Feed Hole / caseypeters marked

Dell CEO poised to join auto industry

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:36:42 -0400

Despite a slumping U.S. auto market, Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Inc., thinks that there are plenty of opportunities within the auto industry, and not where you might think. Although it's perfectly rational to assume the 43 year old CEO has his eye on incorporating Dell computers into future vehicles, Dell is actually planning [...]

Secret Location

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:55:38 -0400

Secret Location

10-06-2008
Secret Location & HelloHello! - www.thesecretlocation.com/
View All By This Designer

deviantART: 30+ Breathtaking Artworks

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:35:53 -0400

The web is rich with creative and amazing artworks, and one of the most unusual source of artworks are those you can find on deviantART. Let’s take a close look at 30 of the most breathtaking deviations we’ve found on deviantART. Some amazing artworks are missing? Let us know for our next roundup!

Assign Attributes To The WP_List_Pages Tag

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:36:06 -0400

Our WPCandy v1 WordPress Theme uses a nifty, little script called Scrollovers. A while back when I was developing the theme, I ran into a bit of a problem with the script and WordPress. I wanted to add some bam to the nav with Scrollovers and also use the wp_list_pages tag in order to keep the dynamic nature of the navigation. But see, with Scrollovers, the anchor for a link requires a class and type value of “scrollovers”, which isn’t possible to accomplish with WordPress. As a result, I moved on by simply hardcoding the links in the navigation, as below, and provided the appropriate documentation for users.

” class=”scrollover” type=”scrollover”>home

Well, that was that, until I received an e-mail from Chris Poteet who outlined a sweet and simple solution to solve my problem. jQuery. With a simple jQuery script, Chris was able to assign the necessary attributes to the anchors. Let’s take a look at how Chris was able to do so:

Getting Started

First, go grab the latest version of jQuery, upload it to the root of your theme’s folder, and reference the file in the section of header.php. Your reference should look something like this:

Now we need to include the following code somewhere below the references line:

Basically, this block of code finds all anchors with a class of page_item (this is the default class for the wp_list_pages tag), and adds a class and type with the value of “scrollover”.

Replacing The Original Code

Now we have to replace the original hardcoded navigation links. Delete the

values but leave the

and , in which you will place the following code in between:

If everything is working properly, then you have created yourself a fully dynamic navigation with Scrollovers!

With that being said, I’m sure this trick works with other WordPress template tags, which could be a Godsend for some developers who want to extend WordPress beyond its capabilities. If you can figure out other ways to use this trick, please feel free to let us know in the comments.

Oh and if you’re currently using our WPCandy v1 theme, you can download an updated version of the header.php file here.

WordPress Plugin: RSS Footer

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:00:17 -0400

If your website offers a feed and you care about protecting your copyrighted content, one thing you should make sure to do is have some sort of copyright notice within your blog’s feed.

There are a variety of WordPress plugins out there that allow you to create a footer for your WordPress feed, including Feed Footer, which we have previously reviewed here. Some offer rotated feeds, others allow you to use HTML to display whatever you want, but for the average person with a blog this is mostly fluff.

If you just want the ability to basically add a copyright notice or use a small amount of HTML to promote a product/service, then you will want to check out the RSS Footer WordPress plugin. It allows you to easily plugin in a line of code and choose where in your code it should be displayed.

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All-in-One SEO Pack No Longer Supported?

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:00:56 -0400

Late last week I talked about an advanced alternative premium WordPress plugin to the free All-in-One SEO Pack called SEO Sniper. In what can only be described as a complete coincidence (or weird timing), I’ve read a couple reports today that the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin will no longer be supported by the author, Uberdose. No mention is made for the reason behind this.

This is a fairly new plugin (about a year old I believe), yet it is by far the most used WordPress plugin out there and I’m sure most of you use it. So, what will come of this free plugin? As of right now it works fine, but what about after WordPress 2.6? I was unable to find licensing information associated with the plugin, so it is unclear of it is available for someone else to take over and continue to develop and improve.

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Clean and pure CSS FORM design

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 08:08:00 -0400

Some readers of my blog hate html tables and often ask to me which is the better way to design FORMS with CSS, without using tables to place each form element in a table's cell. How I said some time ago... tables are not evil. Sincerly, in some case I used pure CSS code to design forms but, in general, I prefer to use tables. It's simpler and faster than use only CSS property "to simulate" a table structure. In any case, for CSS lovers, this tutorial illustrates a proposal about how to design a pure CSS form without using html tables.

