Category: Website topics

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Multiple Authors with WordPress

You can easily add new authorized users (authors, contributors, admins) via the Dashboard.

Inviting Contributors, Followers, and Viewers

As for adding more than author to a post, see here for a plugin that can do this:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-add-multiple-authors-to-a-post

And, this article has a more complete list and guidelines for multiple authors in general:

10+ Must have Plugins if You have Multiple Authors in WordPress

* * *
Also, it is imperative that your WP blog be current and have all updates installed.
Plus there are several plugins that are important to detect malware that might have crept in during time periods when older WP versions had vulnerabilities (since patched with v 3.4.2).

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How to Send SMS messages from your Webapp

http://www.textmagic.com/app/pages/en/products/bulk-sms-gateway-api

Bulk SMS Gateway API: Integrate Text Messaging Into Your Applications!

Connect to TextMagic’s Bulk SMS Gateway using our HTTP SMS API or Email to SMS services.
TextMagic’s Bulk SMS Gateway API allows application developers to send text messages to more than 700 global mobile networks.

You can integrate bulk SMS messaging services into your applications, websites, software and back-office custom apps. With our HTTP SMS API, it’s quick and easy. If you don’t want to spend time and money writing code, use our ready-made SMS scripts FREE. Available in PHP, Ruby, Java, Perl and Python.

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You need a shopping cart; here’s what to do

Here is a quick summary of the options available to you, and the decisions you need to make before a development cost can be established:

There are dozens of good solutions, and which to choose depends on a multitude of factors… do you have a site already with a CMS ? do you mind offloading visitors to a 3rd party “hosted storefront” like Shopify, which is a great service…  or do you prefer to keep them on your site throughout the checkout flow?

Is your site running as a self-hosted WP blog, and thus could use an on-site ecomm plugin instead? There are a few popular plugin options for this scenario.

Further, if you already use PayPal, do you want to simply add a Paypal checkout button?

See a site that does this:  http://depotpublishing.com
You can do this method on both a website or a blogging system.

If yes to Paypal, do you want to continue using PayPal but need a true cart, and want a seamless, integrated checkout flow where the user never leaves your site? Then, we use the PayPal Pro api to make any type of cart system. See my site  http://moultonfarm.com and go to the online store.

Or, you might want a full-featured shopping cart using a different payment processor, like authorize.net, and you want it hosted on your own site… ?
see  http://kieve.org
or  even http://choiceliteracy.com

And lastly, how do you handle the backend accounting and inventory management, if at all? Do you need QB integration? (troublesome!)  They need a store like bigcommerce that can send all sales data to QB on a synced basic. But setting up this scenario requires a true QB expert on hand.

The options go on!

In some cases, you may not want to use Paypal, and already have a 3rd-party gateway and merchant service. Therefore, you need a very simple “cart” that does only what you want, that talks to the API (interface) of the gateway.  A common gateway is Authorize.net. It has APIs with which you talk to their systems.

Or, you may not have a merchant account yet. In that case, you could use an all-in-one procider like:  e-onlinedata.com

And now, we get to the technologies with which your site is coded… php? asp? jsp? python? ruby? We here at PDG&Associates use only php and sometimes python.

For php, there are lots of choices.

For a simple and free one, here’s:  http://conceptlogic.com/jcart/
You could modify it as needed to make it work, and a programmer could use it as the basis for a custom solution. And there are probably 100 more carts like it this.

Or with custom programming, we could simply build a tailored solution. Give us a call to make sense of the options!

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Comment philosophy on Tumblr

From an interview with David Karp, founder of the Tumblr blog network, I want to highlight a concept where design shapes behavior:

Karp’s thinking about the comments section, which is generally assumed to be a core blog feature, helps illustrate his broader ideas about how design shapes behavior online. Typically, a YouTube video or blog post or article on a newspaper’s site is the dominant object, with comments strewed below it, buried like so much garbage. Thus many commenters feel they must scream to be noticed, and do so in all caps, profanely and with maximum hyperbole. This, Karp argues, brings out the worst in people, so Tumblr’s design does not include a comments section.

