly before. It’s extremely refreshing.

Finances

Nobody likes talking money, well, unless you’re a banker, accountant or the tax man.

Businesses are usually no different.
Finances are usually a “closed door” kinda deal.

In large companies, this is necessary.
However, this isn’t the right atmosphere for a studio, or exciting startup. Everyone needs to be working towards one common goal… a profitable business!

After all, without profit, there are no jobs!

Opening this “closed door” is a refreshing way to blow the barrier between management and the team out of the water.
It shows appreciation and honesty towards employees, and makes them feel like they aren’t just a cog in someone else’s machine.

Knowing how the business is doing financially is a great way of motivating your staff.
They can see that their hard work is paying off, or in some new startups how much harder they might need to work.

Opening The Floor Up

This is a key opportunity for the entire team to offer up ideas on how to improve the business.

This can be anything from a new revenue stream, an internal process, a team building activity or even something as simple as asking for a BBQ when the weather gets nice.

This is a “no holds barred” time.
Nothing is criticised or put down.
The more ideas the better.

Often this process may be fruitless, but by not doing it, you’re closing your eyes on potentially ground breaking opportunities.

The Social Calendar

Giving your business a strong sense of “team” is essential for productivity.

I’ve worked in corporate environments, and the idea of “arse covering emails” and office politics send shivers down my spine. It’s just not good for team morale.

Productivity increases can be achieved with something as simple as a pizza lunch. It doesn’t have to be expensive!

However, if the cash is available, organising a karting event, or Go Ape is an ideal way of having a giggle and building your team’s morale.

By investing a small cost in your employees’ happiness business are directly transferring that cost into profitable business through increased productivity… everyone wins!

The Bottom Line

Make your business see through, and reap the benefits of a better team environment.

Happy, involved and enthusiastic workers are productive. Simple.

The post Jigowatt “gets naked” for Jigowattians appeared first on Jigowatt.

CodeKit has earned it’s place in our development toolkit throughout it’s numerous beta releases… and they were numerous!

If you’re not using it already, you’ll soon be wondering why.

CodeKit, if nothing else, will give you one simple thing… time.

We estimated that without CodeKit, we’d be spending around 1hr per week doing the following through various methods:

• Compiling LESS/SASS files
• Minifying JS files
• Compressing images
• Refreshing browser windows

CodeKit will do all of this for you in a simple, easy to use app.
Streamlined workflow? YESPLZ!

“Wow, you saved an hour” you say?

Consider the following:
Working Week: 7.5(hrs/day) * 5 (days) = 37.5hrs
CodeKit saves: 1hr * 47 (working weeks) = 47hrs

That’s right…
CodeKit has just given you an entire week of your life back (assuming you’re not watching cat videos at work) to do the things you love doing – building beautiful websites.

You may not spend your entire week coding, but you get the idea… it saves lot’s of “dead” time you normally spend doing tedious tasks over and over.

It’s only going to get better too!

Have a look at the site, and watch the videos, if this post hasn’t convinced you, then they will.

That’s why we use CodeKit, and why you should be too!

The post CodeKit has been released! appeared first on Jigowatt.

We’ve committed the basic business sin of not making time for updating our own sites and content.

Because of this, we’ve spent the last couple of weeks looking at our internal systems, taking stock of our own sites, and planning what we need to do going forward.

We don’t blog enough.
We should.
This will change.

We’re going to blog about what we do, and love… design, e-commerce, WordPress and our other websites.

We’re going to be dedicating time to writing brand spanking new content, finding inspiration, and sharing as much as possible with the wider communities around Magento, WordPress, print and web design.

One of our other commitments is to give our own sites a new lick of paint, and we will be sharing our progress on them as we go.

So keep your eyes peeled and we’ll look forward to seeing your response to it all.

The post Quick update appeared first on Jigowatt.

We’re always looking for new talent, so don’t let this put you off getting in touch with us.

Jigowatt invite you to join our team as a full-time Senior Magento developer. You need to share our passion for open source software, come prepared to share great ideas and live and breathe Magento.

Jigowatt is a small but rapidly growing company, based in Peterborough, England. We’re passionate about building award winning web sites, for the best clients whilst also embarking on our own projects which we build, develop and deploy in-house. It’s a pretty exciting place to work.

We’re always on the lookout for people who share our ethos with regards to standards compliant design, our strong awareness of UX and our love of open source applications such as WordPress and Magento.

Our team are keen to embrace and utilise the very latest web technologies and techniques in our projects. We push platforms and software to their limits resulting in a polished final product and a broader range of knowledge going forward. We encourage new ideas.

You’ll need a heap of skills and experience…

The post We’re Hiring – Senior Magento Developer appeared first on Jigowatt.

The move came after a busy and successful year for Jigowatt. In addition to an increased demand for our bespoke client services, including a number of Magento builds, we also launched our own WordPress eCommerce platform with Jigoshop. And as a result, the team has expanded with new designers and developers, a new marketing consultant, and a new project manager.

In addition to housing a larger team, our new location also has more space for meeting rooms, more parking and other resources, making it more pleasant for you to visit, as well as for us to work in. And as it is just a stone’s throw from our previous location, we’re still in a convenient location close to the A1(M).

The new Jigowatt office before we arrived

We now have space to work, areas for meetings and room to expand

We’re still making improvements, such as adding a place to relax between projects. And slowly we’re adding more of the Jigowatt creative flair to the decor, but if you want to come and see how the office looks now and whether we can add some flair to your website, come and see our new home for yourself – just please call or email to arrange a time!