You can download the source code and use it in your web projects.

Download source code

Step 1: HTML Code
Create a new page index.html and copy and past this code into the tag :

"stylized" class="myform">

How you can see from the code above, the structure of our CSS form is the following:

I used for the name of each input element and tag for the short description. All labels and input elements have float CSS property set to left;

Step 2: CSS Code
Copy and paste the following CSS code in the tag of your page:

body{
font-family:"Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size:12px;
}
p, h1, form, button{border:0; margin:0; padding:0;}
.spacer{clear:both; height:1px;}
/* ----------- My Form ----------- */
.myform{
margin:0 auto;
width:400px;
padding:14px;
}

/* ----------- stylized ----------- */
#stylized{
border:solid 2px #b7ddf2;
background:#ebf4fb;
}
#stylized h1 {
font-size:14px;
font-weight:bold;
margin-bottom:8px;
}
#stylized p{
font-size:11px;
color:#666666;
margin-bottom:20px;
border-bottom:solid 1px #b7ddf2;
padding-bottom:10px;
}
#stylized label{
display:block;
font-weight:bold;
text-align:right;
width:140px;
float:left;
}
#stylized .small{
color:#666666;
display:block;
font-size:11px;
font-weight:normal;
text-align:right;
width:140px;
}
#stylized input{
float:left;
font-size:12px;
padding:4px 2px;
border:solid 1px #aacfe4;
width:200px;
margin:2px 0 20px 10px;
}
#stylized button{
clear:both;
margin-left:150px;
width:125px;
height:31px;
background:#666666 url(img/button.png) no-repeat;
text-align:center;
line-height:31px;
color:#FFFFFF;
font-size:11px;
font-weight:bold;
}

This is only a proposal for the form layout. You can reuse this code changing all properties how you prefer.

Download source code

Related Post
Table's anatomy: why tables are not so bad
Are you a CSS fanatic?
Improve form usability with auto messages

Best of the Web - May

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:07:47 -0400

It’s time for a web roundup from the best of May and a bit of June. These posts take me so long to write, because inevitably I get sidetracked into reading all sorts of fascinating articles and sites. So make sure you’ve got a good amount of time free today, because we have some major linkage for you!

HTML + CSS

Introduction to CSS3

This huge series of 6 posts will give you a complete introduction to CSS3 including some of the awesome features like web fonts and columns!

Part 1 |
Part 2 |
Part 3 |
Part 4 |
Part 5 |
Part 6
How to Code HTML Email Newsletters

Last week I sent out a newsletter to launch our new stock audio site, that went out to about 20,000 people. Only after I hit send did I find out that Outlook really didn’t approve of how I’d laid it all out, not to mention gmail and the webmail providers. If you need to send out email, sitepoint’s new guide is definitely worth a read first!

Visit Tutorial
CSS Decorative Gallery

Nick La showcases some great techniques to produce a series of image galleries using CSS, jQuery and even a bit of sIFR

Visit Tutorial
Back to Basics: Understanding CSS Positioning

This great 3 part series will have you declared master of positioning in no time at all!

Part 1 |
Part 2 |
Part 3
Easy Vertical Centering

CSS has a tendency of making anything to do with vertical heights needlessly troublesome, but this simple explanation of vertical centring should go some way to clearing up some basics anyhow.

Visit Tutorial
5 CSS Questions…and Answers

I love Jeff’s question/answer format, and this post answers some really common issues that CSS designers run into.

Visit Article

Javascript & JS Libraries

1kb Horizontal Javascript Accordion

I found this link via our NETTUTS user link feed, and was really impressed. It’s a simple, versatile little accordion effect that would work well on any site. And while you’re over at Leigeber check out their huge array of other awesome components.

Visit Download
Exceptional Ajax Javascript Techniques

Noupe continues to roundup the best resources (including a few links to us!) and this post rounds up some 30 odd cool tutorials and techniques.

Visit Article
5 jQuery Questions & Answers

Jeff from DetachedDesigns has been posting some great articles on jQuery and web design, this one answers a few solid basics in jQuery.

Visit Article
ScreenCast - Intro to jQuery

Can’t be bothered with all this Reading business? Don’t worry about it, because Chris’s latest screencast will give you the intro you need without all the.. erm words.

