Archive for October, 2009
Saturday, October 31st, 2009
As we announced a couple of days ago, the new version or our WYSIWYG editor for WordPress is done. The main improvements are:
- Multiple image posting
The Image Management window stays opened after to send an image to the post. This allows you to insert multiple images with ease. If you like the window to be closed every time you insert the image into the post, you can disable multiple image posting in the options.
- No need to edit any configuration files
Everything important is in the options screen now!
New Foliopress WYSIWYG options screen
- Available thumbnail sizes are limited by the size of the picture
Each time you are going to insert a thumbnail for an image into the post, only the sizes which are lower than the horizontal size of the image are shown. This won't let you insert a 500px thumbnail for a 320x240px image.
- Better security
Since the Image Management window may stay opened after you insert an image, we implemented a technique which disables the usage of that window after you log out from your WordPress admin panel.
- Automatic wpautop can be turned off
If the post you are about to edit with Foliopress WYSIWYG was created with the default WordPress editor (TinyMCE), Foliopress WYSIWYG runs wpautop on it prior to editing. TinyMCE is storing posts without any HTML markup for the paragraphs, so it's necessary to run this core WordPress function in order to work with the posts correctly in our editor. You may want to disable this function if some of your special posts are destroyed after opening with Foliopress WYSIWYG.
Download the plugin from our Foliopress WYSIWYG page or from the WordPress plugin page.
If you are going to do the auto-upgrade, you should use this simple guide to preserve your current settings.
By Martin
WordPress |
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
If you use our WYSIWYG editor for WordPress called Foliopress WYSIWYG, then you will be probably happy to hear the exciting news:
You will be able to upgrade to the next version (which will be released in next couple of days) using the WordPress built-in automatic plugin updater.
However if you ever made any changes to the custom configuration file, these changes will be lost, as we have no control over the WordPress update process and all the files will be overwritten. This is a list of your configuration changes which we can't keep after the update is done:
- configuration of BodyId and BodyClass for the editor
- custom Toolbar configurations
- custom plugins for the built-in FCK editor
What you need to do is to write down these settings before the upgrade and then put them into the new options screen which the new version of our plugin will feature (in case you used any extra plugins inside the editor, you need to save all the plugin files and update the same custom config file manually).
Here's an article about how to change the custom config file in all the old Foliopress WYSIWYG versions which will help you to pull these settings out of it: Foliopress WYSIWYG setup and edit.
If you are not using our editor yet, we hope this feature will help it compete with the others.
By Martin
WordPress |
Friday, October 23rd, 2009
Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz opens day two of SEO Pro Training in London
Keep reading Review: Distilled & SEOmoz Expert Training London Day Two
By Alec
SEO |
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
Will Critchlow Rand Fishkin welcome the world to London for SEO Expert Training
Introduction
As an owner of both SEOmoz Basic SEO Training DVD and the SEOmoz Advanced Training DVD, I knew that the speakers knew their stuff and they looked like a fun crowd to boot. So I decided to attend the SEO Expert Training live conference in London on October 19 and 20.
Was the trip to London worthwhile?
Definitely yes, but…
Let’s start with the program which Distilled and SEOmoz organised for us. In a word, superb. The program included dedicated sessions on:
- link building
- site structure
- social campaigns
- SEO tools
- content strategy
- conversion techniques
- SEO team management
- Google penalties and penalty filters
- Google analytics
For the most part this partial list of topics is a dreamlist of issues which I’d like to hear about in depth.
Keep reading Review: Distilled & SEOmoz Expert Training London Day One
By Alec
SEO |
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
We are very happy to announce that one of the most burning issues with our own WYSIWYG editor called Foliopress WYSIWYG has been fixed. I'm talking about the bad size of editor window in Safari and some other Webkit based browsers, like Google Chrome.
This is the problem most of Safari users experienced with our editor
You can see that the actual editor window is not stretched to the whole desired size of the editing window. The workaround was to switch to the Source mode and then back to WYSIWYG. The editor window had the right size then.
The fix for this issue appeared just a couple of weeks ago in FCKeditor's trac bugtracking system here (FCKeditor is one of the biggest parts of Foliopress WYSIWYG).
You can download the new version (0.9.5) from the main Foliopress WYSIWYG page.
By Martin
WordPress |
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
One of our clients was recently lured into paying to pitch to a group of investors.
Their product is a good one. I can't say much, but it's in the financial servies industry. Instead of spending their time and money to get the product really into action, they decided to go the angel route.
Madness. The finished product langours instead of making them the money they should be paying. They asked me if they should pay to pitch. I said no, make your company pay each day.
It turns out that the venture capital shark pool is even worse than I expected. There are dozens of these organizations out there looking to suck the blood of the innocent or hapless entrepreneur. These bastards are out for as much US$25K of your money to pitch to disinterested middle-level brokers and junior bankers.
Keep reading Paying to pitch to VC's or Angel Investors
By Alec
Business |
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
We are working on some major upgrades to our Foliopress WYSIWYG this month. Our wonderful client Richard Nikoley kicks the pants out of his Macbook Pro and he does the same thing to Foliopress WYSIWYG. He's given us a laundry list of small issues to fix, most of which have to do with minor misbehaviour in the Safari browser.
