» Desktop Blogging Software Review: ScribeFire

Earlier in the Spring I posted a review of BlogJet, I can’t believe it’s taken me 5 months to finally get around to writing my review of ScribeFire.

When I decided to start writing my desktop blogging software review series, ScribeFire was the second desktop tool I tried. And I have to admit, in the beginning I was very skeptical. I used it a couple of times and it just didn’t feel comfortable. But that’s all changed now. I recently gave ScribeFire another look and have been using it more regularly and I’m really growing to like it.

Features Which Set It Apart

• Split screen view. It splits the browser in half so I have a web page in the top half of the browser window and the ScribeFire Editor on the lower half.
• ScribeFire is Add-on Extension to FireFox.
• Add categories to the blog from the editor… can’t do this with BlogDesk.
• Choose to publish as a Post, Page or Draft.
• Toggle between Visual and Code editors without going to the main menu.. it’s on the WYSIWYG interface.
• A current archive of Posts and Pages which you can edit without having to go into the WordPress Interface.
• Work on multiple posts at a time with the use of tabs for each individual post.

All-in-all I really like using ScribeFire… it’s easy to use, it’s feature rich and it’s free. For the last 5 months I’ve actually been using BlogDesk as my primary desktop blogging tool but over the last 3 weeks I’ve been using ScribeFire more and enjoying it.

Do have feedback about the ScribeFire Desktop Blogging Tool? if so, post comments and share your experience with others.

Posted in Reviews | No Comments

» A List Apart Web Design Survey for Web Professionals

I saw this come through via the Blog Herald RSS Feed… A List Apart put together an 18 page survey for web designers and web professionals. This is the second year they have conducted this survey. They took a lot from what they learned last year to make this years survey even better.

If you are a web designer or web professional, please take a few minutes to take their survey. A List Apart will release a report with the tallied results later this year.

Posted in Announcements | No Comments

» ShareThis! Social Bookmarking Widget

The buzz across the web and all the Search Engine Conferences for the last couple of years has been social media marketing or SMM. The social media platform can be a very powerful tool for your blog, feed or website.

My favorite social media plugin is ShareThis! for Wordpress. ShareThis! actually started (and still is) a widget that can be customized to your liking and placed on your website or blog. With Wordpress you still have to go to the web and register for a ShareThis! Account and the plugin makes it easy to include the button in your content.

I like ShareThis! for a few reasons…

• It allows for interaction with all the top social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Stumble Upon, Technorati etc.
• It also has an email a friend function.
• Reporting features in the ShareThis! web panel.
• Compact.. it doesn’t add 25 little buttons to your content.
• Within Worpress.. very easy to manually configure where you want your ShareThis! Button to be placed if you don’t like the auto placement.

Posted in My Favorite Plugins | No Comments

» URLs Restricted by Robots.txt in Google Webmaster Tools

The other night I popped into the Wordpress Support Forum to see if I could help solve anyone’s issues. One thread I responded to had to deal with someones site not being indexed properly by Google, plus Webmaster Tools was stating the site urls are restricted by robots.txt… but the site didn’t have a robots.txt.

Read more…

Posted in SEO Stuff, Tutorials | No Comments

» Dreamweaver Template to Wordpress Theme Variation

Last year I published a tutorial outlining how to convert a Dreamweaver Template into a Wordpress Theme. In that first method we detached the page from the Dreamweaver template and we eventually broke the templated file into the various Wordpress include files. In this alternate variation we will keep the association between the themes files & the Dreamweaver Template intact. We’ll drop the Wordpress Loop and sidebar code into the editable regions of the Dreamweaver Templated page via source code or split view. And just like in the first tutorial, we will also be merging style sheets together without bringing over too much code so theres no weird cascading effects from overlapping styles.

When converting a Dreamweaver Template to a Wordpress Theme, I personally prefer to use the initial method because creating a full on Wordpress Theme with all it’s include files makes managing your Wordpress CMS or Blog easier and more versatile in my opinion.

Suggested Requirements

• At the very minimum your Dreamweaver Template needs to have one editable region for the main body area and one editable region for the side bar area.
• Any person attempting to use this tutorial should have a moderate understanding of HTML & CSS, a pretty good understanding of how Dreamweaver Templates work, a good attention to detail and common sense.
• Most important, you should read through the original tutorial as this one is a quick bulleted todo list, where the original method goes into a little more detail. Read through both and decide which route you want to take.
• Read the primers for Theme Development and The Wordpress Loop… at least once.

