August 2011
1 post
Search Plugin for Open Site Explorer
Yahoo has announced they are shutting down one of the old and beloved SEO tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, later this year.
Yahoo recommends that webmasters sign up with Bing Webmaster Tools and use that as Yahoo shuts off Site Explorer.
Yahoo makes it sound like that you won’t miss the old Site Explorer but I find it hard to believe that Microsoft will provide detailed link data for competitors....
December 2010
1 post
How to Create a Facebook Profile Picture That...
Have you ever provided a client with a graphic for their Facebook Profile Picture with the hope that they’d figure out how to crop it properly to create a nicely branded thumbnail? Well, if you create a graphic to the right specs, Facebook’s auto-cropping will create the perfect thumbnail image.
These two blog posts provide some good detail about creating Profile Pictures with...
July 2010
1 post
How to Post Daily Delicious Links to Tumblr
Importing a Delicious RSS feed to Tumblr will create a post for every new link you bookmark. To import those links in a single daily post, some extra steps are required.
Delicious > WordPress.com > Tumblr
Delicious Blog Posting
Delicious has an experimental feature called Blog Posting that creates a daily post of your latest bookmarks to your blog. It supports Movable Type, Typepad,...
March 2010
1 post
Mobile Plugins for WordPress
I’m working on setting up a mobile edition of a WordPress site. The no frills approach would be to simply create a separate stylesheet for handheld devices, but I could probably spend days tweaking that. Surely a mobile plugin for WordPress would yield faster and more featured results.
WordPress Mobile Pack is a complete toolkit to help mobilize your WordPress site and blog. Unfortunately,...
February 2010
3 posts
4 Truths About Social Media That You Don't Want to...
Cleaning off my desk today, I came across a page of notes from last month’s Awareness webinar with David Alston of Radian6, Are you answering the “social phone”? Here are some of my favorite scrawls:
a brand is the sum of all conversations
with traditional media, you’re just renting eyeballs
community = asset
it’s not eyes and ears, it’s hearts and...
3 tags
CommentLuv Blogs Are Doomed
Am I the only one who thinks the CommentLuv plugin for WordPress is nothing more than glorified link building with major potential for abuse and spam?
CommentLuv provides additional functionality to the comment system on your WordPress blog. More specifically, CommentLuv automatically fetches a selection of a commentator’s latest blog posts, tweets or diggs that they can choose from to...
3 tags
Annotating Items in Google Reader
While doing some reading/listening for a social media marketing campaign yesterday, I thought to myself:
Wouldn’t it be nice if… Google Reader enabled private notes on items?
Often, I find myself wanting to add comments to items in Reader for later actions but I don’t necessarily want to “Share with note.” Starring is not enough—-I need to be able to remind...
November 2009
2 posts
3 Reasons why publishing your Facebook status to...
Social media marketing can be very time consuming, and automated tools are welcome in just about any marketer’s toolbox. It’s very crucial however to select the right tasks to automate. Twitter automated DMs are an example of problematic automation. So is publishing your Facebook status updates to Twitter.
Back in August, Facebook announced on their blog the release of a feature that...
One-click bulk follow for Twitter Lists
The new Twitter Lists feature has probably been rolled out to everyone by now. More than just another social media popularity contest, Twitter Lists reveal topic-based influence, pointing you in the direction of the best people to follow for a given topic.
Lists function slightly differently from what I was expecting. They’re more like groups: tweets made by list members are not displayed...
October 2009
3 posts
Tips for running Twitter contests
Twitter contests can offer numerous benefits including increased exposure through tweets and retweets (viral), and demonstrating a fun side of your brand (ex. scavenger hunts, uniquely interactive contests.) Designing an effective Twitter contest is not without its challenges. Consider this: If you’re running a “1st person to answer” type of contest, how will you judge when the...
Social media profile organizers
This isn’t an exhaustive list, but here are the services I checked out when looking to create a central social media profile. Initially, I was only looking for a static profile page, but I ended up wanting some lifestreaming capabilities as well.
DandyID is a nice service that produces a clean-looking profile page, albeit a little flat. I’m not fond of the domain name (and resulting...
Blog migration
I don’t blog enough to warrant a self-hosted install of WordPress and the regular maintenance and security upgrades that requires. At the same time, I don’t want to lose my place on the web to share web development and SEO related information and resources.
The solution? Tumblr. Without the need to tend to the application, I can focus more on sharing content. Tumblr’s custom...
December 2008
1 post
PHP Anaconda: Amazon AWS 4.0 keyword search script...
UPDATE, 10/24/09: PHP Anaconda has served its purpose but in August of this year Amazon started requiring that all API requests be signed, rendering the Amazon e-commerce script useless. While it no longer works right out of the box, you can try integrating mierendo.com’s Amazon® AWS HMAC signed request script to retain the simplicity and easy deployment of PHP Anaconda.
If you’re...
July 2008
1 post
Get help with WordPress and French locale dates...
Have you ever had to develop a WordPress-powered website in a language other than English?
