Blog•
on September 3rd, 2010•
This is a blog about using WordPress in order to create a wiki area for team collaboration purposes.
First of all, what is a wiki area? If you are familiar with Wikipedia, a wiki is a website page that can be edited by any number of people. The changes made can then be reflected immediately or can join a line queue of approval before they proceed to the live website.
The way this could play out for you is to have a spot on your church website where church members can go in and add their name next to a date/time to bring food to someone in need. It could also be used as a collaborative team effort to write a paper or even edit website content through different concerned parties.
So, first things first, there is a plugin that deals directly with a Wikipedia-type function. This plugin is called WordPress Wiki. But, I am not going to write about using this. I am going to write about a different option. My experience with WP-Wiki was that it did not function well within WordPress 3.0+.
Here are instructions to set up your own wiki page that can only be edited by people to whom you provide a username & password:
- Add the following plugins to your WordPress admin area
- Create a new page that will become your Wiki area page.
- In your WordPress menu, go to Appearance > Widgets and click on Widgets.
- Add the Sidebar Login Widget to your sidebar area.
- Now, in your WordPress menu, go to Users > Add New.
- Create a new user with an Editor role. Be sure to note the username & password.
- Go to the menu item Restrictions > Pages. In this area, choose to ‘Restrict Selected Roles for selected pages.’ Put a check mark next to the Page Editor for the wiki page.
- Now go to the menu item Roles > Pages. Here you can assign your new user the ability to become a page editor for the new Wiki Page you have created. These past two steps will limit the pages that can be edited to just the new wiki page.
- Now test it out. Go to your new wiki page. Enter your username & password. After logging in, you should be able to double click on any text on that page to edit it.
- Now, send an email to those with an interest in editing this page. Give them the URL, the username & password, and instructions on how to double click to edit and to click save to populate the changes.
If you have any questions or additional information, please use the comment form below. Happy wiki!
Blog•
on August 26th, 2010•
I’ve been hearing strange tidbits of information as of late in how people are accessing content from the Internet. One was that people are now spending more time using social media than they are using email. Another was that the web was dead, but that the Internet was still alive. And it’s not just Prince that made this comment. Chris Anderson, the famous creator of the “Long Tail” and “Freemium” ideas wrote an article where he exclaimed that the web was dead.
When I hear comments like this, I generally distrust them at first. The web dead? Come on. But as I began to look at my own online behavior, some of these thoughts began to make sense and I began pondering these trends a bit more.
Why is social media more popular than email? How many spam messages a day do you receive in your personal email account? How many do you receive in Facebook? Facebook is a controlled environment. Everyone in the world has access to your email account. Only people you specify have access to send you a message on Facebook.
And what about the web being dead? Chris Anderson is referring to the World Wide Web (www). His view is that the use of the Internet is as popular as ever, but the use of the Web is losing traction.
Again, I thought Mr. Anderson was in error until I considered how I access a lot of my content now. I have an iPhone. In the morning, I read the headlines from the Wall St. Journal, the NY Times, and NPR on my iPhone. Only, I don’t go to the Safari browser on my iPhone, I go to the apps (applications) that these companies have available for free for the iPhone.
After that, I may check what my friends are doing on Facebook and Twitter. Later on, when I take a run, I use a GPS-based app that tracks my run, how fast (or slow) and how far I’ve gone. Again, an app. Up until this point, I have not accessed the World Wide Web. I could go on through the rest of my day, but you see the point. As Chris Anderson wrote, it’s “less about the searching, more about the getting.”
So, what does this mean for your company? Will people stop looking at your website? No, of course not. But, the role your website plays might be shifting.
The way I view it is that your website should be the place where all public information related to your company resides. If people really want to know all about your company, then there should be a place for them to view that information on your website.
But you should also have an app related to your company, or some sort of a mobile presence. I see this as your interactive piece. This is how you communicate with your clients. This is where you have your most important information that people regularly seek (as simple as the address, phone number, open times, etc.). The app should provide ways for clients to get your information easily, not a place where they have to search long and hard.
So, in this shifting landscape, are you preparing for this change? Have you begun thinking about an App to release on the iPhone and other major smartphones? Have you begun brainstroming what sort of content, games, podcasts, etc. you could have on your app? Have you figured out a way to make money from these apps?
Blog•
on August 24th, 2010•
I just ran into a problem where I couldn’t copy text from a PDF file. Normally, I can highlight text, copy it, and paste it elsewhere. But for this one particular PDF file, I was unable to do so.
