Monthly Archives: January 2010

Press75 Massive News WordPress Theme Giveaway

Posted by Steven Swafford on January 31, 2010

Congrats to @warstwydotcom as the lucky winner of this contest!

I am proud to announce that beginning today I am holding a contest for a single copy of Massive News from Press75. The drawing will take place on 15 February 2010.

Theme Requirements

Massive News requires WordPress 2.8+, MySQL 5+ and PHP 5+ with GD Support enabled in order to function properly. If you’re not sure that your hosting environment will support the Massive News theme, you can download the free requirements check plugin HERE. Simply upload then activate the plugin after which a message will be displayed telling you if your environment is compatible. If your hosting environment is not compatible, a list will be displayed telling you exactly what needs to be upgraded.

It is important to note that there are NO support facilities, such as theme documentation, knowledge base, support forums and theme tutorials either on behalf of  Press 75 nor Radical Development.

Theme Options and Widgets

The Massive News theme theme options page includes configuration and management for several key display and content customization tasks. Easily add your own logo, manage featured content settings and advertisements, or change theme styles without touching a singe theme file. The Massive News theme also includes 5 new and exclusive widgets which allow you to customize your sidebars however you want. The Simple Sidebar Ads widget provides options for adding and managing 125×125 advertisements within your sidebar. The Featured Content widget allows you to display featured content (posts) within the sidebar with numerous different configuration options. There is are also Relates Post, Popular Content and Comments widgets that are all included with the theme.

Winner Selection Process

Check tweets win for contest details. If you run a WordPress blog don’t miss you chance at this great theme!

Printer Friendly Web Pages

Posted by Steven Swafford on January 30, 2010

While I personally do print a great deal of web pages I do find myself from time to time running across an article that I want to to keep and a bookmark is something I do not want to use. Print is something that you can file away to ensure that the information is available to you at any point in time.

The one thing that drives me nuts is those sites that do not provide printer friendly versions of content or if they do it contains logos and other unnecessary images.

Everyone has their own idea when it comes to this topic and while I tend to lean to 100% text when it comes to printer friendly pages there are exceptions to this rule. Just use common sense in this area and you will do fine. Take the following as good example of 100% text:

How To Implement Printer Friendly Pages

There are a number of ways you can do this and I will touch on two.

  1. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
  2. Third Party Sources

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

A print style sheet works basically in the same manner as the screen type with a slight difference which is to exclude the content that you do not want to be printed and setting the appropriate media type. Once you have your stylesheet in place all the remains is to reference this stylesheet in your web pages, for example:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="print.css" type="text/css" media="print" />

In this case the print.css may be represented by:

/* Remove unwanted elements */
#header, #nav, #sidebar
{
display: none;
}

/* Ensure the content spans the full width */
#container, #body, #content
{
width: 100%; margin: 0; float: none;
}

/* Improve color of links */
a:link, a:visited
{
color: #781351
}

As you see by employing CSS it is not difficult to give your readers a medium to print content without them have to spend their hard earned case on ink.

Third Party Sources

If you are like I am and do not want to reinvent the wheel there are a number of third party resources you can use to accomplish the same goal as CSS all without the additional overhead of doing the actual work. One of my absolute favorites is Instapaper which handles a number of mediums that include computer, paper, mobile devices, and the Kindle. While I am a heavy user of Instapaper there are others you may also find useful.

Conclusion

Printer friendly web pages in many cases is a must and if you have not implemented such a solution to enhance your readers experience then what are you waiting for? It is not a difficult nor a time consuming process and the payoff is worth its weight in gold.

What have you found works best for you? Do you employ CSS or is there a service that does the job for you? Please take a moment a share any resource that you are aware of so others may evaluate it to determine its merit.

Best Practices: Visual Studio .NET Project Naming Standards

Posted by Steven Swafford on January 23, 2010

If you have not adopted a best practice when it comes to naming your solution and projects within Visual Studio .NET, I urge you to take a moment a think about this subject. As anyone will tell you best practices are worth their weight in gold and why would anyone not want to review what others has determined that works? By doing so you are not doomed to make the same mistakes.

I believe a great place to start is the .NET Framework Class Library itself. By looking at this framework you will notice that the namespaces are grouped by commonality therefore you can apply the same thoughts to your projects. An unexpected perk of adopting this type of thought is you will now be promoting code re-use and efficient separation of logic. Face it, anything that reduces complexity and increases productivity is well worth the thought.

Assume for a moment that you have the following components:

  • Business Logic
  • Data Access
  • Common Logic
  • Exception Management
  • Utilities

In most cases this holds true for any application. To break these out within Visual Studio .NET as meaningful projects I suggest following the standard format of companyname.tier and this helps immensely in keeping things in order. Example:

Many applications more often than not employ the use of third party assemblies. A practice that I follow is to establish a folder named ThirdPartyAssemblies and create nested folders for each of these third party products. By doing so you can eliminate the need for a developer having to download and install additional products while at the same time ensuring the appropriate versions of the product is employed.

