Tutorials

5 FREE WordPress Plugins Every Blogger Needs to Have

March 30, 2011 By Miranda Surgery 5 Comments

Blog publishing has become a labyrinth of content structure, templating systems and plug-ins. Maintaining a good blog with optimal potential requires a focused and practical plan. Plugins are essential. There are a good amount of safe, free plugins to download and utilize.

1. Swat Your Spam

Akismet. This is the most popular free anti-spam/comment plug-ins. Downloading is free however there is a minimal charge for commercial based blogs. In addition, it offers a library option in a variety of languages. With Akismet, the algorithm code that is usually based on the home website is on the Akismet server. It sends the comment back to the host website and determines whether it is spam or legitimate. It will hold content for fifteen days, just in case, and then delete it. Installation requires a WordPress blog which entails signing up for a WordPress.com API key account. After this, install the Akismet plugin into the WordPress plugin directory. It is important to follow the spam folder compiled by Akismet in the first few weeks or so of use. This way you can train it to recognize comments that may otherwise be considered spam and missed.

2. Keyword Tracker

SEO Rank Reporter is an excellent free plugin that will track keywords in your site. Every three days it will show an easy to follow Google ranking graph. As your ranking fluctuates Rank Reporter will send you emails alerting you of top rank changes.

3. Platinum SEO Pack

This plugin will utilize the titles of your blogs for search engine optimization by routinely generating Meta tags. In addition, duplicate information on your site is immediately brought to your attention.

4. SEO Content Control

A plugin that acts like a personal secretary is found in SEO Content Control. It finds content that you may have forgotten to tag, describe and/or categorize and offers ways to develop more optimal choices thus potentially increasing your search engine rankings.

5. Keyword Density Checker

By compiling keyword densities, Keyword Density Checker can create an overview of the density usage of used keywords and key phrases. Meta keyword suggestions are also offered plus prevention of content language and word filter usage.

Take note that because of continuing upgrades offered for WordPress plugins it is probably best to save your current plugins in the WordPress database. When you do this you can go back and decide the specific actions your plugin will take when the upgrade is applied.

About the Author: Miranda S. is a surgical tech by day and blogger by night. She loves looking for unique ways to improve her blogs (and the blogs of others) without spending a ton of cash!

Filed Under: WordPress Tagged With: akismet, keywords, plugins, seo, WordPress

WordPress Web Design Tips

January 1, 2011 By CDT 1 Comment

Our little shop is primarily a WordPress web shop. We design custom WordPress websites that are search engine friendly and easily editable by the client. Here are some tips for WordPress web design.

Do not modify core files in WordPress.
It might be the easy way to do something, but it will be over written when WordPress is updated. It won’t seem like such an easy fix when you have to do it again. You should be using a plugin instead. Plugins are the best way to add functionality to a WordPress site. If you can’t find a plugin to do the job you need done, build one.

Modify the child themes, not the parent themes.
That is what child themes are for. Create your child theme and keep your modifications to your own child theme files. Parent themes are updated occasionally and you will lose your changes.

Use one javascript library.
Find a suitable javascript library and stick to it. jQuery is good. Mixing javascript is bad. Finding pre-existing scripts on the web to incorporate in your design is a good way to learn. If the comments in those scripts in any way contain the phrase “I don’t care,” ditch the script. Learn from it if you can, but do not waste time trying to make it work.

Keep your code clean.

Delete extra styles in the CSS.
Remove unused PHP from the functions file.
Remove old analytics code if it is no longer needed.
Delete unused or unnecessary plugins.
Consolidate your javascript and CSS whenever possible.
Clean up files while you are working and make sure all files are organized and clean before the site goes live.
Comment your code clearly.

Do cross browser checks as you work.
It’s far better to frequently check as many browsers as possible as you work than to try to fix many things at the end. All too often, fixing one thing means breaking something else.

Validate code. Validate code. Validate code.

Pay attention to the details.
As Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said: “God is in the details.” The details will make or break a design. It’s okay to be a perfectionist.

Test everything.
Never publish anything without testing it first. Test in multiple browsers and platforms. Have your friends test it. Have others in the shop test it. Make sure all forms work. Make sure it works as it should before publishing live content.

Written by Shanna Cramer, owner of The Web Shoppe in Fargo, ND. Twitter Facebook

Filed Under: WordPress Tagged With: Web Design, WordPress

Add a clickable header in Hybrid

July 25, 2010 By CDT 1 Comment

I use Justin Tadlock’s Hybrid theme framework often. It’s clean, SEO friendly and easy to customize through child themes. Child themes are custom theme files built on the hybrid framework. Hybrid is based on php hooks, so most of the modifications need to be done through hooks.