The way I got around this was by uploading the file to Google Docs. Google Docs converted the text to a format that I could copy and paste. Here are the instructions:
- Sign in or create your Google Docs account: http://www.google.com/docs
- Click the “Upload” link.
- Select your file to upload.
- In the check box, make sure you check the selection: “Convert text from PDF or image files to Google Docs documents.”
- Click “Start Upload.”
- Once you have done this, click on the link and the text from the PDF file should now be in text format that you can copy and paste.
Blog•
on August 11th, 2010•
As a website designer and developer, I enjoy keeping an eye on trends in the marketplace and watching patters with my clients. The process of creating and maintaining a website has undergone dramatic changes in just the last few years, not to mention the last decade.
In the not so distant past, website design for a company was about creating static pages of information. What I mean by static is that the design and content lived on the same HTML page that was usually too complicated to be updated by the client. So, website designers would create a website and then be called upon for each small copy or image update.
What has happened recently is that a separation has occurred between the design and the content. The design is on one side of the development process, but the content doesn’t live on the same file (or website page) as the design. Within the design, code is used that calls the content (ex. biography, photo, links) to be loaded onto the page from a Database. Thus, the information doesn’t reside with the website designer, but is now placed in the hands of the client who can update and maintain their own content.
A website page that calls the content from a database is called a dynamic page. We have moved from static website pages to pages that are dynamically driven and able to be updated by the client via computer or mobile device. The page will look the same to the end user.
The main shift here is that the client has become the owner and editor of their own content.
This may seem like an added task to the client. Something they want to outsource anyway. But, here’s the key feature. If you set up a dynamically driven site for your client, you are empowering them. They now have a database of their own information that they will keep forever. Think of it this way. If you purchase an iPhone, you can load, update, and maintain all of the information on that iPhone. Maybe you want to update the case around the iPhone every few years to the latest design trends, but that iPhone will be yours and you will be in charge of what it contains.
Here is an image that shows this process in a very basic way. The client now has their own user interface where they can add, remove, and archive information in their database without knowing the first thing about database management. Those changes take place in a website Admin area and are reflected in the database. The front end of the website (what the user sees on his/her computer) then pulls this updated information from the database.
Similarly, as a website designer and developer, you can maintain working relationships with your clients by updating the look and feel of their website every few years. You can incorporate the new standards and abilities available. But that database will remain the same for that client.
This is a very exciting shift. As your clients continue to see the importance of their website in gaining new clients, making new sales, or promoting their idea, they will want to maintain a closer relationship to that content and will have the ability by maintaining their own content.
I often run across the need to standardize the size of photos or images for a given project. In the past, I would go into an image editing software program to make all image sizes uniform. But if you have a Mac, there is a much easier way to do this:
- Place all relevant images into a new folder.
- Open that folder and select all of the images (command + A) and double click on one of the selected images.
- This will open Preview and all images will show along the right side of the application.
- Click on one of the images and do another select all (command + A)
- Under the Tools menu, click on Adjust Size.
- Here you can designate the width and height of each image. There are some standard options to choose from as well as the ability to determine your own size.
- You’re done. Now all images in that folder will be in the new customized size.
It may be a good idea to make a copy of the images folder before you make this change, just so you have the originals if you ever need them.
I need to give credit here to Josh Winkles for teaching me know how to do this.
In working on websites for a number of different clients, I have worked within quite a few of the hosting companies out there. In this blog, I want to highlight three of these companies and offer my opinions on each one:
GoDaddy
GoDaddy.com
GoDaddy is my favorite hosting company out there. Their customer service is excellent (I have called a lot), their prices are competitive, and they make things very easy for web developers. My only real complaint (other than their trashy advertising) is that some of my clients have experiences brief down times of their websites as GoDaddy’s servers go down. This is extremely rare though and I haven’t seen this happen in the last 4 months.
GoDaddy’s customer service is fast and they usually provide the answer that I need. The representatives are based out of the USA. For prices, type in “GoDaddy Promo Codes” into Google and you will find an array of price-saving coupons. And for making things easy, they have hosting products specific to WordPress where you really don’t need to know anything about setting up a WordPress site to be up and running in no time.