WordPress has the capability to serve your pages in the language of your choice. The WordPress community has already translated it into many languages, and there are themes, translation files, and support also available in many other languages.
With a client project I’m just about to roll out, I had...
May 2008
1 post
tweeternet: An introduction to Twitter
Need to explain Twitter to a client, colleague, or friend?
tweeternet is a one page Twitter primer that I just put online in an effort to streamline my own efforts at describing the social networking and microblogging service.
I’ve linked to several blog posts about Twitter that I feel are best-of-breed. If you think I’ve missed one, just tweet me. Similarly, I’m pulling in my...
March 2008
1 post
How to promote your business with YouTube
YouTube is a video sharing community website owned by Google that offers a unique (and free) avenue to promote your business on the web. Sure, you can put videos on your own website without using YouTube, but then you aren’t tapping into the huge and ever-growing YouTube community, which can virally spread the word about your products and services, ultimately driving traffic back...
February 2008
2 posts
Easy lifestreaming with SimplePie
This easy lifestreaming script is handy but it lacks rich media features such as embedded video. If you want something less utilitarian with more wow factor, check out what you can do with Sweetcron.
Lifestreaming became a popular buzzword in 2007 and doesn’t show signs of letting up. While there are several hosted services that allow you to easily create a lifestream (as well as a myriad...
Book review: Professional Search Engine...
Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP is another fine Programmer to Programmer book from Wrox Press, authored by Jaimie Sirovich and Cristian Darie. As a hybrid designer/developer/marketer, I had been waiting for a book just like this for some time, and the authors deliver with concise information, expert advice and plenty of ready-to-use code that helps put your new knowledge into...
January 2008
3 posts
Book review: Defensive Design for the Web
Any self-respective web developer is well-aware of the achievements of 37signals, creators of Basecamp and the extremely popular Ruby on Rails development framework. Having already read and thoroughly enjoyed their web application development manifesto, Getting Real, I was excited to get my hands on 37signalers Matthew Linderman’s and Jason Fried’s 2004 book on web usability, Defensive...
Book review: Pro Drupal Development
Apress is another publisher that has been putting out some excellent books focused on open source technologies in recent years. Last year’s much needed entry to the world of Drupal development is no exception. Pro Drupal Development by John K. VanDyk and Matt Westgate covers the popular open source content management framework with a depth that no previous book attempted, and is an essential...
Book review: Professional Web APIs with PHP
Professional Web APIs with PHP by Paul Reinheimer is a book that I first got a glimpse of at the Vancouver PHP Conference last spring. Alas, I didn’t have any cash on me to pick it up, but I promised Paul that I would buy it through his website so he could pick up the Amazon sales commission. Unfortunately, when I went to buy the book, I found his website unavailable. Paul, I owe you a beer...
July 2007
1 post
Book review: Drupal - Creating Blogs, Forums,...
David Mercer’s Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals and Community Websites is a great starting point for anyone who’s getting familiar with the Drupal content management framework. It’s a well-designed, easy to read book that defines Drupal concepts that can be difficult to figure out by trial and error.
The book begins with a very basic introduction to Drupal. If...
June 2007
1 post
Book review: The AdSense Code
Joel Comm is a well-respected expert on Google AdSense and Internet marketing, so I had no misgivings about picking up his popular book, The AdSense Code. Unfortunately, the book turned out to be somewhat disappointing.
At first glance, the book looks professional: the front cover, despite the overuse of bevelling, is attractive, and the “New York Times Bestseller” across the top...
May 2007
1 post
Book review: The Principles of Beautiful Web...
I’ve been a fan of SitePoint books for many years now, so when they launched Jason Beaird’s The Principles of Beautiful Web Design I ordered my copy right away. I was immediately impressed upon opening the package (and should note that shipping to Canada is always fast with SitePoint). The larger 8×10” full-color format of this book simply rocks: it stays open on the table while...
February 2007
2 posts
State and province drop down code for Phorm
Phorm is an excellent form processor written in PHP that I use on a number of websites. Here’s some copy-and-paste code that will come in handy if you require a drop down menu with U.S. states and Canadian provinces on your form.
First, here’s the PHP code for your form’s config file.
Now here’s the HTML for your form.
Hope that saves you some typing!
Export MySQL data to a tab-delimited spreadsheet
This data export script has turned out to be quite useful for me. Assuming that others might also find uses for it, I’m sharing the source code. If you have the need to export MySQL data to a tab-delimited spreadsheet, then the Data Export Utility is for you too!
March 2006
1 post
How to recover your Dreamweaver passwords
Sure, I could have called the web host and had them reset the password to the shared hosting account I was trying to access via FTP, but they’re great guys and I prefer to bug them over more serious issues. So, how to recover my lost Dreamweaver FTP password? It was actually incredibly easy: I opened the .ste (site definition) file in TextPad, copied the numeric value that followed...
December 2005
1 post
Free cron job services
List of free cron job services:
WebCron.org
PseudoCron
Web Service Scheduler
Online Cron Jobs
Set Cron Job
Cronless
Also, Sébastien Willemijns posted an overview of free cron job services.