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New iToy: Pogo stylus

Last week I had discovered something: I can’t type worth a flip on a touch screen when I’m mad!

Jessie had suggested getting a stylus — well, in a round-about way, after discovering that her Nintendo DS stylus would not work with my iPhone. LOL! I thought it was a great idea though and began scouring the net for possibilities. And let me tell you, there are TONS out there. I finally popped back onto the Apple site and looked through their online store. One immediately caught my eye, so I ordered it: the Pogo Stylus.

I got the red one!

It came in the mail yesterday, so I spent a good deal of time last night and this morning playing with it. I don’t think I’ll use it every day, but there will be times when I’ll need to take lengthy notes or maybe post to my blog, and this will come in VERY handy!

New WordPress Theme: Black Hat

My newest theme for WordPress 2.7. I think this one has been my biggest challenge due to all the features I had wanted to incorporate. As I had previously highlighted in my post the other day, this theme includes a detailed “read me” file covering its various features and a couple of FAQs/frequently requested modifications:

• Theme option for changing sidebar location
• Sitemap template
• Printer-friendly stylesheet
• Favicon
• Additional feeds
• Additional/SEO meta tags — including Google’s new canonical tag for paginated post pages. (Rumor has it this tag will be added to the core code in a future WordPress release. Nice!)

While I don’t think it’s my best work visually-speaking, I think its functionality and user-oriented details make it one of my better themes overall.

As time permits, I will be updating previous releases to meet the standard that I’ve set for myself with this release.

Details

Black Hat is a dark minimalist theme based on Adrian Diaconescu’s Corporate Sandbox. It is has been built specifically with WordPress 2.7 in mind, but is backwards compatible down to version 2.5. Stickers icons courtesy of DryIcons. Favicon by Brian Brasher.

Availability

Demo | Download

The Con is on!

Remember last year when we attended OmegaCon? We had a blast, and considering it was the con’s first year, I’d have called it a major success. But I became worried that it had been too successful and had moved on to another town — the website had gone down, the MySpace page had gone quiet and hadn’t been updated in a coon’s age, etc. It seemed to have dropped off the face of the planet … until I re-discovered it today!

I had been sitting in a meeting and had the good fortune to be sitting near a terminal with internet access. (Google to the rescue!) I ran across a reference on a local Star Wars forum to an event called “ImagiCon.” Another quick Google and I had found the website: ImagiCon.org. From the sound of it, it’s the same con, but renamed, with a spiffy website, and by the look of it a lot more to see this year.

YAY!

Ok, so who else is going?

Blogger How-To: Add Sticky Content / Fake Front Page

Working on my most recent side project, I’ve had to brush up on my Blogger/Blogspot coding. One of the things requested of me was to find a way to have a static front page on a Blogger site.

WordPress has this feature built-in, but Blogger currently does not.

I know of two ways that this can be accomplished:

Solution #1

Create a new post with the content you want to show on the index of your Blogger site and save as normal. When you add more content to your site, re-open your “front page” post. Click Post Options. Change the Post date and time to values which chronologically fall after those of your last “regular” post.

Now go to Settings, Formatting. Set it to show only 1 post on the main page.

The idea is to always keep the “front page” post as the newest, so it is the top post (and therefore the only one shown on the main page). You’ll have to do this every time you add new posts to your Blogger site.

Or …

Solution #2

I like to call this one the “Sticky Content method.”

A while back someone had shown me that enabling the showaddelement attribute in a Blogger XML template allowed you to add widgets above your posts. Basically, changing a small bit of code in your template …

… gave you this ability:

I’ve seen plenty of people do this to display Google Ads or other PPC stuff above their posts.

To do this, you’ll need to first download a fresh copy of your template — go to Layout, Edit HTML, Download Full Template.

Open it in your text editor of choice (use Notepad if you’re not sure) and search for type='Blog' or “posts”. Either of those should show you the section code containing the Blogger function for calling blog posts. You’ll see a line that says something along the lines of:

<b:section class='main' id='main' showaddelement='no'>

When you change showaddelement from ‘no’ to ‘yes’, you are then able to add widgets above your blog posts. Save the changes to your XML and upload it to Blogger (go to Layout, Edit HTML) using their upload form. Once that’s done, go add a widget by going to Page Elements (in Layout).

