Out of the many shopping website scripts available (Magento, Shopify, osCommerce to name just a few), OpenCart is my favourite from both the admin side and customer point of view.

I thought I’d share 10 modern, professional looking OpenCart themes with you.

Responsive

Responsive, built on the Skeleton Framework, is the first ever responsive theme for OpenCart 1.5. This unique theme allows visitors to shop your store tailored to the screen size they are viewing it on.

Responsive is not just another mobile theme, as the visitors resizes the browser the content dynamically moves for the best display experience.

Live Preview

Simple

• Everything is setup from the admin.
• All pages have been styled.
• Minimal use of images for easy customization.
• Couple of extra features. See demo for more information.
• 2 Layered PNG file for the homepage and product page.
• Well Documented. Theme installation is easy.

Live Preview

Shoppica

Shoppica is a stylish premium OpenCart theme. The clean and modern design allows you to use the theme for every kind of online shop. In combination with the powerful option to change all the element’s color, Shoppica theme give you the possibility to make a unique e-commerce website that stands out of the crowd!

Live Preview

Spicylicious

Spicylicious is a very advanced OpenCart theme suitable for various kind or e-commerce web sites coming with totally reworked layout and huge amount of JS visual effects.

The theme is not only visually appealing, but also built with the modern e-commerce tendencies and best SEO practices in mind.

Whether you’re looking for a new skin for your existing OpenCart based store or a template to modify for your client, Spicylicious is the right choice.

Live Preview

Gecco Shop

Universal design – perfect for shops with luxury goods

Display any image, texture as headers’ background – CHECK SCREENSHOTS TO SEE OTHER BACKGROUNDS

Sell digital goods

Animated jQuery caption over the thumbnails

Cool animated preloader for product images

Live Preview

Basico

Basico Premium OpenCart Theme is a stylish premium OpenCart theme ideal for your online web store. Basico theme give you the possibility to make a unique e-commerce website (In combination with the powerful option to change all text color and background image).

Live Preview

Teez

Teez is a simple and easy to use OpenCart theme for a T-shirt or Apparel store.

Live Preview

Sellegance

Sellegance is a responsive, elegant and easy to install OpenCart theme.

With its clean design and lots of features, you will have a very profitable online shop in no time.

It’s perfect for any kind of web shop. Its superb UI delivers the ultimate experience for end users. It has been built with mobile users in mind. So it looks great on desktops, tablets and mobiles.

Live Preview

Uni-Store

Uni-Store is a advanced theme for OpenCart 1.5.1. With the gradients, unlimited colors and GoogleWebFonts you can create your dream shop in few minutes.

In addition, we have created for you 6 basic color version that you can further edit.

Live Preview

Vanity Shop

Are you looking for little more creative, universal OpenCart theme? If yes then Vanity Shop theme will be perfect choice for you.

My partner actually uses this theme for her jewellery shop which can be found here: gothicjewellerybox.com – this is a fully working shop so feel free to browse and see how it works in the real world.

If you have any suggestions of other great themes such as the above or use any of the themes on your OpenCart shop, leave a comment so I can check them out.

A short promo video for my photography website, eVophoto . It’ll possibly be used as a background video. I’m unsure at the moment because it’d need a bit of tweaking.

Music courtesy of Tony Longworth http://tonylongworth.com
Photography and video ©2012 Luke Addison & eVophoto

As a footnote; videos can always be produced for clients at an extra cost after an event.
Get in touch for more details.

I’ve just been browsing Themeforest.net as I sometimes do and came across a really awesome designer called Mike McAlister.

His WordPress themes are so clean, elegant, modern and functional that I just had to share some of them with the readers of my blog.

I hope you appreciate the designs as much as I do.  I’m seriously considering using one of his themes on one of my websites in the very near future.

Enjoy!