Hostway
http://www.hostway.com/
I have used Hostway hosting for a number of sites. Overall, this is a pretty good company. They have just upgraded their user interface design to make their site easier to navigate. One time, I needed to upgrade to the latest version of PHP, and they were helpful in making that happen. It seems as though every time I have called Hostway, I am connected to a representative in India. At times, there has been a small language or understanding barrier, but overall, their representatives are very knowledgeable and helpful.
Register.com
http://www.register.com/
I don’t have one nice thing to say about Register.com. They are more expensive than the competition and their customer service is horrendous. During a recent problem I had on one of my client’s sites, I called Register.com 8 times. Of those 8 calls, the representative got my phone number and said they would call me back within 2 hours. I only received 1 call back out of those 8 promises.
Recently, Register.com attempted to move one of my sites from one hosting area to another. They promised they could make this happen. Turns out, their tech team couldn’t do it and my site ended up being down for a whole week. During this process, they forgot to move the SSL certificate I had with the website and so a few weeks later, my site was down 4 days again while they fixed that. They also tried to get me to pay for their mistake.
Register.com’s support staff is based out of Nova Scotia I believe. They are an hour ahead of Eastern Time. I have probably spoken to half of their support staff by this point and have only been impressed by a few of them.
Overall, you are not getting your moneys worth with Register.com. If I can help it, I don’t ever plan to use them again. They have caused me enormous stress and anguish.
I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on different hosting companies in the comment box below.
I just ran into the issue of not being able to access the Google Analytics data to which a client provided to me. I have numerous other Analytics accounts showing in my Google Account, but for some reason this one would not show up.
The solution actually ended up being frustratingly easy. Here it is:
- Even if your Gmail account email address is all lowercase (your.email@gmail.com), your analytics account may be set up as both upper & lowercase (Your.Email@gmail.com).
- If your Google Analytics account is a mix of both upper and lowercase, and you try to receive access to someone’s account, it will not work, it must match exactly.
- The way to check this is to sign into your Google Analytics profile – www.google.com/analytics
- Click on Settings in the upper right-hand corner of the page.
- On the next page, you will see the email address as Google Analytics sees it.
- This is the email address to provide someone who is attempting to give you access to view their website analytics.
If you have any trouble, let me know in the comment box below.
Some friends of mine just released an iPhone app that allows you to access your website files and even edit them. The new application is called QuickFTP. You can look it up in the iPhone App Store or click on this link to access it directly:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quickftp/id364306378?mt=8
I had held off on getting an iPad because I really wouldn’t be able to do a lot of my work on the device. But with this iPhone app, I can now access all of my sites and make changes to the files. I can now justify an iPad purchase. Thanks guys!
If you are a website designer, you have likely come to the realization that Internet Explorer 6 is of the devil. Most browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari) read and present code a specific way. You create your website and it looks grand in those browsers. Then, you look in Internet Explorer 6 and it looks like someone shook your page and left you with the results. Thanks Microsoft.
It is nice to think about the day when no one will use IE6 anymore, but when I look at website analytics, an astonishing number of people still use IE6. I think they purchased a PC 5 years ago and never upgraded their browser edition, even though IE 8 & 9 are available.
This problem in IE6 is particularly apparent when using DIV tags to design your website.
Below are a few tricks for making sure your page looks the same in IE6:
- First of all, if you have spaced out your DIVs across the page, but IE6 pushes them down, an easy fix is to float the div to the left (float: left;) and to set the display to inline (display:inline;).
- Secondly, IE6 reads code starting with an underscore, so say you have the following margin written in your CSS file (margin: 0px 10px 3px 15px). If IE6 is showing the Left margin incorrectly, you could add a second line to the CSS for that particular DIV tag that goes like this (_margin: 0px 10px 3px 0px).
Some of this is honestly trial and error until you discover the way to make your website look the same in IE6 as Firefox. As you experiment more and more, you will begin to see how IE6 distorts your page and will know ways to combat this for your future sites.
Here is a good site to learn how IE6 reads Floats, Margins, & Padding – http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer/floatIndent.html
This post is for my clients. I want to list a tool for finding colors to be used on your website.
The common color system used in building websites is the Hex Triplet, which is a 6 digit, 3-byte code that defines the red, green, and blue parts to a particular color. Black is #000000, white is #FFFFFF, and #FF0000 is True Red. To learn more, click here.
Here is a tool to pick colors for your website. Once you have the color that you like, let me know the 6 digits after the # sign:
http://www.colorpicker.com/
Just move around the circle and the arrows on the side bar to get your desired color.
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