» Optimizing Website Page Speed
April 13th, 2010 Sammy RussoOk, we know page speed is important because fast sites equal happy users. And from my last post we know how to run a test for page speed. But the big question remains is how does one go about optimizing their site using the feedback from the speed tests? Read more…
» Analyzing Website Page Speeds
April 12th, 2010 Sammy RussoPage loading speeds are important to websites, especially now that page speed is part of the Google search algorithm. To analyze the page speed or load time of your website, here are 3 free and easy ways to analyze your websites page speed.
Read more…
» Rounded Corners with CSS
May 8th, 2009 Sammy RussoSome good stuff on creating rounded corners with css for your website. Check out http://www.roundedcornr.com.
Use the RoundedCornr engine to generate the images and CSS code for…
- Basic Rounded Corners
- Rounded Corners with a Gradient
- Rounded Corners with a Border
- Single Rounded Corner Image
And here are a couple of great tutorials on rounded corners with CSS.
http://kalsey.com/2003/07/rounded_corners_in_css/
http://www.cssjuice.com/25-rounded-corners-techniques-with-css/
Enjoy
» Social Networking & Social Media Optimization
August 23rd, 2008 Sammy RussoI just finished a successful week at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose. While traveling home to Southern California on the Amtrak train.. I had some to reflect on what on what I took away from the conference. The hot topic was social media and social networking.
» URLs Restricted by Robots.txt in Google Webmaster Tools
July 28th, 2008 Sammy RussoThe 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.
» Dreamweaver Template to Wordpress Theme Variation
July 13th, 2008 Sammy RussoLast 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.
» Goal Conversions in Google Analytics
June 11th, 2008 Sammy RussoOne 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.
» Upgrading Wordpress Using Dreamweaver
January 6th, 2008 Sammy RussoDreamweaver is my primary web development tool… I use it for writing code and for FTP. There are a lot of folks out there who swear up and down that Dreamweaver FTP is aweful. Personally I love it and I’ve never, ever had an issue.
Here it goes Read more…
» Dreamweaver Templates into Wordpress Themes
September 25th, 2007 Sammy RussoThis tutorial explains how to take your Dreamweaver Template and convert it into a Wordpress Theme. I also posted a variation of this tutorial where I leave the Dreamweaver Template intact. You may want to read through both before you begin.
Through this process we’ll start by creating a blank Dreamweaver Templated page, we’ll detach it from the Dreamweaver Template, insert the Wordpress loop, sidebar & header code, adjust the stylesheet a bit and finally break the page into the various Wordpress include files typically used in a Wordpress theme. We’ll be grabbing the Wordpress loop, sidebar and header code from the Default Wordpress Kubrick Theme and pasting it into the Dreamweaver Templated page.
I like to create a new page from the Dreamweaver Template I plan to convert and name it index.html, then I detach the file from the template for a few reasons. First, once in Wordpress, you don’t need all that extra Dreamweaver template mark up. And second, Dreamweaver doesn’t understand the WP commands when including the header, footer and sidebar files because they aren’t standard includes. Finally, this allows me to work in WSYIWYG version for most of the process. However, I suggest you get used to working in split mode (code & Design).
Before we start converting your Dreamweaver Template into a complete Wordpress Theme, please note that you will need a good working knowledge of HTML and CSS, a very basic understanding of PHP, and good attention to detail.
And By all means.. if you get stumped or don’t understand a part of my explanation, please leave a comment with your issue and I’ll try and follow up.. I’m usually pretty fast to respond.
» Simple Maintenance – Backup Everything
January 6th, 2007 Sammy RussoBackups are so important, yet one might not appreciate them until you something catastrophic happens and you actually need one. I currently administer several Word Press Blogs (this being one of them) and working on launching another here very soon… I found it very educational to actually go through the entire backup and restoring process of one my blog sites.
Fortunately for me I have a development blog that is password protected and strictly for the use of a web team that I work with. We use it to post design samples, project lists and assign tasks to the individuals involved. So we decided that being the WebDev blog is not live so to speak that we do a practice run of restoring it from backup files so we know the process if anything crashed on one of our live sites.