Visit Screencast
9 Open Source Fisheye Menus

You might be wondering wtf is a fisheye menu, click the link and you’ll find out! Along with 9 links to great open source demos. And we have an NETTUTS tutorial coming on creating one of these little guys, so stay tuned.

Visit Article

Flash!

Using Flash and Staying Standards Compliant

When you’re developing with Flash, it’s always good to finish it off by keeping your html container standards compliant, look out for searchability and work on usability issues. Over at CSS Tricks there’s a neat article explaining the first of those three. I’ll keep an eye out for tutorials on the other two!

Visit Tutorial
Advanced Animation with Drawing API

They say code is art, so why not draw with it? A nice tutorial on using the drawing API with AS3.

Visit Tutorial
Opening a URL in Actionscript 3 Dynamically

Plunge into AS3 with ScriptPlayground who have a bunch of great tutorials on various actionscript techniques. Also worth a look is how to display Digg posts using AS3

Visit Tutorial
Create an Amazing Flash Widget for Your Blog

Abduzeedo’s Fabio writes up a tutorial on making an RSS widget for your blog.

Visit Tutorial
The Ultimate Dynamic Image Gallery

This has to be one of the longest Flash tutorials I’ve ever seen, spanning some 12 pages, but it sure looks worth it!

Visit Tutorial
FlashDen’s Top 50 Files

If you’ve never visited our sister site - FlashDen’s top sellers list, it’s worth a look, some of these components are really pretty amazing.

Visit Top Sellers
FLATUTS - Coming Soon!

OK so this isn’t really a link, but I thought I would mention that a few days ago I managed to secure the domain FLATUTS.com and if you’re into Flash, you’ll be pleased to hear we’re starting to find tutorial writers. I’ll post more details soon.

Developer Links

SimplePie

Need to process some RSS? Well SimplePie’s super easy to use, really well documented, and frankly has a great looking website! Perfect for crafting that new PopUrls clone you always wanted to make.

And while you’re at it, check out this neat use of SimplePie to Create a Slick iPhone/Mobile Interface from Any RSS Feed

Visit SimplePie
Iceberg

Iceberg which launched really, really recently (today I think actually) is a web application that lets “anyone” build web applications. Sound like a big claim? It sure is, but seems to be getting some good press.

Visit Iceberg
7 Applications to Make Working with MySQL Databases Easier

I’ve always just used phpMyAdmin, but it seems there are a bunch of neat solutions for managing your database, and SixRevisions have rounded them up for you.

Visit Iceberg
A PHP Guy’s Look at Python

With Google’s App Engine only using Python, all of a sudden you might be wondering whether it’s worth a look in. This Sitepoint article is a great intro for all of us PHP’ers

Visit Article
15 Places to Find Great Screencasts

RWW rounds up a bunch of great sites to learn by watching, including favourites like Peepcode and lots I’d never heard of.

Visit Article
Need a Good Coding Font?

Looking for a nice font to code in? Envry Code R was released a couple of weeks ago and is worth a look.

Get Envy

Content Management Systems

SilverStripe

I came across SilverStripe recently and though I haven’t had a chance to try it out, it looks really promising. Hopefully we’ll see an SS tutorial here soon!

Visit Site
Need a Forum? 8 Popular Open Source Forums

WebTecker rounds up the best of the open source forums out there, I’ve only ever used Vanilla and PHPBB. If you haven’t tried PHPBB v3, you really should, even just the install process is awesome!

Visit Site
Mastering your Wordpress Theme Hacks and Techniques

A fantastic resource for any wordpress themer with not only lots of content, but a huge number of links off to even more great articles!

Visit Tutorial

Miscellanea

DevKick

A great new resource site that catalogs and collects components and resources, including a heck of a lot of jQuery stuff!

Visit Site
8 Fonts You Probably Don’t Use in CSS But Should

If you’re anything like me, you’re always looking for new ideas for your web designs, and using some of these not-so-standard fonts might just be one. I must admit I didn’t know Gill Sans was so common on Macs!

Visit Article
The Rise of Contextual User Interfaces

An interesting article over at RWW about interfaces that change in context with the content, how they’ve been cropping up more and more and what relevance they have to web designers.