Read more…

Posted in Tutorials | 1 Comment

» Wordpress is Search Engine Friendly

Considering the business I’m in, it only makes sense to use tools that make building search engine friendly websites more efficient. Which is why I use Wordpress for a number of my projects because it’s internal architecture is designed to be search engine friendly.

WordPress, straight out of the box, comes ready to embrace search engines. Its features and functions guide a search engine through the posts, pages, and categories to help the search engine crawl your site and gather the information it needs to include your site within its database.

WordPress comes with several built in search optimization tools, including the ability to use .htaccess to create apparently static URLs called permalinks, blogrolling, and pinging. There are also a number of third party plugins and hacks which can be used for search engine optimization (SEO).

excerpt from wordpress.org - Search Engine Optimization for Wordpress

It’s out of the box features and the various Wordpress SEO plugins available combined with it’s ease of use make it a very powerful tool. I’ve been working with content managements systems for a number of years now and hands down.. I think Wordpress is the most search engine friendly on the market.

So whether you want to start a blog, build a website using a content management system or both… I recommend using Wordpress. It makes doing business online easy and affordable.

Need some help building a website? Check out our website services or contact us for a free consultation.

Posted in Why Wordpress? | No Comments

» Follow up to Goal Conversions in Google Analytics

A few weeks back I posted an article highlighting what I thought was the solution to my Google Analytics goal conversion tracking dilemma. I later posted a comment noting that the solution did not work.

To catch you up to speed, I have a client who needs to track more than the alloted 4 conversion goals allowed in a Google Analytics profile. According to Google Help docs, to track more conversions you’re supposed to set up additional profiles.

Read more…

Posted in Web Resources | No Comments

» Goal Conversions in Google Analytics

One of my clients decided that we they needed to start tracking certain goals or conversions on the website via Google Analytics. So I set up the the allotted conversion goals / funnels, but I needed more.

According to Google Analytics documentation or Help Center, they say that if you need to more than four goal conversions… set up additional profiles. So I did.. I took the snippet of java script code (we’re using the Legacy Tracking Code - urchin.js) and pasted it along side the other script. I waited a couple of days and noticed that the second profile wasn’t collecting data.

Read more…

Posted in Tutorials, Web Resources | 3 Comments

» A Great New Anti Spam Bot Plugin

I came across a great new plugin this morning.. I’ve been looking for this exact plugin for a while now. The plugin is called is_human() by Nick Berlette. With one tiny snippet of code placed into the comments.php file and you have catpcha security integrated into you site. Upon activation it automatically embeds it self in your Wordpress Registration page.

I have a blog called Tehachapi Daily which is completely open to the community to post to the site. They are granted contributor level access immediately upon registration and get worried sometimes about all the spam registers I get. Now with is_human(), I’ve got Catpha security.

Thanks Nick for developing this new plugin.

Download is_human()

Posted in My Favorite Plugins, Reviews | No Comments

» When A Deactivated Plugin Breaks Your Blog

I logged into my dashboard and saw a post in the WP feed about what to do if your blog goes down upon deactivating a plugin. I’ve had this happen to me a couple of times. The plugins I usually have this issue with are..

• Related Posts
• Breadcrumb Navigation
• Recent Posts
• My Category Order

When a plugin breaks my site.. if I know for certain I’m going to be reactivating the plugin anytime soon I go ahead and delete the PHP call for the plugin. If I think I’m going be using the plugin in question again I comment it out instead.

How to ID the Plugin Causing the Problem?

If you’re new to Wordpress and PHP, one thing the original article left out was how to ID the Faulty Plugin. The error message usually tells you. Lets say you deactivated al plugins and now your front page has this message..

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: get_breadcrumb() in /home/hostname/public_html/websitename/wp-content/themes/genesis-10/header.php on line 48

I have all the info I need to quickly find the bad code and either comment it out or delete it. I know that on line 48 in the header file of the Genesis theme i need to find the code get_breadcrumb(). Make sure to include the open and close php brackets that enclose the call.

Posted in Wordpress Tips & Tricks | No Comments