A WordPress Developer’s Tips for Using Panic Coda

Posted on February 7, 2012

Panic CodaI use Panic Coda for coding. I like its Mac-style interface and it “fits” me well. There are some items that are frustrating, including a lack of auto-complete for functions you’ve already used in your code. Here are three tips to improve your coding experience.  Read more…

Posted in Web Development, WordPress | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

A Sweet Javascript Slideshow Script

Posted on February 6, 2012

Developers: reveal.js is a great standards-compliant slideshow script. It looks great and is an awesome alternative to Flash-based or image-based slideshows.

reveal.js

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Ten Blue Links

Posted on January 11, 2012

Remember when Google was ten blue links?

Today, for the first time, I was actually taken aback by the amount of visual crap on Google results.

Google search results

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Introducing IDX+, WordPress Real Estate & IDX Done Right

Posted on December 19, 2011

I’m happy to release IDX+, the best WordPress IDX solution.

Enhance dsIDXpressIDX+ is a project I’ve been working on for months. It was born came out of necessity: a client told me “there is no perfect solution for WordPress real estate websites.” After looking into it, I realized he was right.

IDX+ is the solution to your real estate website’s problems.  Read more…

Posted in Plugins | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Selling BoulderSEO.com

Posted on December 12, 2011

A great domain goes up for sale on GoDaddy.

BoulderSEO.comI have put the BoulderSEO.com domain up for auction: with the upcoming release of the top-secret WordPress real estate plugin, I have chosen to sell this prime property.

The BoulderSEO.com auction will be ending in 18 hours, so if you’re into Colorado, Denver, Loveland, or Boulder SEO (you get the idea!), check out this auction.

You will instantly rank well with this great domain.

Currently priced at only $660 – it’s a great deal! With literally no work done on the site since April, 2009, I still get 1-2 leads/month from this site. This domain will pay for itself in a month.

Go to the auction.

Posted in Domains | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

WordPress Real Estate Plugin: Stay Tuned…

Posted on December 9, 2011

You may have noticed this blog has gone un-updated. That’s because I’ve been working on an awesome new plugin.

WordPress + Real Estate + User Data + SEO

In the past, I’ve written posts about how to optimize your WordPress real estate website for SEO and I’ve created a Trulia plugin for WordPress.

This WordPress real estate plugin changes the game of what you can do with your WordPress website — and for how much money. No longer do you need to pay tens of thousands of dollars for an indexed IDX solution.

Next week I will release a beta version, so stay tuned for the formal announcement.

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Easy Content Deployment for WordPress: RAMP

Posted on August 25, 2011

RAMP allows you to make all the changes you need in your staging environment, then selectively push these changes to your production site. You can set up a new section of your site, upload some images to fill out a nice carousel for it, and add a link to it on your home page. Once this content has been reviewed and approved, you can go to your RAMP page, select these content changes, and push them to your production site.

via Easy Content Deployment for WordPress: RAMP.

This would be really handy for larger WordPress sites.

Posted in WordPress | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Yourls Google Analytics Link Tagging

Posted on June 22, 2011

In my last post, I wrote about the benefits of using YOURLS, a self-hosted link-shortening service. I’m finding that YOURLS is great, but it’s not perfect. Some of the issues I have experience are part of what you get using most URL shortener services.

Some of the downsides of using link shorteners are:

  1. Google Analytics doesn’t always capture the original referrer (and I have no clue how they do the rest of the time!).
  2. When generating links using the bookmarklet (or in this case, also the Yourls installation), there’s no easy way to add campaign, source, medium, content, and term tags for Google Analytics to track.
  3. Yourls doesn’t allow query strings on URLs by default, making overriding existing campaign tags difficult/impossible. For example: http://katz.si/t?utm_source=2300

I’m not the only one who wanted these things, so I’ve created a plugin that adds Google Analytics tracking to Yourls. It’s very cool.  Read more…

Posted in Plugins, Web Development | Tagged , , , , , , | 13 Comments

YOURLS URL Shortener

Posted on June 20, 2011

YOURLS LogoI was having trouble finding the right URL shortening service. My requests for shortening were not too picky. I wanted two simple features:

  • Good statistics that are visible only to administrators
  • Edit the long URLs after generating shortened links

…but not one service has both features:

  • http://sn.im has editable URLs, a bookmarklet, but no stats. Oh, and they kept on deleting my links.
  • http://bit.ly has great stats, name recognition, but the links aren’t editable and the stats are public.
  • http://goo.gl is the fastest service (so they claim), they have good stats (maybe the best, since they include OS & browser information), but they don’t have editable links or private stats.

Other smaller offerings may have had both features, but they also seem unreliable. I wanted control of my links.  Read more…

Posted in Domains, Web Development | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Google +1 Sprite Animation

Posted on June 9, 2011

How the +1 Button Works

Google +1 Button The +1 Button uses an advanced sprite technique to simulate an animated gif. The animation occurs when hovering over search results with +1 enabled, and the shine moves across the button. (The image to the right is an animated gif I made…)

The +1 Button is not an animated gif, however. It’s a sprite image that moves a background image across the “window” of the button using Javascript. The code, if you care, goes something like this:

onmouseover="window.gbar&&gbar.pw&&gbar.pw.hvr(this,google.time())"

The sprite image Google uses for the +1 button is below:

Google +1 Sprite

Pretty neat, huh?

Yeah, the +1 Button animation is pretty neat…
…now turn it off!

Oh goodness gracious, the animation is annoying. After hovering over one search result, it’s obvious how awful the animation is and I want to claw my eyes out with a rusty nail. I wanted to find a way to disable the animation.  Read more…

Posted in CSS, Google | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments
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