Archive for November, 2006

Nov 29 2006 at 4:03pm

Digg has turned to total crap

But you knew that already, right? Admittedly, it was a bit crap to begin with, at least since I’ve been using it. I did find some useful articles in there, and I had fun digging things up and down (especially comments!). It’s a bit of an addictive medium, but that only works when there’s good content coming up.

I have been subscribed to the digg design and tech news feeds for a couple of months now. I liked how the design section featured all types of design. It’s interesting to see what’s being done with cars, interiors, and industrial design. I think all design fields could learn a lot from each other.

Fixing my WordPress Title Tags

Update 03/07/2008 – I am no longer using this solution for my title tags. Read more about my new solution in Fixing my wordpress title tags, revisited. The solution below may still be useful for anyone who finds the plugin options to be overkill.

Also note that this code was posted in 2006 and may not be compatible with current versions of WordPress.

I thought I’d document this just for my own info and in case anyone else is looking to do the same thing.

Default title format

The default wordpress titles look like this:

Home page: Blog Name (and that’s it)
Category Pages: Blog Name » Category
Archive Pages & individual posts: Blog Name » Blog Archive » Post Title

I wanted to reverse this for a few reasons. Firstly because it’s good for people that have a lot of tabs open and can only read the first part of the title. Secondly, it might be better for SEO and actual reading of SERP’s. Thirdly, because I just like it better that way.

Designers and Marketers: why the disconnect?

We see it all the time in the forums: someone shows up asking all kinds of questions about SEO and promotion but the site is terribly designed. Or, on the opposite side, someone asks for a design review but clearly has absolutely no concept of SEO or marketing. You tell them they need to get some keywords in their title tag and they give you the equivalent of a blank stare
Read more…

Posted in Design, Marketing/SEO/Monetization | 1 Comment »

Nov 08 2006 at 12:10pm

Wednesday Linkup

Just a bunch of cool stuff I’ve come across recently:

Ma.Gnolia – I know, it’s been around for awhile but I just got around to trying it last week. No more sending myself links by email, or keeping tabs open for days while I get around to reading something. They also have a blog plugin that will list my links right on this site. I’ll be implementing that soon
101 Web Marketing Ideas and Tips from Christian Mezei. Loads of great ideas there – a must bookmark!
The power of rough edges – from 37 Signals. Interesting thoughts on “shabby chic” web design.
Gorgeous web design site from Canadian designer Nick La
Research-Based Web Design & USability Guidelines – a comprehensive free PDF book from the US Department of Health and Human Services (warning, it’s almost 300 pages long! Print with caution )
One of my first sites! – there’s lots of link rot going on here but parts of it are still there. I think this one was done in early 1999 or maybe even summer 1998. This one was done in the summer of 1999. I had lost those until I decided to do a google search for myself the other day.

That’s all for now!

Posted in General | 2 Comments »

Nov 01 2006 at 4:23pm

Opera’s Developer site, now open!

Opera has just launched a new site for web developers. It looks to be a really great resource, with lots of articles on stanards compliant development. As the article guidelines state, “we expect visitors to come here with questions of how to implement, not why they should implement a particular technology.” I also like the “don’t assume your readers are idiots” bit.

I think we might be using these guidelines as a reference when we make up some guidelines for our new content site. They are also releasing it all under a creative commons lisence.

It is currently in “beta” (unforunate web 2.0-ism), but keep an eye out for good content to come. The site is super-cute as well, just like the Opera widgets site This is also a good sign that they will be including some developer tools in v. 10.

Posted in General | No Comments »