For those who have been here before I’m sure you noticed the new template. I am in the process of migrating from the Google Syntax Highlighter plugin to Chili so code in some posts needs to be reformatted.

Great content is on it’s way including a lot of custom Wordpress plugins, Wordpress tutorials, X-cart plugins, X-cart themes, PHP scripts, etc, etc.

Hope everyone has a great 2010!!!

                        

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I know the basics about Wordpress, built a few blogs, created custom templates and even a few very simple plugins but I find it easier to grasp something new when someone else has written a book filled with real world examples. That is exactly what “How to be a ROCKSTAR WordPress Designer” is. The book covers a lot of ground from the basics to what else can WordPress be used for.

The concepts of blog design, how to move your design comps from Photoshop to HTML, explaining “the loop”, how to extend your template without writing a plugin, basic plugin building, splitting your template into multiple files, widgets and everything else you need to get from not knowing anything about building a WordPress theme to a ninja in no time.

My favorite part is the final chapter in the book that lists “Innovative Ways to Use WordPress“, and the items listed are truly innovative. The diversity of uses show just how powerful yet simple WordPress really is.

This book has answered a lot of questions I had when trying to sift through the WordPress API documentation and even a lot of online examples I had downloaded and reviewed. Collis Ta’eed and Harley Alexander have done an incredible job writing this book and I can’t wait to read the others available from the Rockable Press.

Support My Blog and Pick Up a Copy Today

Click the button below to be redirected to purchase your copy of How to Be a Rockstar Wordpress Designer.

Resources

WordPress
How to be a ROCKSTAR WordPress Designer
Rockable Press

                        

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Leon Brocard (Blog) and Jake Brumby (Mr Monkey) have done a great job consolidating some of the most important parts of the web site/web application creation process in an easy to read 85 page book. Everything from start to finish is included from planning, creating an outline, managing how to get the project completed, technologies to use, building the site, best practices and much more.

The book is to the point and does not include examples for every point covered but that’s not the point of the book. It’s to give you an idea of what you should be doing to ensure that your next web site project goes smoothly. Even the most seasoned web designer or web developer can benefit from this book and I recommend that you pick up a copy.

FYI

There is a spreadsheet version of the tick list at the end of the book available by request. Send an email to authors@tickmyboxes.com and request your copy. I have also been told that the authors are planning to create an online version of the checklist for book owners.

                        

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There is one very important section titled “Does that mean I should avoid rewriting dynamic URLs at all?“. Based on Google’s recommendation rewriting is not suggested from an SE perspective (though the article mentions that more readable URLs help with click through rates).

Yes, dynamic URLs make the URL pretty but I’m with Google on this one. For web applications/sites that are not trying squeeze every possible ounce of SEO there is nothing wrong with the good old query string parameters to pass data.

If you have marketing campaigns you should have landing pages with a static URL to help with CTR, the small ounce of SEO boost with the optimized URL and let your web application do it’ own thing, crunch code.

                        

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Online

A Website Design & Development Project Checklist

Website Checklist

Web Design Contract Essentials Checklist

Software Development Project Checklist (Free Registration Required to Download)

Project Checklists

Checklist: Web Contracts

The Official “Successful Website Checklist Challenge”

SEO Checklist for Designers, Programmers and Project Managers

Website Launch Checklist

Custom Software Development Checklist

A Security Checklist for Web Application Design

The Gigantic SEO Client Technical Checklist

Books

Tick My Boxes (Read my review)

Deliver First Class Websites (soon to review)

                        

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My biggest gripe is not being able to drag and drop from Explorer directly to the remote machine from the File Transfer window. I usually have a very large directory tree and digging down several levels from the built in File Transfer window is cumbersome.

Here is an example is what should be included in the next release or update.

                        

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The rules are simple; select weapons of your choice (nuclear as well) to destroy the other tanks on the field. The game play is smooth and you’ll find yourself playing this game hours on end.

Set the level to extreme and test your shooting skills.

http://www.ethannicholas.com/iShoot/

                        

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CSS Transparency Settings for All Browsers

                        

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The new 2.0 release is fully compliant with Eclipse standards, enabling PHP developers to leverage a wide variety of Eclipse projects, such as Web Tools Project (WTP) and Dynamic Language Toolkit (DLTK), for faster and easier development. PDT 2.0 also offers strong support for Object Orient Programming (OOP) in PHP.

Some of the new capabilities in PDT 2.0 are:

• A Type Hierarchy view
• Mark Occurrences
• Indexing and caching of model elements
• And much, much more…

Download a copy >>

                        

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• My Essential Developer’s Toolbox – Part I

Update SlideShowPro

Open the SlideShowPro .fla you are working with in Flash.

Select to Window/Component Inspector or Shift + F7.

Scroll to the bottom and change the XML File Path value to the absolute path to your XML file. I am using the following.

/wp-content/themes/default/gallery.xml

Update XML Image Path

Open your gallery XML file and change the lgpath value to the path where your slideshow images are located. I am using the path below used in conjunction with the XML File Path set above.

/wp-content/themes/default/slideshow/gallery1/

Done

Export your movie and your gallery should start.

Resources

There are plugins available that help with deeper integration with Wordpress such as Slide Press. You might want to check those out if you want to manage the images directly from Wordpress.

                        

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