Visit Article
Haulin’ Ass with Dreamweaver - 10 Site Management Tools

Though Dreamweaver doesn’t always have a lot of cred, it does have some pretty powerful tools. I know I always use it for it’s awesome find+replace tool. And this article takes you a through key features that you might not be making full use of.

Visit Article
The Next-Gen Web: HTML5 - Will We Ever See A Real Standard?

A fascinating look at where the web has been and where it’s heading over at TechCrunch.

Visit Article
Why We Skip Photoshop | Why We Don’t Skip Photoshop

The guys at 37Signals have always been pretty opinionated, a few days ago they posted about why Photoshop isn’t part of their process. Jeff Croft at BlueFlavor answered with a rebuttal, and both articles make for good reading…

37Signals’ Original | Jeff’s Rebuttal
6 Ways to Subliminally Tell Users Don’t Come Back

An amusingly true look at some mistakes to avoid.

Visit Article

Free Glossy Blogging Icons Set for Bloggers

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 04:01:18 -0400

After weeks of development, we are happy to announce the release of “Blogging Icons Set” specifically designed for bloggers. There are total 12 shiny and modern icons for your blogs. It comes with 3 sizes, 24×24, 36×36 and 48×48 in png format. Blogging Icons Set is released under Creative Commons License, please feel free to use it on your personal and commercial projects. If you love them, please digg, stumble or link to this article. Spread it like wild fire now~

Download Blogging Icons Set Now

Disclaimer & Conditions: Redistribution, Release for Download or Selling of these icons on an another site without permission is completely prohibited.

As we promised from the start of Blog Perfume, we would like to help bloggers as much as we can. We are trying to find all the best wordpress resources for bloggers, at the same time are developing some helpful tools for bloggers. You can view our themes and tools we have released eariler.

Feed Analysis - Detailed report and analysis for individual FeedBurner feed.
SilveRay - Clean and Soft Free WordPress Theme
Blubs - Elegant Premium WordPress Theme
Feed Compare - Compare your FeedBurner subscriber numbers with Others

A lot more coming…… Please subscribe to our RSS and stay tuned.

Leaked image reveals 2010 Nissan compact coupe

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:58:03 -0400

Nissan is currently developing a new compact sports coupe that will effectively compete with the upcoming and yet-to-be named sports car Subaru and Toyota are developing and, thanks to a leaked image from Nissan GT 2012 meeting, we have our first glimpse at what the car will look like. Word is Nissan's car has [...]

CurtisHenson.com Version 3.0

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:53:58 -0400

It’s alive! And almost error free. I was never happy with the previous designs of this site, they seemed pasted together like a bad 80’s collage. So I set on the adventure to re-design my own site, something I hate doing because I always want to go in a thousand different directions.

The Design

I liked some things about the previous design like the color scheme(for now). But I didn’t like the background much, and it left me limited in what I could do. This time around I wanted a “cleaner” look, but not too clean. This proved to be harder than I thought, but eventually I combined two other designs into what you see now. I set out to freshen everything up and give it a good scrubbing and I’m happy with results(for now). I did sacrifice whitespace, almost all of it. I think I may need to address that in the future because I think the site looks somewhat “busy”(What do you think?).

The Layout

This new design uses almost the same grid as the previous designs, but now it actually sticks to it throughout the site. I’ve got some plans for the future and I wanted(needed) a strong grid and to actually stick to it this time. The homepage is now something I’m happy with, it meets all my goals, and I will be able to update the top with my latest projects. The site in whole is much more structured and hopefully easier to navigate now.

The Portfolio

This site used to be my portfolio, but when I started blogging a trashed it. Since then it felt like this site had a bit of an identity crisis. It wasn’t a really just a blog, but wasn’t a portfolio either. I feel I’ve integrated by business and the blog much nicer now. I wanted a flashy portfolio, but simple and effective at the same time. I decided to use some AJAX for it, mainly because I wanted to experiment. The result is a cool portfolio…that barely works at the moment. I’m still working on the kinks and usability issues(like bookmarking) so if you spot any errors(or better ways of doing it) please let me know. It is also pretty sparse over there as I haven’t really uploaded much to it yet.