Click Add a Gadget, and add the HTML/JavaScript widget and type in the content you want to show on your front page and save.

Keep in mind: that this would show up on EVERY page on your site unless you adjust a couple things!

Download an updated copy of your template and open it in your text editor of choice. Now that you’ve added a widget, you should see something like this:

Hint: Look for the title of your widget if you get lost!

Change the following:

<div class='widget-content'>
<data:content/>
</div>


to this:

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<div class='widget-content'>
<data:content/>
</div>
</b:if>


Basically, you are telling Blogger to only display that widget if the page you’re on is the home page (main page).

Now, let’s fix the blog settings so that nothing shows up on the main page except this widget. Go to Settings, Formatting, and set it to show no posts on the main page.

Pretty cool, huh?

Closing Thoughts

Whichever method you choose, make sure that you have some way for your visitors to access your site’s content. I suggest adding Blog Archive and Labels widgets. You could also use the Feed widget and put in your RSS feed to show your blog’s latest posts.

I hope the solutions I’ve posted are clear, but if you need anything explained further please feel free to ask in the comments below!

Google knows football

I sniped this one from the Times Daily forums:

Click the image to view full size.

ROLL TIDE!

WordPress dupe content workaround

Recently I’ve started paying more attention to Google’s Webmaster Tools. As much as I hate to admit it, they’ve been really useful in helping me track down outdated content and bad links, and really clean up search results for my site. One of the many things I had kept putting off for this site was removing duplicate content — in my case, posts with duplicate titles and descriptions.

Google is known for ‘punishing‘ websites with lower rank for this. Donna Fontenot touched on this in her “SEO For WordPress” presentation at WordCamp Birmingham earlier this month. She had displayed some examples for nuking duplicate content search results by modifying your header’s meta robots, title, and description tags.

As you can see, my weekly “Humpday Hilarities” posts, although not yet completely indexed by Google’s bots, definitely fall into this category.

As it stood, my site loomed perilously on the edge of getting one of those infamous “Duplicate Content Penalty” from Google (assuming it hadn’t already!). So to get around this, I made a few changes to my template’s headers.php file. In addition to Donna’s robots suggestion, I modified my description based loosely from the code in her presentation:

I also modified my title a bit based on her coding as well:

Basically in both of these snippets, I am checking the post title to see if it’s “Humpday Hilarities” and if it is, add the date into the code to make both the meta title and description tags unique. While most users would never need anything like this, anyone who posts a specific topic with repeating titles might find this handy.

What do you think?

Feedback, questions, constructive criticism is (as always) welcome. Feel free to use the comment form below!

I have a blog, now what?

I am by no means an expert on site promotion, but I am asked this question pretty often:

“I have a blog. Now what do I do?”

The basics of blog promotion aren’t difficult concepts, but the process requires time, attention to detail, and focus. Most of the things I’ll cover here are pretty common sense stuff about which many of us probably would never think twice.

Is your blog REALLY done?

Once you decide, “I’m finished! Now to promote my blog!” Take a step back for a moment and look closely at your blog. Are you sure that you’re really done? Before you can start any heavy-duty blog pimping, it always helps to make sure your blog is optimized.

What does this mean?

Optimization is pretty much any little enhancements that make your blog “friendlier” — whether for your readers, or search engines, or marketing, etc.

Things to consider:

Are you using the default template?

Every blogging software or service comes with one or more default templates. Most of them are nice enough to get you started, but using one would hardly set your blog apart from the others — especially if all the blogs look the same! With the number of free blog templates growing exponentially every day, there really is no excuse for using the default template on your blog.

Link decoration: to underline or not underline? That is the question!

This one is more of a personal preference issue, but I always advise blog owners to make links stand out in their posts. Whether you prefer underlined blue links or bolded green, it doesn’t really matter as long as your reader can see that it is a link. It should be notably different from the rest of the text.

Favicon? What’s that?

