sixthandelm.com » Blogging and Web Design

VTKS Revolt

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:14:52 +0000

Adam periodically sends me blog stories he thinks I might like and many of them are related to my new obsession: Typography. He just sent me an article from Noupe.com entitled “50 Incredible Fonts for Professional Web & Print Design” and included in the list was a free font I have previously overlooked called VTKS Revolt. I think I am in love.

Share This.

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:20:13 +0000

Adam found a new plug-in (well, new to me) for a website he is designing and I decided to share. There are many different views when it comes to the social media icons you should include in your posts to entice people to blog about your article, submit it to Digg or StumbleUpon, post to Facebook or any of a million other choices. Some feel that the more icons, the better as it increases your chance of being submitted. Others shun the design of this approach and opt for none to keep the page simple, reasoning that if someone really wanted to submit a post they would find a way or most likely already had a toolbar button for this purpose.

I’ve always been in the middle, flipping back and forth, so I was really happy to find the Share This Plug-In that you can see demonstrated at the bottom of this post. It is unobtrusive, mostly text based in design and kinda cute. It has evolved into a web service (www.sharethis.com) and you can login and access stats about your site’s submissions and preferences across all Share This enabled sites. Go ahead, click on it. See all the options? No, really, go click on it. Come on, just click on it! You can’t fully appreciate it until you do. There, see how cool it is? .So, hopefully this entices some of you to get to Digging or Stumbling and posting my more educational or entertaining posts, after you hop on by to the website for the Share This plug-in and grab it for your own blog.

I just realized this is an Alex King Plug-in, my favorite plug-in designer…OH GOD! Just also realized I am way more than a gigantic dork. I have a favorite plug-in designer. Beyond dork.

Twitter Buttons For Your Blog

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:38:56 +0000

I made some Twitter buttons with the old and the new birdy thing for you to use on your blog if you want. To use, just copy the code below the icon you would like to use, replacing the text in bold to your actual Twitter username. If it’s not working, you can always right-click save the images, upload to your blog server and use that way. Enjoy!

yourtwitterusername“>

Blog Check-up Part 2 – Taking Advantage of Tags

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:26:16 +0000

Like many, I assign categories to all my posts but I lag a little when it comes to tagging because, well, it’s boring and I hate doing it. But tags are important to help you organize your posts and help readers find archived posts when the categories simply don’ t give enough information. Tags are also part of a good SEO system (search engine optimization – getting higher on search results); even though some bots and crawlers don’t rely too heavily on tags since they have been abused in the past, they are still indexed and do help drive traffic to your site.

Post Tags

Many people ask what the difference between categories and tags and it can be a bit fuzzy. A category is the topic of your post, a high level summary. The tags are a list of anything that is mentioned in the post and anything people might search Google for, such as specific people, websites, plug-ins, products, locations or events.

I had no intention of trolling through 800+ posts to tag the ones I have already written. WP Calais Archive Tagger is a WordPress Plug-in that will search the content of your previous posts and add relevant tags to each one. It is fun to watch it generate the tags for each post and made me look back to figure out what I wrote on the post that it tagged “Tia, Toronto, conductive paint, in-the-car panic attacks, Christmas and electrophoresis.”

Going forward I plan on using the Tagaroo Tag plug-in, also from the Calais community, that will suggest tags for the new post as I write and even allow me to look up relevant Flickr images right on the write-post page.

Meta Tags and Meta Descriptions

Meta tags are the invisible tags viewable only by bots and crawlers indexing your site and help determine the categories and search results your site should be included in and the relative position on the search results page. To manually add Meta tags in WordPress:

1. On your WordPress admin, click the design tab, and the theme editor sub-tab.
2. Select the Header Template
3. In the header you will see the following:

<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?><?php wp_title(); ?>

4. Directly under this, enter your meta tags. The resulting code would appear as follows:

<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?><?php wp_title(); ?>
A description of your site“>
Keywords, words, describing, your,
site“>

The words in bold must be replaced by a quick description line and the keywords you want to use.

If your template doesn’t look like this, or you are using blogger instead of WordPress, just add the meta tags and description in the format of the code shown above just below the tag and you should be good.

INstead of doing this manually, you could use a meta tag plug-in, such as the Add-Meta-Tags WordPress Plugin. This is a slightly more comprehensive solution as it adds tags to single post pages, template pages and archive pages too. But though plug-ins are great, the more you have the more chance you will have for an incompatible plug-in clash that shuts down the site until you disable it so it is good to know how to do it by hand, too.

Alt Image Tags

When an image is not able to load, the alt image text is what is displayed instead. These tags, along with the image title are what search engines use to find relevant pictures when people search image engines such as Google images. Again, you can go back and alt tag all your old images or, as always, you can be a lazy-ass like me and find a plug-in to do it for you. SEO Friendly images will add the alt image tag to your old and new images based on the title of the image and the title of the post. It is best to hand-tag them in the future so you can make more relevant tags, but for the 800+ posts I have already written, this will do fine for me. Maybe I’ll get around to hand-tagging all my past images. Maybe I’ll get around to scrubbing all the baseboards in my house and cleaning all the windows by hand too.