Cleanup

I still haven’t done my ritual of going through the code and cleaning it all up and making it pretty so the backend is not optimized at this time. In fact the code for this website looks like a monkey grabbed my keyboard. But it works, which is the most important part, unless you are a one of those people that reads the code to see how un-semantic sites are. If you are one of those people(I read web-pages in pure HTML), you might have a heart attack looking at the code right now(give me a week, for your health’s sake). The javascript also will need some attention at some point, but that will likely happen when jQuery 1.5 is released.

Basecamp Affiliate Disappointment

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 04:40:41 -0400

As you know, I’m a pretty big fan of Basecamp and I use it extensively for personal projects, client projects and even for managing the relations between my partners on Premium News Themes. Having previously blogged about my affection for their project management platform, you can understand that I was pretty excited to see 37Signals launch a new affiliate program for their members.

So I figured that this would be a great way to earn a bit of extra cash, since I was already recommending the system to a lot of people… But when I got to their sign up page, it clearly stated that the affiliate program was only available to US citizens… Why!?

Now, I have to admit that I’m really disappointed in this very stupid limitation in their affiliate program. I really don’t understand why they have limited it to US citizens only; considering that all other affiliate programs are open to anyone… This seems like such an amateur solution from such a great company… Anyone agree with me?

30 Amazing Free Vector Icons, Buttons, Stickers, Banners, Labels and Speech Bubbles

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 02:03:37 -0400

1. Labels

2. Free Web 2.0 Services Vector Package

3. 3D Luggage Tag

4. Trendy Circles

5. Web Stickers Round

6. Collection of 90 free ‘Web 2.0′ Style Buttons

7. New RSS Icon

8. Bright Web Banners

9. Promotional buttons by ~unicko

10. theCoffeeandTvMilkBox by ~HappyStalin

11. 165 Lovely Vector Icons (for free)

12. Bright! - a free icon set

13. 30 Free Vector RSS Icons

14. Milky, a free vector icon set

15. Free Vector Blue Icons

16. Free Vector Buttons and Icons - Metal and Glass

17. Designrific: 90 Free Vector Icons Set

18. Retro Vector Icon Set

19. Globe Icon Set | You the Designer

20. Sticker Icons

21. Mini Vector Car Icons

22. Free Vector Web Stickers

23. 20 poppy Color Stickers

24. Vector Wooden Labels

25. Classy Banners Set1

26. 72 Free Vector Glass Buttons and Bars

27. Free Vector Glass Orbs

28. Free Vector Icon Set 1

29. Speech Balloon Shapes

30. Free Vector Badges - Glass

Ultimate Baseball Theme

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:40:38 -0400

Category 4, authors of the well-designed Probama Theme, has just released another beauty for baseball fans. It’s loaded with features that make it extremely easy for even novice WordPress users, including Flickr and Scoreboard Feed integration. Let’s take a look at what Category 4’s latest theme has to offer.

Installation

Installation of the Ultimate Baseball Theme is pretty simple. An options page is added under the Design tab that lets you control many functions of the theme including a Flickr feed and a lead story image. There’s no messing around with custom fields or anything. The theme and its options page takes care of it all.

Flickr Integration

Flickr integration is seamless. Enter your User ID, choose the number of images you want to display, and let it know which photo tags to look for. The result is a nifty box on your site that lets you flick through images from your Flickr account.

Lead Story and Header Images

Another feature built into this theme is the ability to easily upload an image to use on the homepage next to the latest article. It doesn’t matter what size your images is; it will automatically be cropped and resized and fitted to suit. You can also upload an image for the header which lets you brand your site for your favorite team. Again, cropping and resizing options are available to you.

Scoreboard

What’s a fansite without a scoreboard? The Ultimate Baseball Theme includes the ability to integrate an XML feed from a site such as TotallyScored and formats it into a neat little scoreboard for your site.

Recap

For a free theme, Category 4’s latest release is a home run. Installation is a breeze and everything you might need to customize is available from the options page.

Pros

Easy Installation - no messing with custom fields or extensive options pages
Effortless Flickr and TotallyScored Integration
Stylized scoreboard and Flickr area
Easy file uploads to help brand the site, automatically crops and resizes images
Comes ready for content, displayed in clean fashion
Very well designed
Free!

Cons

I honestly can’t think of any.

The Ultimate Baseball theme is available for a free download from Category 4’s website. You can also take it for a test spin here.