A clickable logo is something that almost every business website needs. Here is a quick and easy function to add a clickable logo to your header div.

Make sure you are working in your child theme files.

Open functions.php in your child theme folder. If you do not have a functions.php, create one.

Add the code between the backticks (`):

`
< ? php (remove spaces)
/* clickable logo header ///////////////////////////////////// */
function clickable_logo() {
?>
<a href=”http://thewebshoppe.net”><img src=”http://locationOfYourImage.com/logo.png” width=”554px” height=”83px” /></a>
< ? php (remove spaces)
}
add_action ('hybrid_header', 'clickable_logo');
?>
`

The comment line has to go after the opening php tag. If it is outside the tag, it will write above the opening html tag and throw IE7/8 into quirks mode. All sorts of ugly will happen. The first php names the function clickable_logo.

Use standard html to add the logo. Make sure you replace the above values with your own.

The final php action hook will put the logo into the header.

Filed Under: WordPress Tagged With: child theme, clickable, customize, hybrid, logo, php, theme, WordPress

Using Graphic Bullets in InDesign

April 15, 2010 By CDT 3 Comments

You can use any character of any font available to you in InDesign as a bullet point. If that isn’t enough, you can also use the vector graphic of your choice. Here’s how.

Add bullet points to your text in InDesign. I am using CS4, but this probably works in other versions.

Bullet points can be added two different ways.

Select the text.
Go to the options flyout menu on the paragraphs panel.
Choose Numbering and Bullets.
Select Bullets from the drop down menu in the dialog box.

-or-

Select the text.
Go to the paragraph styles panel.
From the options flyout menu of the paragraph styles panel, select NEW STYLE.
Name your new style
When the dialog box opens, select Bullets and Numbering from the list at the left.
Select Bullets from the style drop down menu.

The benefit of adding bullet points as a paragraph style is that you can reuse the bullet style with a click.

Note: Only change bullets to graphics when you are finished editing the text. This process changes bullets to text instead of bulleted lists, so they will not be editable as bullets. You can still edit them as text with tabs.

Get your graphic for the bullets.

Bring your vector image into InDesign. I am copying and pasting from Illustrator, but you can also place (file -> place) in InDesign.
Size it to the size you need for the bullets.
Copy your vector image to the clipboard.
Select the bulleted text.
Under Type -> Bulleted & Numbered Lists -> Convert Bullets to Text.

Change the bullet to a graphic.

Select the bulleted list.
Go under Edit -> Find/Change.
In the dialog box, make sure you are in the TEXT tab.
Click the flyout menu button to the right of the Find What drop down list.
Select Symbols -> Bullet Character.

Click the flyout menu button to the right of the Change To drop down list.
Select Other -> Clipboard Contents, Unformatted.
Click Change All.

Your bullet points are now graphics!

Filed Under: InDesign Tagged With: bulleted lists, bullets, CS4, graphic, how to, InDesign, Quick Tips, Tips

One Million Free Photoshop Brushes

June 18, 2009 By CDT Leave a Comment

I counted. Really.

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Filed Under: Photoshop Tagged With: brushes, download, free, Photoshop

How do you save a form in Adobe Reader?

June 2, 2009 By CDT

If you create a fillable form in Acrobat, other Acrobat users will be able to fill out, print and save the form. Not so with Reader users and there are far more of those. Reader is free, easy to install and there is no reason for anyone not to have it. In order to make forms accessible to Readers only one small additional step needs to be taken.

In Acrobat 9:

Create your form. When the form is complete, go to Advanced => Extend Features in Adobe Reader…

Extend Features in Adobe Reader

This will prompt you to save a copy. Be sure you do, it will restrict editing later on.

Enable Usage Rights in Adobe Reader warning

When the file is opened in Adobe Reader, there will be a purple bar across the top of the screen letting users know they can save data typed into a form.

Adobe Reader view of a usage enabled form

Simple as that! Take this one extra step on all of your PDF forms to let Reader users save them.

Filed Under: Acrobat Tagged With: Acrobat, Acrobat 9, extend rights, fillable form, Reader

Set Bookmarks Panel to Open When the PDF Opens

May 31, 2009 By CDT 2 Comments

Offices are going paperless and what used to be on paper is now on PDF. Acrobat has a slightly higher learning curve than paper, so make it as simple as possible for the end user to navigate your PDFs. One way to do that is to have a navigation panel, either the pages panel or the bookmarks panel, open with the PDF.