Rewrite

• Super Clean, Responsive Design
• Fully Scalable Galleries
• Swipe Support on Galleries
• Fully Scalable Embedded Video
• Twitter and Flickr Widgets
• Drop Down Menu (on all sizes)
• Custom Archive Page
• Theme Options
• Beautiful Typography
• Shortcode Manager
• Custom Styles
• Social Media Icons
• Contact Form

Live Preview

Deploy

• All-In-One Page
• Super Clean Design
• 3 Custom Backgrounds (Dark, Light, and Wood)
• MailChimp Integration
• Countdown Clock
• Twitter Implementation
• Blog/Comment Functionality
• Menu Management
• Theme Options
• Post Scrolling Navigations
• Twitter, Facebook and Google+ Share Buttons
• Social Media Icons (Twitter, Dribbble, RSS , Vimeo, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, LinkedIn)
• Contact Form

Live Preview

DocPress

• Minimal Design, Powerful Functionality
• Four Portfolio Templates
• Custom Templates for Homepage, Portfolio and Blog
• Logo and Color Scheme Options
• Layout and Style Shortcodes
• WP 3 .0 Menus
• Auto-Sized Featured Images
• Contact Form
• Installation Videos

Live Preview

PrePress

• Minimal Contemporary Design
• WP3 Drop Down Menu
• Unique Homepage Slider
• Layout and Style Shortcodes
• Twitter Widgets
• Unique Blog Design
• 6 Color Schemes (Green, Red, Orange, Blue, Gray, Purple)
• Theme Options Panel
• Contact 7 Support
• Well Documented + Screencasts

Live Preview

If you have any other suggestions of great themes like these, please feel free to comment and share below.

Also, if you use any of these themes; I’d love to take a look at your websites.

WordPress skins are something I do, but there are occasions when; I either don’t have the time or just don’t have the skills to create the WordPress theme I really want.

I spent many hours searching for the perfect theme for my photography portfolio website.  Below were the best I could find on the web.

I thought I’d kindly create a blog post so you don’t need to go to all the trouble of searching!

Simpolio – Fullscreen Portfolio & Blog WP Theme

Live Preview

JR Photography WordPress Theme

Live Preview

Panorama Fullscreen Photography WordPress Theme

Live Preview

Adventure – A Unique Photography WordPress Theme

Live Preview

Mattis Photography WordPress Theme

Live Preview

Studio8 – A Creative Minimalist WordPress Theme

Live Preview

DynamiX – Premium WordPress Theme

Live Preview

PhotoPurePress – WordPress for Photographers

Live Preview

Core Minimalist Photography Portfolio

Live Preview

ANAN – For Photography Creative Portfolio

Live Preview

If you have any other suggestions of great themes like these, please feel free to comment below.

Also, if you use any of these themes, I’d love to take a look at your website and photography.

Here’s my site: evophoto.co.uk

ACTA is one more offensive against the sharing of culture on the Internet. ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is an agreement secretly negotiated by a small “club” of like-minded countries (39 countries, including the 27 of the European Union, the United States, Japan, etc). Negotiated instead of being democratically debated, ACTA bypasses parliaments and international organizations to dictate a repressive logic dictated by the entertainment industries.

ACTA would impose new criminal sanctions forcing Internet actors to monitor and censor online communications. It is thus a major threat to freedom of expression online and creates legal uncertainty for Internet companies. In the name of trademarks and patents, it would also hamper access to generic medicines in poor countries.

More info here: www.eff.org/issues/acta and here: www.stopacta.info

EDIT: Video added of Protests against ACTA in Poland.

Many thanks to Obywatel RP for adding the comment with a link to this heart warming sight!

Now please sign the UK HM Government e-petition: https://submissions.epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/20685

and the Avaaz petition to help: http://www.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet_spread/?cRQjWbb

Other reasons why this is very very bad!

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and Its Impact on Access to Medicines

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.

Baby Sitting Holly – Totally crazy in the bath!, originally uploaded by eVo photo.

One of my favorite photos ever I think.

Hope you like it too.

Please check out http://evophoto.co.uk/ That’s my photography business website.

I’m available for all kinds of work from portraits to events.

I have a dilemma / a first world problem.

My current broadband supplier, Be Broadband is great but I can’t see them offering me a fast FTTC connection any time soon.  I could really do with better speeds for the work I do.

I could switch to an unlimited* BT Infinity product which would provide much better speeds (up and down).  I’m just not sure if I should switch to BT when I know that Be Broadband provide a good service.

Reasons to stay with Be include:

• Good customer service
• Good community forums
• Great user-group with unofficial stats and news
• A one month rolling contract

Reasons to jump ship to BT Infinity:

• Much faster downloads and uploads (6.5Mb/s currently to around 35Mb/s download and 1Mb/s upload currently to around 10Mb/s upload)

An 18 month contract with BT really puts me off as does their bad reputation.  Also, don’t feel I can fully trust BT not to turn over details if I happen to allegedly download something that may be frowned upon by the authorities.

