Ryan Marganti over at SoulSizzle.com runs through what WordPress hooks are, and how you might use them including some simple examples. He reviews WordPress filters, edits to your functions.php file, the get_terms hook, and where you might find out more references about hooks. This is a nice introduction for WordPress theme or plugin developer newbie. […]
Free SEO tools to fine tune your Website
Now that I’ve launched the Digital Designer blog, I’ve been looking for guidance on what my intrepid visitors are up to when they get here. In addition, I wanted to make sure I was keyword optimizing my pages to attract the right type of visitors from Google and other search engines. There I was, with a lot of questions and in need of serious feedback on my SEO – hoping my visitors are getting good use out of my content. Off I went, venturing out on the Interwebs to find some free SEO tools to help me answer my questions and improve my search engine rankings.
If you’re in a similar situation, hopefully you were smart enough to use a SEO optimized theme for your CMS or blog. If you didn’t, you should switch to one…
Embracing HTML5, CSS3 is a power play worth billions
Each day HTML5 and CSS3 show up on my radar more and more, like some kind of incessant reality show that dominates the topic of conversation at the office water cooler. But in this case, HTML5 and CSS3 dominate Internet chatter and the trends I follow on Twitter, where HTML5/CSS3-related issues have really been picking up steam. As I alluded to here in my previous post about HTML5, and as evidenced by this article on the coming build of Internet Explorer 9, HTML5 and CSS3, compliance is likely to shift the balance of power in Web development software. Adobe (which is currently the dominant player in Rich Internet Application development) is likely to see their current market presence they’ve enjoyed curtailed by competitors such as Apple, Microsoft and Google who suddenly have a jones for the open standard HTML5/CSS3 offers…
16 Twitter rules for high performance results
I was like most people when I first heard about Twitter, I didn’t get it and was dismissive. I said things like, “Oh, this is like AIM, only you’re broadcasting to EVERYONE on the planet.” “What’s with this character restriction… 140 characters?” “This is crap.” Then I realized that it was tied to standard mobile texting character limits. “OK cool, but I really don’t get this Web interface, and why are they asking for my mobile number?”
Life happens, and Twitter moved on without me, time passing as Twitter's user base just kept growing. I started to come around slowly and soon found the true power under the hood…
SEO in WordPress themes, duplicate meta description tags
I’m using a theme for my blog called “Journalist”. I wanted something no-nonsense, with a minimalist 2 column layout that I could remix to my taste. Once I read Matt Mullenweg (founder of Automattic) uses it, I was sold. I realized when making this choice, I was using an older theme (optimized for 2.7) and I was aware it didn’t have some of the bells and whistles of some of the more expansive Wordpress theme frameworks. This made me mindful to continually review what I was doing, looking out for conflicts with the latest Wordpress install, and researching features I needed to add myself. I’m glad I stayed on top of this, because a SEO problem was occurring in my header.php file I didn’t catch originally when I was tweaking the theme…