December 9th, 2007
Just discovered an amazing bookmarklet from Aussie company Western Civilization, one of the original creators of CSS editing software. StyleMaster was always a little bit buggy processor intensive, expensive and complicated for me so I learned how to code CSS from scratch. I still think that's the best way to write CSS.
But the modern web is getting so complicated that we really need a better way to look at web pages to be able to figure out how they are put together.
Well WestCiv has really hit the ball out of the park with this one. They have a cross browser compatible javascript bookmarklet that will let you click and see all the CSS and structure for any element on a page. The bookmarklet, appropriately enough, is called Xray.
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alec |
WordPress |
June 21st, 2007
There are lots of ways to build incoming links.
For a small window of time (about six months until April of this year) sponsoring WordPress themes was a great way to get varied links from lots of different independent websites.
Of course these links wouldn't be going on top PR sites generally (custom themes) and you don't have control of the theme of the site.
On the other hand, you do have control over the anchor text, which is already not bad.
And previously it was quite inexpensive - you would pay about $40 or $50/link on a two sponsored link theme and around $70 to $100 for a single sponsored link theme.
Things have changed - most theme developers are pushing three sponsored links and are trying to get $100 or more per link.
With the inflation and feeding frenzy, a lot more lousy developers have thrown their hats into the ring, so there is an oversaturation of themes.
The developers all talk a good game of how they promote the theme on sites such as:
Unfortunately on all or most of these high PR authority sites, your sponsored link will be nowhere to seen. Just a link to download the theme and some jpegs of the theme.
The developers will also try to shout and scream about 450 downloads, 1037 downloads for past themes. But for link building number of downloads accomplishes nothing for you.
What you are interested in is the number of sites which use the theme and include the sponsored links. For the purposes of sponsored links, a single is much better as the end user is less likely to rip out the links. By the same token it would also be better if the links were discreetly nested and not in electric green (where they are likely to attract the attention of the site owner and his visitors and finally get ripped out). An exception could be made if your site is likely to go viral and has a very wide appeal. In that case, clicks from sponsored links might actually contribute to your business. For my regional websites, we are not looking for random clicks. It will never generate any business for my clients and the more discreet the sponsored links the better.
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alec |
SEO, WordPress |
June 20th, 2007
Knowing which template file you are working is the first major hurdle that the designer runs into when working with the php files. This is what a ftp listing of a WordPress theme looks like.
With this labyrinth of various PHP files with similar names, how on earth is an honest designer to know what file he or she should be working? Browsing the front end of the site, you have no idea what you are looking at most of the time.
Am I working on archives.php or archive.php? Is this index.php or home.php?
Well the first thing to do is to open up all the files in the template folder and have a look at them.
Selectable templates which you can choose as a template for your page while editing have this code at the very top of the file:
<?php
/*
Template Name: Archives
*/
}
?>
WordPress needs this unique name to manage your extra templates. Each file with a name like this will be a selectable template in this list when creating or editing a page:
Default WordPress template files (i.e. single.php, page.php, archive.php) don't have that comment and must be present in every theme.
But even this identifier doesn't help you when browsing the site to know which pages are running off each template.
It's easy enough to just drop some html in the source code and it will show up and tell you what template such and such page is using.
But the problem with the simple solution is that everyone who visits your site will see your "Yo - Analysis Template" and wonder why it's there.
There is an easy way to solve this, although it took some searching to find the solution.
Instead of adding just straight text or a paragraph, add this instead:
<?php if ( $user_ID ) { ?><p class="templateinfo">Template = Archives</p><?php } ?>
The ideal place I've found for the identifier code in my templates is between the header and the content block:
After that I apply these styles to the base css file:
p.templateinfo, p.sidebarinfo {font-size: 8px; color: gainsboro;}
p.templateinfo {float: left;}
The sidebarinfo class is there to cover the situation when you have multiple sidebars (Foliovision does). The float left on p.templateinfo may or may not work for your own template. It works great on mine.
In the sidebar files I recommend adding the code at the bottom of the sidebar:
<?php if ( $user_ID ) { ?><p class="templateinfo">Template = Archives</p><?php } ?>
With this done, as you browse your site logged in you will know at all times exactly what file you are looking at. So if you don't like it is a trival matter to go in and make adjustments.
Here's what the end result looks like:
and for the sidebar.php:
You can save up to five or ten minutes confusion per edit with these simple additions to your template file.
And your visitors don't even need to be aware of the under construction signs everywhere.
Setting template identifiers up only takes about ten minutes. They make editing a WordPress template faster and a lot more fun.
alec |
WordPress |