Have you had any experience of BT Infinity good or bad?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
EDIT: I switched to Plus.net.  Have been connected for around 12 hours now and it’s been a rock solid stable connection.

I’m hoping my upload speed will improve a bit over time but I’m happy enough.  The only other thing is remembering that it’s not unlimited so downloads will have to happen at night when it doesn’t eat into my allowance.

A new simple, clean design for the landing page of my Facebook Fan page for photography ( evophoto.co.uk )

On Friday the 18 November 2011, I will be the official photographer for the Golden Square Shopping Centre (Warrington) Christmas light switch-on event.

Read more here: Peter Andre Lights Switch-On in Warrington » eVo photo – Photography by Luke Addison.

Peter Andre Christmas Light Ticket Giveaway, originally uploaded by eVo photo.

My Favourite Photo I took today.

Hope you like it too!

I’m not sure if any of my blog readers would be into this type of thing but I thought I’d share.

My partner; Amanda Norman is into all things Gothic and Horror and has recently started making some very nice jewellery, such as this Blood Vial (not real blood) Necklace.

I was helping out, taking some photos for her site and really liked this one.

What do you think?

See much more of her work over at gothicjewellerybox.com

If anyone would like any product photography doing, get in touch via evophoto.co.uk

Great business apps help you to get the most out of your time, groom you for peak performance, and can even help you trim your budget. Along with advances in 3G and 4G wireless broadband capabilities, business apps can help you make smart business decisions, speed your productivity, assist you in analyzing your performance, and help you capture ideas, all at the touch of a screen. 10 iPhone app must haves for business are as follows.

Skype

One of the top video chat apps that exists, Skype can make Skype-to-Skype calls completely free and can even call regular phones, both nationally and internationally, or send text messages for a very low fee. Skype takes advantage of wireless broadband speeds and will improve your business communications, help you make smart business decisions, and make you instantly available to your contacts for free.

Dragon Dictation

Not only does this handy little app record your voice, it can turn your spoken words directly into printed ones. It has a very high success rate for translating talking into text and is very easy to use, featuring one tap to record and another to translate the recording into text and copy it to your clipboard or send it via email.

Keynote

This app is like a streamlined, improved iPhone version of PowerPoint. Keynote offers some of the best options for creating and viewing presentations of all kinds. It is also great for creating and distributing other promotional materials such as catalogs and brochures.

Documents to Go Premium

Like the Microsoft Office package of the iPhone world, Documents to Go Premium allows you to both create and edit practically any document format that exists including Excel, PowerPoint, and, of course, Word files. Commands are easy to navigate and there is a syncing feature to align all your documents across different platforms.

Roambi

For those who need to analyze performance and stay constantly in touch with their company’s vital information, Roambi is a must have item. Taking advantage of wireless broadband technology, Roambi updates the vital details of your company and uploads it straight to your screen for you to analyze by the minute. Roambi’s interface is extremely user-friendly allowing you to interact with the info on the go without hassle or headache.

Analytics App

If you’ve ever used Google’s Analytics features, you are probably aware of both how useful it is and how painful it can be when its data is not at your fingertips. This app allows your Analytics data to remain in your hands no matter where you go as long as you bring your iPhone with you.

Genius Scan

This is a scanning app for iPhone that allows you to capture ideas by making copies of practically anything in the physical world. You can save them in either JPG or PDF format and even upload them to the web.

WorldCard Mobile

WorldCard will take a photo of any business card, analyze the image, and then save the data into your iPhone as a new contact. Even though it doesn’t have a hundred percent accuracy rate, WorldCard Mobile does quite a good job of getting all the info on a business card into the correct fields in your Contacts menu.

InerTrak

InerTrak will help you to speed productivity by allowing you to keep track of how much time you spend on various projects throughout the day. This app is great for billing, multi-tasking, or even just finding out where all the time goes.

Blake Sanders is a tech writer at Australian broadband comparison site Broadband Expert and specializes in wireless broadband, mobile phones, and the latest in wireless internet provider news and information.

Note: Photo courtesy of k-ideas via FlickR Creative Commons.

A few months ago my PC was fried.

