Use BuddyPress, Keep your Theme
If you want to use BuddyPress (a massive plugin that basically adds a social networking layer to WordPress sites, think, forums, profiles, user blogs, etc) but you’ve been hesitant to try it, now is a better time than ever.
BuddyPress 1.2 now works with stand-alone WordPress installs (before you had to use MU) and you can even keep your existing theme.
Google & Microformats: Drive More Traffic
Anyone that has spent time trying to improve their click through rates (CTR) from search engine results pages (SERPs) will tell you that Google algorithmically picks the snippet displayed for a given page; it’s not something you can always control. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t always display the snippet that will give you the best conversion rate.
Why Providing Value in Your Job is Important
One of the first things that they taught me at Blogging School was how to flog my blog erm, I mean, how to promote readership. There are many ways to get people to your site, but the not-so-secret way to get them to stay, and willingly come back, is to provide them value. There has to be a compelling reason for them to take time out of their incredibly busy day to spend five or ten minutes reading whatever you wrote.
Whether it’s a comedic post, tips on how-to be a better whatever, or a discussion about a mutual love of Pez dispensers, providing content that lets the reader justify why they bothered going to your site is critical.
jQTouch Makes Web Development on the iPhone and iPod Touch a Snap
jQTouch is described on the site as a jQuery plugin for web development on the iPhone and iPod Touch. But it’s more than just a plugin; its simplified development approach helps you create and theme the various screens of your web app and apply animated transitions between them.
It will help in all manner of ways, but app development using jQTouch is quick if you follow a simple recipe. You create a series of div elements (one for each screen in your application), give each one an id, and give the home screen the class of current. You then place an unordered list within the home screen div. In each list item you place an anchor tag with a href that links to one of the other divs.
Free Web UI Wireframe Kit
Sometimes you don’t need to build interactive wireframes, or may not feel all that comfortable in Visio or OmniGraffle. I know here are times I just want to open up Photoshop and start laying things out.
This web UI template kit is made completley with shape objects and in some cases converted into SmartObjects. So they’re totally scalable. There are no usage restrictions but if you find them helpful give us a shout. We love hearing from you!
Calendar or To Do List? Two Task Management Tools Compared
How do you plan and track your daily activities, with a calendar or a to do list? Some productivity gurus claim that putting everything on your calendar ensures that it never gets done, or that you’ll cross off what you don’t get done and just reschedule it for the next day — which defeats the purpose of scheduling. Other gurus claim that putting everything on a list, where items aren’t tied to a time and date, ensures that they never get done, since they lack specific queues to get started or deadlines to finish.
If the choice is mutually exclusive, I think they’re both wrong. Calendars and lists are related, but serve different purposes, not unlike clocks and timers. You can use a clock as a timer, but it’s not the best tool for the job.
Are Your Working Hours Jeopardizing Your Productivity?
Human beings are creatures of habit. (Yes, even freelancers like you.) We tend to wake up at the same time each morning, go through the same basic routine of tasks every day, and go to bed at the same hour every night. Routines are comforting and familiar.
Oh, and they could destroy your productivity.
Stop Spammers and Other Scumbags with a Custom Blacklist
I usually reserve most of my blacklisting content for Perishable Press, but after posting about using WordPress’ built-in tools to stop comment spam, several DiW readers have asked about a good custom blacklist that may be used for the “Comment Moderation” and/or “Comment Blacklist” features in the WordPress “Discussion Settings” screen. Over the years, I have built up an extensive custom blacklist of terms that has proven quite effective at keeping spam and other garbage out of the comments section, even without using any anti-spam plugins such as Akismet. It’s strictly plug-n-play, and should help protect your site (and reputation) against all sorts of malicious nonsense. So without further ado..
Which Template File does WordPress Use to Render Different Pages?
This page in the codex has a particularly interesting infographic that shows a flowchart of how WordPress chooses which template file it is going to use to render the page. For example, did you know if you have a published page with “contact” as the slug, it will look for and use page-contact.php automatically?
