The results from the 2008 Avusa Retails Awards for online retailers is somewhat mind boggling (score in brackets):

1 - eBucks (2.8)
2 - Kalahari.net (1.5)
3 - Amazon.com (1.3)
4 - Ebay (0.9)
5 - Interflora (0.6)
6 - Bid or Buy (0.3)
7 - Loot (0.2)

Surely the above is not representative of the online retailing landscape in South Africa? Which begs the question, how was this specific section researched by Ipsos-Markinor?

According to Click.co.za, there are some 800 odd online shopping sites operating from within South Africa (the assumption is that international sites such as Amazon and Ebay are not included in that list) - a comprehensive list of online shops in South Africa can be found at Jump.co.za.

To put the e-Retailers list in perspective:

- the maximum score ranges from 2.5 - 28.4 across all categories;

- most other categories list the top 10 results (with the lowest score 0.1), only 7 online retailers were listed here; and

- the 29 categories include baby stores, banks, airlines, fast food outlets and car dealerships, to name but a few.

I found this very informative post about lighttpd mod-rewrites for Wordpress, written by Hinrik Örn Sigurðsson.

Create a file called wp-rewrite.conf in your lighttpd config folder:

url.rewrite-once = (
    "^" + wpdir + "(wp-.+).*/?" => "$0",
    "^" + wpdir + "(sitemap.xml)" => "$0",
    "^" + wpdir + "(xmlrpc.php)" => "$0",
    "^" + wpdir + "keyword/([A-Za-z_0-9-])/?$" => wpdir + "index.php?keyword=$1",
    "^" + wpdir + "(.+)/?$" => wpdir + "index.php/$1"
)

Then include the above file in the $HTTP["host'] section of the specific domain’s config file:

$HTTP["host"] =~ "mydomain.com" {
    var.wpdir = "/"
    include "wp-rewrite.conf"
}

Just make sure that you remove any existing rules in .htaccess, that caused some problems on my side.

Every new project has its own challenges and opportunities. This time round, the latter will be fully embraced!

Technologies being used include Flex and Ruby (Rails to a lesser extend). As a newcomer to Flex, my experiences with it will be posted here, with links to resources and the like.