How, then, to encourage feedback while discouraging drive-by hecklers who make you never want to post again? First, Karp notes, you can comment on someone else’s post, by reblogging it and adding your reaction. But that reaction appears on your Tumblr, not the one you’re commenting on. “So if you’re going to be a jerk, you’re looking like a jerk in your own space, and my space is still pristine,” Karp explains. This makes for a thoughtful network and encourages expression and, ultimately, creativity. “That’s how you can design to make a community more positive.”

While the imagined rationale for commenters acting poorly because they can’t be noticed easily is a weak cause-and-effect, I find the design response innovative and appealing:

Your readers’ comments are shown on their blog, not yours, thus keeping your blog more positive.

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Wring the most performance from the Google Analytics script

From an excellent post by Mathias Bynens… originally posted in 2010 but updated in June 2012.

http://mathiasbynens.be/notes/async-analytics-snippet

<script>
  var _gaq = [['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X'], ['_trackPageview']];
  (function(d, t) {
    var g = d.createElement(t),
        s = d.getElementsByTagName(t)[0];
    g.src = '//www.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
    s.parentNode.insertBefore(g, s);
  }(document, 'script'));
</script>

 

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CSS 3 – Box Shadow properties

The box-shadow property in CSS3 allows a comma-separated list of shadow attribute values.

These specify, in order, the horizontal offset, vertical offset, optional blur distance and optional spread distance of the shadow);

Then,  an optional color value and an optional ‘inset‘ keyword.

Inset lets you create an inner shadow, rather than the default outer shadow.

Examples:

  box-shadow: 5px 5px;
  box-shadow: 5px 5px 15px #888;
  box-shadow: inset 2px 2px 2px 2px black;
  box-shadow: 5px 5px #666, -12px -12px #f4f4f4, 0px 0px 15px 15px #cc6600;

These are supported in newer browsers.

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Firefox 7 brings speed and UI annoyances

1.

For power users who need their address bar to show the “http://” in a web address, you can revert to the original, preferred behavior:

  1. Open a new window and type about:config into the address/URL bar
  2. Paste in this quick filter-field search: browser.urlbar.trimURLs
  3. Double click on the browser.urlbar.trimURLs field to change its value from true to false
  4. Close the window (or tab) and your URL protocols will be unhidden

Why would you want to do this? If you copy/paste web address routinely — say, to clients, via email — you don’t want to be manually adding back the protocol to every email you send or document you create, so that the URL can be clickable.

2.

Firefox 6 introduced a new “domain highlighting” feature, where the address bar grays-out any protocol (like http://  or https:// )  and the directory path in the URL, leaving just the domain in black. The thinking was that it would help inexperienced users easily catch phishing websites.

It is annoying to me, though. It makes the true path harder to see, and since I work with URLs on a regular basis — copy/pasting them to clients in emails and documents — I wanted to turn it off. Here’s how:

  1. Open a new window or tab, and type about:config into the location bar
  2. Search for browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled in the filter field; you can copy/paste it from here
  3. Double click on the browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled field to toggle the value to false
  4. Close the window (or tab) and your domain paths will be unhidden

That’s all there is to it! Now you can revert to a better way. :-)

firefox snapshot

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What is Remarketing

Remarketing allows you to show your ads to users who’ve previously visited your website — as they browse the Web and encounter Google’s ad network elsewhere.

From Google’s Forum:

Remarketing is a feature of interest-based advertising … Remarketing allows you to reach people who previously visited your website, and match the right people with the right message. You can show users these messages as they browse sites across the Google Display Network.

Here’s how it works: You add a piece of code (remarketing tag) to pages of your site that correspond to certain categories you want to promote. For example, adding a tag for “TV” on all of the pages where you sell TVs will let you later show relevant TV ads to everyone who visits those pages. Learn more about creating remarketing lists.

Search advertisers can use remarketing to create an integrated campaign strategy. After driving traffic to your site with search ads, you can then remarket to those users who reach your site by showing them tailored ads on sites throughout the Google Display Network.