I haven’t been on here in a few weeks. I have been busy working on client sites plus learning and integrating the twitter API in my recipe site (Twitter profile). I have the site setup so that when someone rates a recipe a new “tweet” is sent out, asking others what they think of the recipe. It also sends out a tweet when I approve a recipe announcing a new recipe. The site also alerts me when a new recipe is added that way I know to do check it out and approve it.
I am also checking out the site textmarks.com to see what kind of cool stuff I can do with their service. Textmarks gives you a “keyword” that someone can send by their cell phone to 41411 and textmarks will respond with a preset message or it can also respond with the output from a web page (thinking something dynamic).
I’m not ready to release it yet but I am working on an API for my URL shortener. URL shorteners are used alot on twitter because of the 140 character limit. I will announce the API here when it’s ready. You can use the site now from a web browser to shorten URLs for free.
Feel free to check out my sites and twitter profiles. If you add me on there let me know you found me from my blog. Thanks!
It was brought to my attention I have not posted in here in a while. All is well I have been working on client sites and also adding content to a couple of my other blogs. Here is a post I did today that I thought would be good on here too. It’s a tip on how to be a better Dodgeball player on the game Playground for the Nintendo Wii. I won’t add duplicate content you can read about Wii Dodgeball Tips here. Enjoy!
Written on January 8th, 2009 Filed under Did you know?
Here are some quick tips to stay safe while making your online purchases.
Look for a customer service phone number. If you don’t feel safe ordering online call and order.
When you are checking out and giving out sensitive information (credit card info, etc) make sure the address bar starts with “https” and not just “http”
Look for a clearly defined shipping and returns policy page.
DO NOT pay by check or money order. If the merchant is a fraud there is generally no recourse.
If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
Be wary of any online merchant that only accepts one type of payment such as paypal only or only check or money order.
Look for seals such as BBB, Buy Safe, or Hacker Safe. These sites have been thoroughly verified.
Be wary (it’s still ok to order if you like) or online merchants who do not give a physical address for their store.
If possible pay by credit card (not your checking account debit card). You will have more recourse should problems come up after the sale.
Remember to stay safe while online. The biggest thing is that if it seems too good of a deal to be true it probably is. Stay safe while shopping online!
Written on December 1st, 2008 Filed under Did you know?
No tech news today just a wish that everyone has a great Thanksgiving! Let me know if you need a 12seconds.tv invite. Also check out my 12seconds channel.
I’m a big fan of the favicon. It’s great for branding purposes and now I have a new use for it. In Firefox I can click and drag a site to my links toolbar to quickly add it. Now I found you can maximize the space even more by just showing the favicon and not the title of the page! Check out the image below:
Now I have quick access to my commonly visited sites and can maximize the space used on my links toolbar! Too bad all of my favorites don’t have favicons or I would just have a big list of favicons on my toolbar.
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Written on November 21st, 2008 Filed under Did you know?
Google webmaster tools is a great way to submit your site and have statistics from google such as Google crawl errors, the top search queries that your site comes up for and also the top clicks that sent traffic to your site. Google webmaster tools will also show you details on crawl statistics and also if your site is a blog it will show you how many people have subscribed to your sites feed in google reader (Statistics -> Subscriber Stats). Links -> Pages With External Links will show how many pages have links coming into them. Click on the number on the right and detailed statistics will be presented.
Another great Google tool I use is Google Alerts. You can enter search terms you want to be alerted for (or enter your URL) and Google will send out an e-mail based on your preferences. I use this to watch some search terms and also to see when someone links to my site.
These are certainly not the only way to view stats a whole book can be written about Google Analytics alone. What I hope to provide is a couple of new ways for webmasters to keep track of how google views their site and some quick stats.
I really like using the favicon. Favicons are great for branding purposes as they show up as a graphic in the URL bar and also when a page is bookmarked. While themes do not change much in Wordpress I thought it would be nice to have a favicon that is specific for that theme. If I switch themes the new theme will need a favicon or nothing (or maybe the default favicon I haven’t tried that) will be shown. First create your 16×16 pixel favicon as described in this post and upload the file called favicon.ico to your BLOG/wp-content/themes/THEMENAME/images directory. Next up in the wordpress admin (or shell or text editor) open up the themes header.php file. Add this one line:
You will then see your favicon in your browser window ONLY when browsing your site. Not in the wp-admin area because your theme is not being used in the admin area.
What do you think? Sure this is extra work as you could simply put this in the root folder but the geek in me likes the control. This could also be useful for distributing a free wordpress theme and branding.
Written on October 17th, 2008 Filed under Did you know?
CommentLuv is a great Wordpress plugin that will attempt to parse someones blog feed when they comment on your blog. It will parse their feed and display the latest post (or let the commenter choose if they are registered at CommentLuv.com). These links are usually “do-followed” meaning that the standard “nofollow” tag it not there. This will help give the commenters blog some “juice” and boost their search engine rankings or google page rank. The plugin is designed to attract more commenters because it is difficult for blogs to get comments as most readers are in a feed reader or subscribed by e-mail. A blog with comments shows that the blogger has some authority on the topic of the blog. I have also made a “CommentLuv” found here badge for my blog it is in the sidebar on the right.
When upgrading CommentLuv it is recommended that you download the latest plugin from the site, deactivate it, upload the plugin, and activate it. The author of the plugin mentioned that the automatic upgrade was missing some features. One of the missing features was that for the admin the CommentLuv image was not being shown on posts. This made it look like the plugin was not working until the admin logged out and went to a post. Now when the user is logged in the badge shows up, letting the blog owner know the CommentLuv plugin is active.
What are your thoughts on the CommentLuv plugin for Wordpress? Leave me a comment and see it in action.
Written on October 14th, 2008 Filed under Did you know?
This one puzzled me for a while when I first installed wordpress. I had seen blogs with a fancy URL like:
/my-great-category/my-awesome-post
But my URLs looked like
/?p=3
I had to figure out how to change that. URLs are great to put your terms of what your post is about. What I found out it is that the URL structure is called “Permalinks”. To change the default permalink structure in wordpress login to the admin area and go to Settings->Permalinks. Pretty easy! You will see some blogs like this one with the date in the URL. I wish I knew not to do this when I set my blog up. You will see some like this one that just use the category name followed by the post name. Great for getting your keywords in your URL. To get URLs like that go to the permalinks setup as described above and choose “Custom Structure” and in the text box beside it enter this:
/%category%/%postname%
I do not recommend changing your permalink structure on an existing blog. This tip is for new wordpress blogs. What do you think? Do you like keeping the date in the URL or would you rather just have the category and post name in the URL? Your comments are welcome.
Written on October 9th, 2008 Filed under Did you know?
