Every morning I like to read blogs and forums. Here are the top three I found of value today. Continue reading »
Jul 202009
Over the past year or so I have kept in close contact with another webmaster from overseas. His name is Temi, and he is the one responsible for the Boss Cart Shopping Cart Contest I am having. If you think Temi is kept busy just managing Boss Cart you would be very mistaken. He has countless sites, directories, and clients. Another ingenious idea he had was to create Job Boards using WordPress. Continue reading »
Jun 302009
Today I downloaded Firefox version 3.5. I knew it was coming, and I wanted to make sure my Twitter Toolbar was working correctly on it. It was. Then I decided to test out several of my sites to make sure nothing strange was happening. All worked as I expected, and everything appeared normal on others sites as well. Then I decided to check my Google AdWords account. Continue reading »
Mar 192009
Here is a cool little blog directory, especially for you WordPress fans. Cyber Blog is a new blog directory, and works similar to the more popular MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog directories. The home page shows off their new members, I just saw my face on there a second ago, and also lists any new blogs submitted.
How Do They Do It?
The reason I say it’s especially cool for you WordPress users, is because once you are logged into their site, you will feel very comfortable. They use WordPress styled forms. How did they do it? I don’t know. I do know that it works fine though, and I suspect it must be some sort of WordPress add-on. The site itself, is running using WordPress Software.
Overall the directory seemed pretty well set up. There were two things that bugged me when registering though. All fields were mandatory, even for entering things like “About Yourself”, and after I submitted I never received the confirmation email. Even after that though, logging in, and submitting my site was a snap. I’m just waiting for aproval now. Final note… High quality, free, WordPress Themes available for download.
Feb 032009
If you are new to building websites you should know that there are a ton of services and software packages out their to help you build a site or blog. Joomla and WordPress are two of my favorites. Their both free, and both are fairly easy to use. Joomla is commonly used for sites, and WordPress is commonly used for blogs.
WordPress is Not Just for Blogs
A common disbelief though is that WordPress is only for blogs. Well you can build a website with WordPress, and you can have as many pages as you want, just don’t expect a content management system (CMS) to manage it as if you were using Joomla. WordPress is great for creating quick information sites like this Power Juicer Review site. It’s easy to change your templates, new pages get automatically added to your menu, you can control the order of the pages, and even have the pages follow a tree in navigation.
Making WordPress Appear as a Site
So if you have ever tried WordPress, you may be wondering how do I make the home page show only my home page, and not all of my blog posts. It’s actually very easy. Under Settings, look for Reading Settings. After you find that all you have to do is select a static page for front page displays, and then select the page you want to use as that home page (assuming you already made one).
It’s that easy. When creating your page you simply use Pages instead of Posts, and within the edit page you can select what order you what the page and its hiarchy.
If you are going to add pages to a WordPress site regardless of it’s format make sure you do pay attention to the page order function. By default pages are ordered alphabetically, but if you want you can change the order by simply giving them a numeric value. This setting is found when you edit a page under Attributes. If you look at the Power Juice site again you will see the Power Juicer Pro page on the bottom of the menu. They have the two most important pages on the top, and is clearly not alphabetized. They are making used of the custom order, and a basic website well done using the power of WordPress.
Jan 302009
Instant website coming up. Building a website doesn’t have to be a major production. Can you say website templates? If you are looking to start a new site, whether it be made from scratch, WordPress, Joomla, or whatever, there are ton of templates out there to get your site up and running in no time. Where are there a ton of them? The Template Kingdom.
Template Kingdom has a variety of templates. You can find Joomla templates, CSS, WordPress, and simple website templates. They have nearly fifty different categories to choose from, and most of them have over fifty or more different templates within. I found this looking for some Joomla templates for myself. For those of you unaware of Joomla, it’s kind of like WordPress in ease of setting up, but it is designed for websites, not blogs. Building a CMS site is the way to go these days, and using Joomla combined with a pre-designed template can certainly make things easier.
Template King offers a variety of free, and paid templates, and if you are template designer they are looking for you!
Author Note: Unfortunately the site has been down for several days so I removed the links in April 2009.
Nov 032008
Here is a quick post for you. WordPress recently released their Beta of WP 2.7. I downloaded, am currently running it, and can say I am not happy. Overall it seems pretty good, but what is driving me nuts is that left sidebar menu they have. It’s really hard to read. At first I thought maybe it was because I had visited all of those links already (this would still be a problem), but it is in fact the default colors. Check out this sidebar menu. Is it easy for you to read? Have you installed the beta, and found the same thing as me? I tried it in FF and IE, and get the same results.
Click the image to see the full screenshot I took.
Another quick comment. When I tried to upload the image for this post the upload button does not appear at default. I must click on something else, and then return to get it to work. This is beta so hopefully the bugs will get worked out.
Aug 262008
I have seen many discussions on whether or not you should use nofollow for a comment author’s URL. I honestly didn’t know which way to go so I decided to go right down the line with a neat little fix. First a little bit about the pros and cons.
Allowing the Follow
The major pro? It can encourage people to write comments on your posts. The major con? It leeches your PR, and could bring you down a little in the rankings. Get enough comments on a post, and your site might even look spammy to a search engine.
Being Mean, NoFollow
The major pro? All those visitors comments, if you get any now, will not hurt your search rankings. The major con? You may not get as many comments. I call it mean, because I feel it’s similar to having someone come into your store, and not saying thank you for visiting.
My Solution
My solution to the problem is to incorporate a little bit of both worlds. I give the first three comment authors their full credit. Comments made after the third, incorporate rel=”nofollow”. Immediate input is encouraged, and having a list full of outbound links prevented. I keep getting posters, and keep my SEO dignity.
Plugin
So I am also guessing some of you might want this as a plugin for WordPress. I am going to make one in the next day or two. It was such an easy fix to my template though, I just had to get it going without one. Edit four lines of code or write an entire plugin? Let me see:)
Aug 192008
Is your site printer friendly? Anyone can go to this site, hit the print button, and print out the content. The problem is, and this is the case for most sites, you print all the content on the page, including menus. I was visiting this fishing site, Ontario Fishing, and they reminded me about something I need to do to this site. I need to make it more printer friendly.
Printer Icon
Next to all of the posts on the Ontario Fishing site they have two handy little icons so visitors can print or email the post to friends. Hit the print button, and now you can print article only information, and all that unnecessary stuff like the sites menu gets removed. Hit the email icon, and viraly promote your site. These are both great features for the user, and take up little space on the site. Definately a positive usuability design element.
Duplicate Content
Don’t mess up your site though. Google hates duplicate content, and if you are linking to printer friendly versions of your articles, make sure you use rel=”nofollow” in your link. Also make sure you robot.txt file says not to index those links as well. A great site design element doesn’t have to mean poor SEO.
WordPress
For those of you that use WordPress it as easy as installing this plugin: WP-Print
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WordPress 2.7 Beta 2
I’m loving WordPress 2.7 Beta 2. They fixed the menu so I can read it, but there is still one more thing that’s bugging me, the comments. I like to reply to my visitors comments, and when you see the recent comments in your dashboard there is no link to the post itself. There are several other links, like to delete the comment, spam the comment, or edit it. There is nothing to go to post though. Email notifications include the link, why not in the dashboard? They do, I think strangely, have a link to edit the post. I’m not really sure of the reasoning for that though, perhaps to stop allowing pings and comments.
Hello WordPress designers, can you hear me? Have a link to the post in the recent comment box.