Given that Safari is webkit and Google Chrome is based on Safari, getting webkit browsers right is a priority for us.
We've fixed the text issues (no need to click the source button and back for proper display) but still have to do our SEO Images upgrade to take us from KFM 1.2.1 to 1.4.3 which will give us full Safari support for image upload and insertion.
While we were at it, Martin and I had a discussion about whether to be using code or pre tags for code extracts.
I advocated both, wrapping slapping an unescaped code tag inside the pre tags. It turns out that wreaks havoc in Foliopress WYSIWYG, stripping the line breaks. So our recommendation for Foliopress WYSIWYG users is just use escaped code inside pre tags.
While I was tracking this down though, I decided to chase down the W3 recommendations for the use of code and pre in the HTML 4.01 specification.
Imagine my surprise to find out that poetry is their code example:
Keep reading Code is poetry: Researching HTML Code and Pre Tags at the W3
By Alec
IT, WordPress |
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
We recently checked our site in W3C Markup Validation Service and find out that some of our inline javascript in the posts is not properly enclosed in CDATA tags. Read about the details of the issue, reason for it and a bit of hope in future WordPress releases.
Everything inside a CDATA section is ignored by the XML parser and all the inline javascript should be in it. This is how you do it:
<script>
<![CDATA[ function anything(a,b)
{ }
]]>
</script>
So we fixed all of our plugins which are putting any javascript into the posts and there was another error coming out of the Validation Service saying that the CDATA section is not properly closed.
Keep reading Why WordPress won't validate
By Martin
WordPress |
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
It's no secret we are seriously into WordPress SEO. After the otherwise brilliant John Godley's Headspace killed a few too many websites on us, we decided not to use any extra WordPress SEO plugin but just use appropriate core WordPress functions for our SEO.
What we did was use the excerpt field for descriptions and tags for keywords.
KISS WordPress SEO: now retired since version 2.7
Our KISS WordPress SEO was great until WordPress 2.7 when suddenly the excerpt field no longer existed in the page editing interface. Thanks Automattic! Our perfect workaround was now a pain in the butt.
We gave the UrbanGiraffe Headspace 2 another look, but alas it was still taking our sites down. I know Headspace 2 can work but it just didn't seem to like our core plugin install.
Keep reading What's wrong with WordPress All-in-One-SEO Plugin
By Alec
SEO, WordPress |
Friday, October 9th, 2009
Relenta is a great CRM-lite which beats any mailing software I know for ease of use and speed. Highly recommended.
As you may be aware, we run almost entirely WordPress sites, although many are almost custom apps with additional functionality for real estate, insurance or political discussion. We needed a way to wed our WordPress sites to Relenta. Relenta does not have contact forms of its own but instead an email API for adding new contacts.
Fortunately John Godley's Filled In for WordPress handles forms admirably and has a mailing function built-in. Filled In to handle the forms and Relenta to handle the lists is the best of both worlds.
But like anything technical, there are a few issues to look out for. Without further ado, here is our detailed guide to using Relenta with WordPress.
In order, these are the steps to create a form in WordPress with help of Filled In and send the information to Relenta CRM for parsing.
Keep reading WordPress Forms for Relenta CRM
By Peter
WordPress |
Friday, October 9th, 2009
Basecamp URL change to basecamphq
Today 37signals dropped our domain http://webwork.clientsection.com. Instead they have replaced it with http://webwork.basecamphq.com.
There is a thread on their forums covering the issue. As one customer writes:
BasecampHQ is a stupid domain for one. What is its relevance to my clients? I am paying for a professional service – not for branding that sounds like a paint ball website.
I totally agree. Apparently this change is coming with additional footer branding and additional branding in the emails.
This is a case of breaking the contract with the original customer: us. We are the ones who bought into their white label extranet solution with attractive anonymous core domains like:
- grouphub.com
- clientsection.com
- projectpath.com
- seework.com
- updatelog.com
We pay a handsome yearly fee for the use of the software and the domain. Until recently, it's been $600/year. Now, it's $1200/year. For that fee, we expected 37signals to honour their part of the deal which was to allow us to continue to use the software and environment which we helped them get off the ground.
Keep reading 37Signals, Basecamp URL change and not giving a damn about your customers
By Alec
Business, WordPress |
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
If you are already an SEO insider, you sure know SEOmoz. And if your steps are heading into the SEO world just right now, you will hear about SEOmoz many times more. These guys are among the leaders in the world of search engine optimization. Within the last decade they have created hundreds of articles, tools, guides, studies and held many conferences and seminars.
Rand Fishkin: Thinking like a search engineer
One of these seminars became the core of The SEOmoz Video Training Series. Since this DVD is quite expensive for a blind purchase, we have written short review for you. What can you expect for your investment of several hundred dollars?
Since the subtitle is SEO Basics (there is also Advanced version offered), it’s supposed you are a rookie. Maybe web designer, who finally recognized the importance of SE optimization, small online business owner, who doesn’t want to spent fortune on professionals; or CEO of a large company, who doesn’t understand why site promotion department asks for funds whoever you are, this training will lead you step by step into the world of SEO.
Keep reading Review: SEOmoz Video Training Series DVD
By Alec
SEO |