How Healthy is Your Blog? Blog Check-up Part 1

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:30:39 +0000

Here are a few handy online tools to help you spring clean (fall clean?) your blog and make sure it is optimized, tagged and correct. I am a notorious bad speller so I need to use a lot of these to find spelling errors, mis-linked hyperlinks and weirdly-spelled meta tags.

I do not own any of these sites and have tried most, but not all. Always use discretion when giving your email address, but the sites I have been to all had online reputations and recommendations and clearly stated privacy policies, so I felt safe with them.

Spell Checking:

http://www.netmechanic.com/cobrands/FutureQuest/spell_check.htm

http://www.texttrust.com/

http://orangoo.com/spell/

Finding Broken Links:

www.linktiger.com/

http://www.creatingonline.com/site_promotion/broken_link_checker.htm

http://validator.w3.org/checklink

http://www.netmechanic.com/cobrands/FutureQuest/link_check.htm

Browser Compatibility Checking: (How does my blog look in other internet browsers?)

http://www.netmechanic.com/cobrands/FutureQuest/compat_check.htm

http://browsershots.org/

I didn’t mention any HTML validation in this article – that is a little more behind-the-scenes and a topic for a more in-depth article about website maintenance, but I will be writing about validators and other web developer tools in the future.

How to iPhone-ize Your Blog

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:50:09 +0000

I want an iPhone. I want it bad. I can’t have one until December 28th ( …don’t get me started on why Rogers wont let me have one until then) but until then I will have to settle for stealing Adam’s every second he forgets to hide it.

My lovely web-designing, iPhone toting husband has attempted to placate my pining by helping me iPhone-ize sixthandelm.com. This involved creating a custom webclip icon for this site and informing me of a really handy WordPress plug-in to make your blog iPhone-format friendly.

1. A webclip is similar to a favicon, for an iPhone. When your site is bookmarked as a menu item by anyone on an iPhone the webclip will automatically display instead of a standard safari bookmark icon. Below are the webclips Adam created for my site, his photoblog and the website for Wonderday.ca, a group started and run by Adam and some friends. He even listed a tutorial for creating your own and loading the file on your website so it is automatically recognized and displayed by iPhones.

2. WPTouch is the nicest mobile webpage formatter I have seen. It takes your site and makes it mobile friendly, easy to read on an iPhone. It acts as a WordPress theme, with customizable colours and icons, but in actuality it is a WordPress plug-in and set up and customized like any other plug-in on WordPress. The extras are stripped and it presents a really clean list of your latest posts with a dropdown menu to view other pages on your site. It does not affect your blog appearance on regular computers, only the iPhone.

With the explosion of the mobile web, it is really important to have an easily navigable version of your site for people on the go. So now my site is iPhone-optimized and all I need is the damn phone.

A bonus tip from Adam on how he created the above screenshots of his phone for me:

A tip to get a screen grab of your iPhone (like shown above) simply hold down the home button and then click the lock button on the top of your phone once, and it will flash white and send the image to your camera roll in your phone.. where you can sync it up with your computer or simply email the pic to yourself.

HOW TO: Update Technorati’s Image of Your Site

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 14:35:50 +0000

Technorati used to rely on Alexa to produce the thumbnails used when indexing websites and Blogs, but I discovered that they are now using Snapshots from Snap.com, which explains why my Alexa thumbnail was current, but the thumbnail shown on Technorati was about 8 months old and showed my old blog design.

Never heard of Snapshots? You know when you go to a site and roll over a link and that giant picture bubble pops up with a thumbnail and description (and usually an ad too)? Yeah, That’s them. I think they’re kind of annoying, but some people find them handy. To each his own, I guess.

Getting Snap.com to update their thumbnail of your site is easy. Follow this link, and click on #14 – How do I update a preview image for a page. They are usually updated within 24 hours of submitting the request.

Snap Shots FAQ" src="http://kwout.com/cutout/h/yf/te/hrw_bor_sha.jpg" alt="hrw bor sha HOW TO: Update Technoratis Image of Your Site" width="518" height="209" />

Et voila!

How to Get Attention While Wasting Time Online

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 02:20:19 +0000

Yeah, yeah, you’re supposed to be posting items in the shop or making a new ad banner for Project Wonderful, but you know you’re gonna spend almost the whole time looking at cute pictures of your friend’s new cat on Flickr or looking up old boyfriends on Facebook. While you’re there, you might as well get a little marketing done. Here are some ways to drum up some interest for your shop while wasting time on the internet.