There are a few different ways to navigate a PDF, some are easier to use, others are easier to create. The end user can navigate around a PDF with links, bookmarks or the pages panel.

Links: Links take some effort to set up, but anyone who knows how to open a PDF knows what a link is. This is by far the easiest to use for anyone who uses the internet.

Bookmarks Panel in Acrobat 9

Bookmarks: Bookmarks also take some effort to set up, but if you set your bookmark styles in the originating application, Word or InDesign for example, the bookmarks should come through to the PDF fully intact. For a user who knows what a bookmark is and knows where to find the bookmarks panel, this is one of the easiest ways to navigate a long PDF document.

Pages Panel in Acrobat 9

Pages Panel: The pages panel shows exactly that, the pages in order. Each page will have a thumbnail so you can see pretty clearly what the pages are. Double click on a page in the pages panel and it will take you there. This is as easy as it gets for a standard short document.

Always make things as simple as possible for the end user.

What if your end user isn’t familiar with navigating PDFs? What if they don’t know what a pages panel or bookmark is let alone where to find it? You could spend hours setting up numerous links so the PDF can be navigated just like a web page. If you make a change to the original document and re-export to PDF, you may need to set up each link again.

As a compromise, fast for you easy for the end user, simply set the pages panel or bookmarks panel to open when the PDF opens.

How To:

Properties Panel in Acrobat 9

With your PDF open in Acrobat 9, go to FILE => PROPERTIES.

In the INITIAL VEW TAB, under LAYOUT AND MAGNIFICATION.

Set the NAVIGATION TAB to BOOKMARKS PANEL AND PAGE or PAGES PANEL AND PAGE.

Under window options, select SHOW => DOCUMENT TITLE. This is usually more meaningful than the file name.

Select the ideal magnification, which page you want it to open to and check any boxes you see fit.

That’s it! Now when the PDF is opened, it will appear as you want it to appear and will be easy to navigate.

Filed Under: Acrobat Tagged With: Acrobat, bookmarks, Links, navigate, pages panel, PDF

How to subscribe to RSS

May 28, 2009 By CDT Leave a Comment

RSS in Plain English by Common Craft is the best explanation of how to subscribe to an RSS.

Here’s a website that has an RSS feed you may want to subscribe to.
- Farm Equipment Classifieds

Filed Under: Tutorials Tagged With: featured, howto, RSS, video

Organizing Photoshop Files

October 29, 2008 By CDT 8 Comments

Do your Photoshop layers look like this? Take five minutes more and organize the files before archiving or handing off to a service bureau or another designer.

Organizing files in general is important. Photoshop files can become unwieldy after adding a couple dozen layers, paths and alpha channels if you don’t maintain an organization system. Files are archived for later use or handed off to another design for some reason or another. Taking over a Photoshop file, or any file from a disorganized designer can be a nightmare, so just take a few extra seconds while you are working to tidy up the file. The sanity you save may be your own.

Do your Photoshop layers look like this? Take five minutes more and organize the files before archiving or handing off to a service bureau or another designer.

Recently, a designer sent me a Photoshop document with over 130 unnamed, unorganized, scattered shape layers. It took 45 minutes to organize the layers before I could start working.

Here are some tips to keep your files neat and organized.

Name your layers.

Yes, all of them. Give them unique, meaningful names that will be easy to recognize later.

Group related layers.

If you have twelve layers of type, put them in a layer group called “type”. Not too tough. If you have a tree, branches, apples and a drop shadow on seventeen different layers, put them in a group called “apple tree”. Simple.

Collapse expanded layers or groups.

Yes, I know Photoshop defaults to expand everything all the time. Yes, it’s a pain to click that extra time. Yes, I have requested that Adobe change this. Just take the fraction of a second necessary to collapse each expanded layer as it is created. You will gain the benefit of seeing more layers in the panel at one time making it easier to edit.

Always save the original PSD.

Seems like common sense, but you would be surprised how often the original file is unavailable when revision time comes around. Save the original layered PSD and send a flattened file to clients for approval.

Delete empty layers

As you are working, you may copy text from one layer to another leaving the first layer empty. Deleting an object in Photoshop does not make the layer containing it to go away. The shape or text may be gone, but the layer is left behind.

Work in the correct color mode.

This may not seem like an organization issue, but it is a common mistake. If you designing for print, work in CMYK. Designing for web, RGB. It really doesn’t seem like a big deal when you are printing from your desktop ink jet, but when you send your file out to a commercial printer you might find this to be a costly oversight.

Happy Photoshopping.

Filed Under: Photoshop, Tips Tagged With: featured, file, organization, Photoshop, Tips