Archive for 2008

• Moderator - Wordpress comment moderator in AIR
• 8 tips to enhance your WordPress blog SEO
• Calling All WordPress-loving Icon Designers
• Loading JavaScripts with WordPress
• XKCD “Secretary”: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
• Does Google Hate WordPress and Other Blog Platforms?
• Showing off your FeedBurner subscribers
• 25 Impressive Blog Footers
• Another 15 Beautiful Twitter Themes
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin: Worth a Look
• Ten Comments You Think Are Cool And Insightful But Aren’t
• 15 Key Elements All Top Web Sites Should Have
• Usability Testing Report: 2.5 and Crazyhorse
• 35 Stunning Black and White Logos
• How to: CSS Large Background
• How to Add Auto Complete to Your Google Custom Search Engine
• Google Abandons Standards, Forks OpenID
• Halloween Logos Around The Web
• Scary WordPress Moments

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan on full-Flash websites. They’re not very usable, search engines don’t really like them, and permalinks are near impossible. (There are a select few Flash sites that are just so cool that I can’t help but liking though.) However, there are some cases where Flash is a good idea. Streaming video is a good example. Animated, talking banners ads that fly across your screen are too. Then you have casual web games, and other things I’m sure. (more…)

Thumbnails can really liven up an otherwise plain list of posts, and add a bit of visual interest. By associating thumbnails with posts you gain a lot of flexibility that you would not have if you just relied on images in post excerpts. This allows you to have more compact listings in archives, yet be a little more visual. (The only disadvantage is you can’t show the thumbnails in WordPress RSS feeds.)

First, a few examples of good use of post thumbnails: (more…)

Just a reminder, the Revolution premium WordPress themes will no longer be available for purchase as of midnight on October 31st.

With the launch of the free Revolution Two themes (post coming soon!), the designer has decided to discontinue the old themes (which are pretty good). I understand his not wanting to make the old themes free, which wouldn’t be very fair to those who paid for them, but why drop them entirely?

So if you’re in the market for a premium WordPress theme, you’d better hurry. (more…)

In (X)HTML, there are several levels of headings. You have h1, h2, h3, h4, and so on. The proper way to use them is in a structural manner, a post title having a lower number (e.g. h1) than subheaders in a posts content, which would be the next one down (and then subheadings below that would be h3).

Search engines are very big on the h-tags, treating content in h1s and h2s as more important than most other text.

The question is, where should that structure start? Information on the semantics of heading tags is very mixed, and can be hard to sort through. (more…)

If your WordPress-based blog gets a lot of comments, it can be a pain to keep up on them.

Approving/spamming comments is sadly something that has to be done frequently, otherwise the unmoderated comments tend to pile up. Let’s face it, if you run a fairly high-traffic blog, you don’t want to trek over to the WordPress Admin to moderate comments.

That’s where Daniel Dura’s “Moderator” comes in. Moderator is an Adobe AIR app that brings the unmoderated comments to you. It sits in your Dock or System Tray and notifies you as the comments stack up in the queue. From there, you can approve, spam, or delete the comments after reading them.

The app requires WordPress 2.6+, and you must install a WordPress plugin before using the app. Once WP 2.7 is out, the developer will release a new version of Moderator to take advantage of 2.7’s comment API, which will make the plugin unneccesary.

Do you know what one of my favorite parts of the internet is?

It’s the community, and their willingness to help people out without anything in return. Sure, the web has it’s fair share of trolls and greedy corporate people, but overall you can just approach someone, say a blogger, ask a question, and get a straight answer.

Having trouble getting a PHP script or CSS effect to work? Visit a coding-oriented web forum and ask for advice. One of the many people there will most likely know what’s wrong and spot that typo on line twelve that you missed despite going over the code dozens of times. (more…)

The WP125 Ad Management Plugin has gained quite a sizeable following over the past few months, with nearly 4,000 downloads logged in WordPress/Extend as I write this. (Note that there were likely a lot of downloads before it was accepted into the repository.)

Overall, I think it’s been successful.

The point of the plugin has been to provide an easy way to manage 125×125 ads, rather than relying on hand-coding or more complex ad-serving applications like OpenX. The goal has been to make it the right choice for as many bloggers as possible who want to sell 125×125 ads.

So, how is it? What do you like about WP125? What do you want to see in it? Is there something about it that just bugs you? What killer feature is missing that you just have to have?

The next release of WP125 is in the works currently, and I’m working on it off and on, whenever I have some spare time. Now is a good time to suggest new additions or changes.

This is you chance to voice your opinions about the plugin. Any constructive criticism or suggestions are welcome.

• What Name Do You Leave Comments on Blogs Under?
• 12 Beautiful Twitter Themes
• 30 creative custom wordpress logins
• WP Post Thumbnail - WordPress plugin
• So You Want to Spam My Forum, Do You?
• Two Ways Google Is Trying To Juice AdSense: Ad-Only Search Boxes And Syndication Pages
• Record Label ‘Infringes’ Own Copyright, Site Pulled
• How to Get Blogs to Link to Your Posts
• 27 Best Places You Should Visit To Get Incredible Web Design Inspiration!
• Tutorial: Creating Custom Write Panels in WordPress
• A visual history of 11 successful blogs
• 55 Premium WordPress Themes to Blow Your Mind
• Ad Marketplaces and Ad Servers for Bloggers
• 50 Beautiful Blog Designs
• WordPress Codex: Version 2.7
• Easily display your last Tweet
• 21 Sets of Free Social Bookmarking Icons for Your Blog

WordPress 2.7 will be here soon, the release only weeks away. In addition to long-awaited major features such as automatic core file updates, we’ll be seeing another major redesign on the Admin pages. The goal of the redesign is to improve usability, require less pageloads to get where you want to go, and to offer much more in the way of customization options.

We’ll finally be seeing the beginings of the customizable Dashboard that’s been in the works for some time. Modules will be reorderable by dragging and dropping, and collapsed/expanded at will.

The New 2.7 Dashboard

Screenshots of the new Admin.

It looks pretty good to me. Hopefully the new WordPress release won’t break too many plugins…especially WP125 and GoCodes.