Upload all your item photos. *Given*
Search the Flickr groups for keywords related to Etsy or your craft and join the groups.
Upload a few photos to each group whenever you are on Flickr. Etsy sellers, buyers and bloggers all frequent the groups as well as more popular design bloggers.
Make sure you have a link to your website in your profile. As per Flickr rules you are not supposed to use Flickr for marketing so you are not supposed to add your Etsy site address, just your blog address, but I haven’t been caught yet. Please don’t rat on me.
Search for users with tags related to Etsy or your craft and add these artists as a contact. Chances are they will add you too and see the your new items when you upload them to Flicker.
Comment on other artist’s photos – a lot. People follow the link back to your profile if you do, I promise.
Add me as a contact

Search Etsy forums for “Twitter” to find other Etsy buyers and sellers to follow. They will probably follow you too.
Go to TwitterFeed.com and set up your Etsy shop RSS so you will generate an automatic Tweet whenever you post an item to your Etsy shop. While you’re there set up a tweet for your blog too. contact me if you need help with RSS or finding your Etsy RSS URL.
Fill out your profile and make sure there are links to your Etsy shop, blog and/or Flickr account.
Go to your favorite design blogs and look for a “follow me on Twitter” link to follow them. Even if they don’t follow you, they will probably still at least check out your webpage.
Of course, follow me on Twitter!

Add the My Etsy Application to your Facebook Profile – Go to the App page and enter your ID. While on that page (after hitting submit) go to the very top of facebook and go to Settings>My Etsy Settings (the settings menu beside your name) and chose the “Profile” tab, then click “add” beside the Box selection. You can try the Etsy Shop App too, but I just got an error when I tried to add it.
Join the Etsy Sellers Facebook Group, upload some pictures, explore the group page and write on the wall or participate in the discussions. Sellers can be buyers too, and I have referred more than one buyer I could not help to Etsy Sellers I talk to on facebook, Flickr or forums.
Add photos of your shop items into albums in your Photos section.
Add other Etsyians as friends by searching for “facebook” in Etsy forum posts (like this thread, or this one) to find people who want to add other Etsy sellers or buyers to their friend lists.
If you want to get REALLY into it, you can make a Facebook page for your store, and encourage other Etsyians to become your fans if you become theirs. I have not done this yet since I don’t have time to maintain a store on Facebook too, and this list is mostly for quick ideas you can do while puttering online.
Add me as a friend: (make sure you let me know you’re an Etsyian, or I’ll think you were a random serial-friender).

Add shops and items to your favorites, especially new shops. They shops with 1000+ hearts don’t always have time to visit each shop when someone favorites them, but the newer sellers will without fail.
Choose an interesting shop item of yours for your avatar. When people see your avatar in convos or forum posts they will be curious and click through to your shop.
Participate in lots of forum threads. Lots. Talk it up, baby.
Join street teams.
Create treasuries, or make friend with people who do!
Pitch story ideas for the Storque to the editors. If accepted, you will get a lot of exposure for authoring an article.
If you have nothing new to list, renew items on a regular basis to keep your page appearing in the recently listed sections.
As always, check out my shop.

Other Online Distractions:

Check out your Etsy stats at Majaba.org
Comment regularly on the Indie and design blogs you read
Add your name to the Etsy Sellers Blog List
Check out my blog! Oh, wait, you’re there now…

Yay for justifiable online puttering!

Twitter Patterns

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:01:10 +0000

Need a new Twitter background? TwitterPatterns has lots of cute patterns, instructions on how to use and a nice clean design overall. I’m thinking of giving up my trademark brown (like I have a trademark on the the colour brown) for their cute Argyle designs.

How To: Update Alexa Thumbnail Previews of Your Site

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:41:16 +0000

Over time many of us like to change the look and feel of our blogs and websites and it is important that the most recent version of our site is being indexed by popular sites such as Alexa, a traffic ranking stats site that many people use to find new sites of interest. This will ensure that your website is up to date both on Alexa’s stat pages, but also on services that use Alexa Site Thumbnail Service. I went to Alexa’s site recently and for some reason it was showing a very outdated version of my blog’s screen shot. Updating it is pretty easy by one of two means:

1. Go to http://www.alexa.com/data/details/contact_info?url=http://yoursite.com – changing the yoursite.com to the exact web address of your blog or shop. Once there you will see the current thumbnail that Alexa has on file for you. If it is out of date, click the link below the thumbnail that says “Update Thumbnail Image of….” and your image will be updated in a few days to 1 week.

2. If the above URL has been changed and is no longer working, and if you have the Alexa toolbar installed on your browser, you can do the above by simply surfing to your site and clicking the “iInfo” tab. On the dropdown menu choose “More Site Info” and on the page that loads scroll to the bottom to the link labeled “Correct errors and omissions in this listing.” This will bring you to the info edit page I mentioned in the first method. This method is actually preferred because the direct link I listed above may change in the future if Alexa ever does a site re-org.

Making sure your Alexa Image is up to date is part of a healthy site maintenance and keeps your most recent brand image in the eyes of your readers! Plus it’s annoying to see that old image pop up in different places.