The post A new home for Jigowatt appeared first on Jigowatt.

One of the biggest improvements to this script is a rewrite to completely eliminate all SQL being executed each time you reloaded a page. That makes for less strain on your servers, and therefore a faster, more reliable website for your users and customers.

In addition, we’ve added a My Account page where users can edit their password and personal information.

Plus, a highly requested feature was email activation upon signup. We’ve added this one as well ; new users now have to confirm their registration via email before they’re allowed to view any of your pages.

A few minor additions as well, such as auto-login on signup and admin panel added to navigation for Admins only.Various other fixes and additions are included, checkout the changelog at the bottom of our item details page for all the technical details!

PHP Event Calendar

No longer is out-dated jQuery plugins or core included with this script. The jQuery plugins bundled with the calendar have been updated to their bleeding-latest versions. The “No, back” button while creating and submitting an event is now fixed as well; it will save your details when you want to change your mind about the new event before submission. More fixes can be found in the changelog.

HTML5 AJAX Contact Form – v1.5

This script is now 100% completely valid HTML5 . We’ve also implemented the jQuery shake effect to be configurable. You can now turn it off or no (default is off) by following the instructions in the readme. Further technical changes can be found in the changelog.

AJAX Contact Form v1.3 + Extended v1.5

Both the AJAX Contact Form and AJAX Contact Form; Extended are now updated to follow xHTML 1.0 standards. You can check the validation for both the AJAX Content Form and AJAX Content Form; Extended.

PHP Simple Contact Form – v2.1

Removed all outdated code to make certain it will work on modern-day servers ! We’ve also added error-mail checking so you can test the form out and make sure it sends emails before rolling it to production.

AJAX Contact Forms (for WordPress)

The submit button will no longer stay disabled after hitting submit the first time and receiving a validation error. A simple javascript fix was all that was needed, and it will be available very shortly..

The post Updates for 7 Jigoshop PHP Scripts. appeared first on Jigowatt.

To do so head over to our plugin page on the WordPress plugin directory or simply search “Jigoshop WordPress eCommerce” from your own WordPress admin panel (Plugins > Add New).

The last two weeks have been spent strenuously testing Jigoshop with our pool of private beta testers and we’re happy to report that all small bugs have been fixed and there were no major issues. Of course, we fully expect further bugs to surface with a wider audience using Jigoshop, and this is the main reason that this release is still a beta.

Hopefully the plugin will mature rapidly and we’ll be able to push out our first stable release very soon.

Coming soon…

Along with fixing bugs we’ve been working hard on the design / build of the brand new jigoshop.com web site. Once ready (hopefully very soon), it will become the official home of Jigoshop with it’s own dedicated development blog.

There will also be a community forum for support of the free version and a couple of premium upgrades for existing users. Jigoshop Premium and support packages will follow closely behind.

The real work begins now

Jigoshop has been a gargantuan undertaking and we’re very happy with the product we’ve built. But this is only the beginning. From today forwards we’re beginning development of even more advanced features, extra payment gateways and bespoke themes, further adding value and building the brand.

We will also be offering dedicated support very soon via which we hope to interact with the community and road map additional features to the plugin based on our users feedback.

Exciting times ahead!

The post Jigoshop is here! appeared first on Jigowatt.

That’s right, Magento have heard the community and made the announcement of rewriting Magento 2 for the upcoming 2012 release. We can only speculate and anticipate as there’s still a good 18 months left of their deadline, but nonetheless codename M2 is certainly a hot topic in the development community. Exciting stuff!

With a timetable of production release by mid to end of 2012, Magento 2 development is underway.

Here’s a chance to discuss and share your thoughts below while highlighting a few dev features we’d like to see considered in the ‘ground up’ architecture of Magento 2, that we think would sharpen the already most sophisticated, feature rich e-commerce platform available today.

For those lucky enough to go along, Day 2 of the upcoming Magento Developers Ibiza conference is the place to be to get an early heads up of the official feature list from the architect himself, Dmitriy Soroka (Magento Inc.).

Magento Developers Paradise is the only place where you can get a sneak preview of improvements and goals we have set for M2 from the lead architect himself!

Our Magento 2 Features Wishlist

• Updates – A developers dream, a piece of software you can update without fear of spontaneous combustion. WordPress have managed it, hopefully the new Magneto 2 Connect Manager which some caught a glimpse of in the 1.5-RC2 release will greatly improve the procedure of both minor and updates to the core-platform.
• jQuery – A long requested change which will make it’s way to Magento eventually, Magento 2 is the best chance they’ll get to oust Prototype in favor of the jQuery library.
• HTML 5 – It’s taken the web by storm, hell, even Microsoft have tried to use it in IE9, would be great to see Magento use the new HTML 5 markup properly and consistently.
• Caching / Optimisation – Will we see a leaner Magento, or further improved caching, perhaps pinched from the sought-after Enterprise Edition?
• Javascript Dependency – In a perfect world, we’d all use the same ‘up to date’ browser with Cookies and Javascript enabled, but we don’t, and we can’t forget about those who still use legacy or just plain depreciated browsers, I won’t mention IE6, but we don’t think it would hurt to remove Javascript dependency for the fundamental e-commerce functions, Add to Cart and Checkout in particular.

In all the excitement we might have missed something off our features shortlist, leave us a comment with your Magento 2 requests and suggestions.

The post Magento 2 – A Developers Paradise, or Nightmare? appeared first on Jigowatt.