Have you ever noticed a little image by the web address in your browser’s address bar when you visit certain websites or bookmark a site? That’s a favicon. You can get one made very easily with the many free services available out there. I highly recommend adding one to your blog. When a user visits or bookmarks your site, that little image can help them associate and remember your site.

Can you be contacted?

A personal web pet-peeve of mine is not being able to contact a website’s owner. Make sure you have a contact form, email address, or something available so that your visitors can reach you. Feedback is always a good thing, so make it easier to receive it!

Are you feeding your visitors?

Every blogging software and service under the sun nowadays have any number of formats available for feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.). Make sure that your feed information is located in a prominent position on your blog! This is usually in the form of a link or button. If it is not immediately noticeable, some visitors won’t bother searching for it (and therefore, won’t subscribe)!

Try to keep in mind that your visitors may not be as familiar with your site’s layout as you are. Pass your link on to loved ones and friends, ask for feedback. Discuss any problems they ran into, such as problems finding specific content, getting lost / navigation issues, etc.

A friend of mine used to say, “Make your site navigation so easy a child could use it” — if needed, borrow a child!

Ok, just kidding, but you see where I’m going with this, right?

Ok, done. Can I start linking now?

Yes, I think at this point you are ready to start promoting your blog. Take careful consideration though. You do not want to go crazy adding links to “every Tom, Dick, and Harry”, nor do you want to ignore the whole blogosphere. Let’s start small — build your blogroll.

What’s a blogroll?

A blogroll is a list of links to other blogs that you like. Having a blogroll allows you to feature a list of favorite blogs, usually in your blog’s sidebar. One might consider blogrolls to be a sort of new “link exchange” programs. The biggest difference is that all sites who participate benefit from the added exposure of being displayed on another member’s site. It’s a good way to gain new readers and repeat visitors for your blog.

It’s an unwritten rule that if a blogger adds your blog’s link to his/her blogroll, you should reciprocate with the same. Of course, everyone approaches this with their own blogging goals in mind. Sometimes it may simply be that you may not like a blog that links to you through its blogroll, and therefore choose not to link back. Whatever the reason may be, it is considered “proper” blogging etiquette to at least review each blog that links to you through its blogroll to decide if you’ll want to add that blog or not.

Blogrolls are often used to express connections between blogs. By having a blogroll on your site, you are telling your visitors:

“Here are other blogs that I like — check ‘em out, you may like them too.”

“Here is my community — I belong to this group.”

(When linking to other blogs) “I like your site and I think my visitors will too.”

If you are new to the blogosphere, a quick way to get your bearings and branch out is by joining open blogrolls. An “open” blogroll is simply a blogroll that is open to new members. Some blogrolls are general, others are specific. Most will have a set of guidelines or criteria posted to allow you to judge for yourself whether or not you belong, or would want to join.

How do you find open blogrolls?

I enjoy adding blogrolls to many of my own sites. However, I found it increasingly hard to find blogrolls pertaining to certain topics and had yet to see a directory or index of blogrolls that are out there, available to everyone … so I decided to make my own: BlogrollDirectory.org

There you will find blogrolls grouped by topic or interest. Simply click the Location link posted and follow the directions posted on its website.

Now, on to Blog Directories!

Submitting your blog to blog directories is perhaps one of the easiest ways to gain exposure to your blog. Blog directories can often drive a good bit of “new” traffic to your site that you wouldn’t have found otherwise.

In the vast and infinite sea of the Internet, there are literally thousands of repositories and directories of links. Rather than try to list them all, I’m going to give you a few to get you started:

• The Basics: DMOZ (which fuels the Google Directory), Yahoo!, and LII
• A list of blog directories by topic
• Top 20 Essential Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog To
• Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites
• Best Blog Directories: Free & Paid

Start with those and branch outward. The goal isn’t to spread your link around to anyone and everyone as fast as possible, it’s to garner quality repeat traffic.

Note: Keep in mind that some directories may require registration and/or a reciprocal link!

To be continued …

I’ll be posting Part 2 of this article next month, so keep an eye out! I’ll most likely cover topics such as SEO and social media, as well as any topics requested here.

As always, feedback and constructive criticism are welcome. Simply leave your remarks via the comments form below!