While these tips are basic in nature I believe that if you take the time to organize your projects before jumping in head first you will find you can better manage the application over time. Be sure to visit Microsoft’s patterns and practices for a wealth of information.

What have you found that works best for you and why? By all means share your own best practices with others so none of us are doomed to repeat mistakes that others have previously addressed.

WPtouch: A Top Notch WordPress Mobile Theme

Posted by Steven Swafford on January 18, 2010

If you have been looking for a mobile theme for WordPress then look no more as Brave New Code has you covered. I have been using this theme for some time and I must say that I have been pleased with both its functionality and performance.

WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress blog into a web-application experience when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch or Android mobile device. It comes complete with all the standard WordPress blog features: search, login, categories, tags, archives, photos & more. WPtouch also offers many customization features through a beautifully designed WordPress admin panel.

To give you a first view as to what this site looks like via a mobile device give the following a look:

As you can see all the features once would expect from a mobile device experience are provided as well as a number of performance points made behind the scene. If you’re running WordPress be sure to visit Brave New Code and grab this excellent plug-in.

Do you have a favorite mobile theme? If so, what is it?

How To Achieve Website Optimization

Posted by Steven Swafford on January 14, 2010

Why should you care about optimization when it comes to your website? Should it really be a surprise to learn that your visitors are impatient and wants what they want immediately? I think not. We have become a society of faster is better therefore you should take every approach possible to get your data rendered as quickly as possible to keep the visitors attention. By doing so you can feel proud of your work while at the same time increasing your user base. When it comes down to it isn’t the goal to generate as much traffic as possible? Now don’t make the mistake and overlook quality and strive for quantity or you will find that you are setting yourself up for failure. Also keep in mind that in current day many of your visitors may be coming from a mobile device therefore optimization becomes even more important.

It is always best to research background data and you may find Sexy Web Design – Free 71 Page Preview! interesting. You’ll be guided through the entire process of creating a gorgeous, usable web site by applying the timeless principles of user-centered design. Even if you’re short on design skills, with this book you’ll be creating your own stunning web sites in no time at all.

Now that you have your website’s graphical user interface looking stunning it is time to turn your concentration to optimization. Of course there are a number of options you may pursue which may include do it yourself (DIY) for those that are knowledgeable when it comes to XHTML or you could even contract out to a third party vendor to do the work for you. Only you can determine which situation works best and in either case the result will be worth it’s weight in gold. For the purpose of this article I will take the DIY individual.

While optimization my cover an extensive points of view I will provide a number of key thoughts your should keep in mind as well as a handful of websites and products that can provide valuable feedback when it comes to potential suggestions you may take to improve optimization.

Tips

  1. Understand the differences between the various image formats. The typical images types used today are JPG, PNG, and GIF. Keep in mind that by reducing the quality will reduce the overall file size however you do not want to reduce the quality so much that the image becomes grainy. Also keep in mind the various issues that extend across browsers. For example, Internet Explorer 6.0 has problems with PNG image types.
  2. Never assume your visitors are using the browser that you prefer. While it would be a perfect world if we did not have to test across a number of browsers and versions of those browsers this will never occur. Of course if you have a requirement that states the users will employ a specific browser vendor and version then you job just became that much easier. The truth is this is rarely the case.
  3. Use CSS to control your layout. Stay away from tables at all cost!
  4. Compress your CSS files. The following websites can help greatly in this endeavor:
  5. Compress and merge you JavaScript files into as few as possible. If you are using JQuery then consider using the cloud to retrieve JQuery or at the very least be sure to use the minified version. While Google and other host JQuery in the cloud I tend to use Microsoft. Here are those URLs:
  6. Consider the use of HTTP compression. While this may or may not be an option in all cases it is none the less something you should consider.

Resources

There are a number of resources that you can use all of which can be free or expensive depending upon your taste. In either case these resources can provide a wealth of information to better assist you in determining what steps to take next.

  1. WebSiteOptimization.com
  2. Pingdom Tools
  3. InternetSupervision
  4. Uptrends.com
  5. Page Speed – my favorite
  6. Fiddler
  7. HttpWatch

Conclusion

There you have it! While there are many more tools that can assist you in addressing this issue I hope that you have found this to be both informative and inspiring. In fact I recently ran page speed on my own site and I have some finding that I noticed required my attention. We are all guilty of neglecting optimization however by taking advance of these tools and tips maybe you also can increase you websites performance.

If you have a tip or a favorite tool that you find beneficial, feel free to leave a comment and share that knowledge with others. By collaborating and sharing information together we can make surfing the web a better experience.

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