AnythingZoomer is a jQuery plugin that will zoom just about anything. Image, text and calendar zooming are examples presented on the website. You can even double click on the unzoomed object to see the enlarged version.

Great for those eCommerce websites looking for a product zoomer but don’t want to use Flash.

For more information: AnythingZoomer

phpMyBackup Pro is an easy to use, free, web-based MySQL backup application. It can backup one or several databases, using compression like gzip, zip (or no compression) and can schedule backups. It can also backup directly to an FTP server or send the backups via email.

All of these features are presented in a management interface. A shell mode is also available for manual use or by cron script.

There are several language packages already available.

For more information: phpMyBackup Pro

Using .HTACCESS files can be a great help to protecting your site’s images and content as well as for SEO. Noah Hendrix has written an article covering 5 Practical Solutions using .HTACCESS.

Some of the things covered are:

• Hotlinking Prevention
• IP Address Blocking
• Error Redirection
• Redirection during site maintenance
• Hiding Directory Listings

If you are using Apache webserver, you need to make sure you have mod_rewrite enabled.

For more information: 5 Fun and Practical Htaccess Solutions

Ed Baxter has created a screencast tutorial explaining the steps involved in installing and setting up a Magento ecommerce website. This is great for those of you who are new to Magento.

This from Ed’s site:

“Hundreds of ecommerce systems exist, but very few can match the power of Magento. In this screencast, I’ll demonstrate how to download and install Magento to a local host, configure some of the site options, and create simple and configurable products and categories for our test e-commerce site.“

I’ve watched this screencast and found it invaluable.

For more information: Easy E-Commerce With Magento