Site changes coming soon!

I’ve been working on a design for this site over the past few months and am pleased to say that it’s nearing completion. I’ve spent just about every lunch hour for the past three weeks debugging scripts and correcting sloppy code. An updated look is overdue and I think it will make browsing easier on my readers (y’all!) — and will hopefully keep any new ones that may breeze in from the random Google search results that I see in my server logs.

My and Jim’s one year anniversary is a week from today, and with that our trip and travel deals less time to concentrate on this. I had originally set a week from today as my “go live by” date. With any luck, I’ll be done in the next couple of days, so I may move it over sooner.

Anywho, I just wanted to post a note of warning … if you see the site down or something’s looking “off”, it’s just me futsing around at the controls!

LinkedIn is useful

I’ve been on LinkedIn for well over a year but never really got into maintaining my profile until recently. Honestly, I never saw much use for it until I started working for UAB. A couple people in my department are heavy LinkedIn users and encouraged me to use the service to “grow” my connections, by reconnecting with old friends and coworkers and reaching out to new ones. (I even ran across my old auto insurance salesman on there!) It’s been pretty cool so far. LinkedIn has added plenty of new features over the last year or so and recently overhauled their Groups. I’m a member of a handful and hadn’t really gone back to check out the new additions.

At the urgings of a coworker last Friday, I logged into my account and checked out the new features — namely the discussions for each of my groups. I’d spent a little time over the past couple of days reading over various discussions for a few of my groups: SharePoint Users, the Libertarian Party, GMail Users, Internet Professionals Society of Alabama (IPSA), and so on.

I’ve discovered that there are a LOT of interesting things posted to these groups. I was reading over the Tweeple (as in “Twitter People”) postings this morning and ran across two Twitter-related gems that I wanted to share with y’all:

• How to add your latest tweet to your email signature
• How to send a DM to a person who is not following you

There are plenty more where those came from …

I’m not really sure why I overlooked this aspect of LinkedIn. Given the new groups I’ve recently discovered, I’m looking forward to finding a lot more insightful tips in the near future on various topics.

Tres geek. Sweet. :mrgreen:

I like GTD

GTD = Getting Things Done

My life is busy. (read: INSANELY HECTIC!!!!) So I rely on reminders and “nag” services to get things done, meet deadlines, and generally remember anything important. Currently I rely on Microsoft Outlook for work-related things and Google Calendar for personal, family, SA-related, et. al., but I am always looking for newer and better ways to GTD, but with minimal hassle and/or cost.

For instance, I would love to find something that I can use at home, at work, and on my cell that would handle everything — and I do mean everything! I’ve enjoyed looking at various apps over the past few months and am always willing to try out something new. (and would prefer something relatively cheap!)

Seriously, to some people this is as exciting as buying office furniture … me, if I got something really handy that works, I wouldn’t mind throwing a few bucks at it.

Though free is always better!

Doomi

I ran across a neat Air app this morning called Doomi (via LifeHacker). It’s pretty, you can set custom reminders to tasks (which I love). The only thing I could not do is delete an active task. (But you can set it as completed and clear all completed tasks.)

Overall not bad. And hey, it’s FREE! There’s a list of scheduled improvements on the website and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where the developer takes this app. The only downside is that this app resides on my computer at work … I can’t view it on my cell nor sync to my laptop at home.

Remember the Milk

Several people have recommended Remember the Milk to me. It’s a FREE web-based service that helps you manage tasks and offers various ways to manage them, as well as receive reminders. Two of my favorites are mentioned right on the front page: Twitter and GMail.

Sweet. :mrgreen:

The UI is pretty self-explanatory, and I haven’t played around with many of the more “advanced” features yet. I do know there’s a mobile version of the RtM site, and I am seriously digging that.

There’s also the option of upgrading your account to “pro” — this includes priority support (via email) and RtM apps for iPhone, Crackberry, Windows Mobile. While none of that suits nor interests me, if they are planning to add support for other providers (or a Java version!!!), I may see that as a justification for going pro.

We’ll have to see.

Anything else?

Got any suggestions or tips to share for GTD? Please hurl ‘em my way!

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