Improve Reader Navigation With The Breadcrumb Navigation Plugin

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:00:16 -0400

A couple readers have commented on how they like the navigation menu that you’ll find at the top of each page on this blog and wanted to know how to do this on their WordPress blogs.

I really love the improved navigation it gives readers, and doing something like this on a WordPress blog is actually really easy, thanks to the incredible community WordPress has. All you need is the Breadcrumb Navigation XT WordPress plugin and some simple code to place where you want the navigation to display.

Once you’ve got your plugin uploaded and activated (activate the Core version), you can place the following code where you want the navigation to display:

assemble(); // Display the breadcrumb $mybreadcrumb->display(); } ?>

You can style it to look how you want using .breadcrumb on your stylesheet.

Enjoy!

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WordPress Firefox Add-on: Zemanta

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 04:00:06 -0400

This guest post was written by Ben Fraley of Ben Fraley.com, where he enjoys writing about WordPress. If you have webmaster or WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for Hack WordPress, please contact us.

Ok so, true to form, here’s my first review of a Wordpress tool for Hack Wordpress. It’s a Firefox extension called “Zemanta,” and if you like Wordpress, you just gotta get this. What it does it suggest links, tags, categories, even pictures for your blog post AS YOU TYPE IT. That’s correct, it doesn’t even wait for you to be done, and you don’t have to go searching yourself. It does it for you. It’s just awesome.

The extension installs into Firefox, and goes seamlessly into the Wordpress (2.3 and 2.5) admin section without any installation into Wordpress itself (I guess it’s not as much a Wordpress plugin as it is a Firefox plugin for Wordpress. Semantics ). Very easy, and very, VERY useful.

So, if you’re a Firefox user (and if you aren’t, go get Firefox right now!) install this plugin for a great blogging experience!

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$4.7B ad drop feared for newspapers

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:54:00 -0400

Print newspaper sales this year appear to be on track to drop by some $4.7 billion to less than $37.5 billion, a level not seen since the mid-1990s. The prediction comes from Paul Ginocchio of Deutsche Bank at a time of growing dismay among media executives who, for the most part, have watched sales weaken every month this year. “We keep throwing more and more rope into the well, but we never

Maximize SEO With the SEO Sniper WordPress Plugin

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:00:59 -0400

When I first ran across the WP SEO Sniper premium WordPress plugin, I wasn’t really sure what exactly to expect. After all, there is a popular free SEO WordPress plugin called All-in-One SEO Pack that has really become popular within the WordPress community.

I immediately picked up a copy of the WordPress plugin and began to test it out to try to get an idea of how it compared to All-in-One SEO Pack. After getting the plugin uploaded and activated, I jumped over to the plugin settings panel and began to dig through the available features. I have to admit, I was instantly impressed!

From what I can tell, All-in-One SEO Pack is designed specifically for anyone to upload and activate for instant improved SEO, meaning it is designed for someone that doesn’t have any SEO knowledge. SEO Sniper was created for those serious about SEO so that they can easily practice advanced SEO techniques on their WordPress blogs directly from the dashboard. They even offer 3 user profiles, so you can set the plugin to Mild, Moderate, or Aggressive.

Although things are displayed a little differently, it appears that SEO Sniper includes everything that use get with All-in-One SEO Pack, but it takes your control over your blogs SEO to a whole new level.

The plugin was based upon Dan Thies’ SEO Fast Start manual, allowing you to easily implement Dan’s strategies on your WordPress blog. Based upon Dan’s suggestions, you should be:

Prevent paged indexes and archives from being indexed by the search engines.
Selectively nofollow links to the main index page from anywhere on your blog.
Craft a custom page title, meta keywords, and meta description for the blog home page.
Nofollow category links on the category pages.
Nofollow category links on the individual posts.
Nofollow category links on the individual pages.
Noindex all tag archives.
Nofollow all internal tag links.
Automatically build a footer page menu.
Insert Google Analytics code and Google site verification code.
Specify if and where you want to nofollow links to the page.
Specify if you want to prevent the page from being indexed by the spiders.
Craft a custom page title, meta keywords, and meta description.
Prevent the page from being included in the WordPress list of pages.
Specify a custom CSS file to be applied.
Perform a 301 redirection on the page. (This is great for those wanting to cloak affiliate links)
Link the page or post to other pages and posts with custom anchor text.