I was sat at it, heard a storm happening outside so went to take a look.  It was an amazing sight; I wish I’d had taken some photos of the folk lightening and dramatic sky!

I came back in as the storm was dying down and my computer was off.  I hit the power button expecting everything to be fine; maybe just a short power cut?  Alas, just a brief spin of the fans and then nothing.  I tried again but this time nothing at all.

I had a spare motherboard and power supply so thought, although they’re not as good as the ones I as using, at least I’ll be able to get my PC back up and running.

I spent all afternoon rebuilding my PC but still was getting nowhere.  I could have cried!

In the end I called my insurance company.  They arranged for a company to pick up my PC to take a look at it to see if it was repairable.  After a couple of days they were in touch to tell me that I’d be needing a complete new PC.  It was happy days when I was told that they would send me the cash value, as new minus my excess.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure that most readers aren’t interested in anything I’ve written up to this point so here’s what I bought (from Scan.co.uk)and built.

What I bought

Corsair H50-1 Hydro High-performance 1 £41.50

Intel Core i5 2500K Unlocked, 1155, 1 £129.15

500GB Seagate ST3500413AS Barracuda 1 £23.59

Asus P8P67 Pro Rev3, Intel P67, S11 1 £115.67

LiteOn IHAS122-18 22x DVD±R, 8x DVD 1 £11.59

2TB Hitachi Deskstar, 0F12117, Cool 1 £46.09

8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance Blue 1 £59.12

2GB XFX HD 6950, PCI-E 2.1 (x16), 5 1 £161.99

750W Coolermaster RS750-ACAAE3-UK G 1 £49.99

Coolermaster CM 690 II Advanced Dom 1 £54.99

Net Total £693.68

Carriage £15.98

VAT @20% £141.93

Scansure (Accidental damage insurance) £25.38

Total £876.97

Issues after build

After thinking I had completed the build and feeling happy with my cable management I put the sides on the case, plugged everything in and tried booting.  Nothing, zip, nada, zilch.

After a small amount of investigation it turned out that the RAM modules weren’t installed properly.  There had been no error beeps however – the only indication was a single LED on the motherboard.

Once the RAM was installed properly (human error on my part) I installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 with no issues.

I do occasionally experience very long boot times or complete system hangs when booting into Windows (it’s fine with any other OS).  After several BIOS updates (none of which have helped) and much research it seems like a fairly common issue with the P67 chipset that I’m stuck with for now.  The system is 100% stable once booted into Windows and I’m a little perplexed as to what’s going on as there are no errors.  If anyone reads this and has had similar issues or has any suggestions please let me know and I’ll report back.

Overclocking

The Core i5 2500k is a monster CPU.  Overclocking was easy right up to 4.7GHz on my particular chip using this guide: http://is.gd/myBdUq

My core voltage was a tiny bit high at 4.7GHz so I’ve settled at a very cool and stable 4.5GHz.

At the time of writing, I’ve not overclocked the Corsair Vengeance RAM.  The only memory tweaking I’ve performed was to change the Command Rate to 1T from 2T and to manually add the correct timings.  Voltage is still stock and the RAM is completely stable.

Graphics card unlocking / overclocking

The 2BG XFX HD 6950 I purchased was a reference card so using this guide I flashed a 6970 bios.  This worked great but after reading a little more I started to get concerned that it may cause issues with the card in the medium to long term.

I settled on using a modded BIOS that unlocked the shaders to 1536 (as are available on the 6970) and then overclocking using Catalyst Control Center after using a simple registry “hack” to increase the overclocking limits of the card.

*If you do use the registry hack please be very careful and don’t overclock too much.  The hack allows you to overclock way too far which could result in a dead graphics card.  I take no responsibility for any damage you may cause.

Conclusion

Generally I’m very happy with this system.  It performs extremely well in day to day tasks (which for me are Photoshop CS5.5 and some video encoding) with only the occasional game not running well at maximum setting (Crysis 2 with DX11 pack and textures etc. comes to mind).

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to be given an access all areas pass for Warrington Music Festival which is an annual event help by the Parr Hall in partnership with the Golden Square shopping centre.

I only managed to stay for a few hours but I’m very pleased with the images I captured and all the wonderful feedback on Facebook, Flickr and elsewhere.

I hope you enjoy looking at the images too.

*If you know any of the people in these photos or any of the band names, please comment and let me know.