With SEO Sniper, you can do the following:

Give your important content more PageRank by cutting out redundant pages.
Preserves more PageRank to be shared amongst your lower level content pages.
Make your entry in the search engines stand out and entice more clicks.
Push more PageRank down to your individual posts.
Preserve more PageRank to be shared amongst your posts.
Preserve more PageRank to be shared amongst your pages.
Since tags are mostly for human benefit, the value of having tag archives in the search engine index is debatable.
Preserve more PageRank to go to your valuable content.
Give your blog a fully SEO’d footer menu with selective nofollows on the links.
Include your Google code without having to edit your theme files.
Precisely control how PageRank flows to a page.
Keep unimportant content out of the search engine index completely.
Make your entry in the search engines stand out and entice more clicks.
Keep unimportant pages out of the list of pages. Many themes use the page list to build a main top menu. Control which pages appear in that important menu.
Individually style a particular post or page if you wish to do so.
Send request for, and the original PageRank, from a redundant post or page to a new post or page.
Implement SEO Fast Start Tiered Pairing or Circular Navigation techniques on your posts and pages to give each post or page as much PageRank as possible.

Like All-in-One SEO Pack, you get an actual menu in your Write panel that gives you full control over that particular post, even going as far as to give you things like the ability to do a 301 redirect for that particular post (pictures above).

Overall I am very impressed with this plugin, though you should already be comfortable with basic SEO techniques before upgrading to this WordPress plugin.

If you decide to give SEO Sniper a try, remember that you have a 56-day money back guarantee, so it is essentially risk free. The author also promises regular plugin updates as WordPress changes, so you know it will be supported over time, unlike many free plugins.

You may also want to try it in conjunction with WP Affiliate Pro, as I have personally found that the two premium plugins work really well together.

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25 of the Best FREE Photoshop Plugins and Filters Resource Sites

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 05:34:54 -0400

1. Plugins World - Directory of plugins for Photoshop

2. Richard Roseman Plugin Downloads

3. Cybia - Plug-In Filters - The Works Series

4. Photoshop Filters Factory

5. The Plugin Site

6. Mehdi - Plugins Photoshop

7. Xero Graphics : Freeware plugins

8. freephotoshop.com - Adobe Photoshop Plugins and Filters

9. Free Photoshop Plugins | TechnoTarget

10. Free Photoshop Plugins » Photoshop Tutorials Blog

and the rest…

11. Free Photoshop Brushes and Plugins | PhotoshopSupport.com.

12. Telegraphics - Free plugins for Photoshop.

13. Adobe Photoshop Plugins DIRECTORY | PhotoshopSupport.com.

14. Plugins - Photo-Plugins.

15. The Plugin Site - Adobe Photoshop plugins and filters.

16. Telegraphics - Free plugins for Photoshop and Illustrator.

17. Little Ink Pot - Free Plugins.

18. HDR photo software and plugins.

19. VanDerLee - Plug-ins.

20. Red-Field Photoshop Plugins.

21. Luce site.

22. Pog’s Notes » Plugins.

23. Adobe - Adobe Photoshop CS3: Plug-ins.

24. AFH Systems Group - Plug-ins.

25. Mysterious Ways (Almathera Plug-in Collection).

How To: Fixing Popularity Contest Plugin for WordPress 2.5

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:32:11 -0400

The problem(s): With some upgrades of the WordPress 2.5 branch, the Popularity Contest WordPress plugin is not working properly. Also, people trying to activate the Popularity Contest plugin on a brand new WordPress install are getting a fatal error or a “doesn’t exist” message when attempting to activate the plugin.

The solution(s): I actually ran into this problem on a fresh install of WordPress. After several attempts, I was unable to figure out the problem myself. Thankfully, a quick Google search showed a post over at WPGuy which gave details on fixing both problems!

Here is what you need to know if you have this problem:

Fix problems with the upgrade to WordPress 2.5

Open your Popularity Contest plugin (edit it) and search for this code:

require('../../wp-blog-header.php');

And replace it with this:
require('../wp-blog-header.php');

Fix problems with a new install of WordPress 2.5

In addition to doing the above, you need to search for the following code:

if (isset($_GET['activate']) && $_GET['activate'] == ‘true’) {

And replace it with this:
if (isset($_GET['action']) && $_GET['action'] == ‘activate’) {

I went through both of these steps on my fresh WordPress install and it fixed the problem perfectly!

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