Macronimous Web Design

Our popular E-Book Practical Search Engine optimization techniques is launched for the iPod Touch/iPhones. You can carry this simple iBook  in your iPhones and use it as quick reference. Its available at iTunes to download now.

Last weekend, we have upgraded this Blog system to WordPress 3. It went well without any troubles, as expected. Our team shares few simple steps to do it yourself.

1. Download WordPress 3.0 from the URL wordpress.org/download. And before you install make sure you have access to the FTP client and mysql database

2. Create a subfolder in your domain root folder and upload unzipped wordpress 3.0 files to the subfolder. Create a database for new WordPress version on your web server. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php. Open wp-config.php in a text editor and fill in your database details and upload to the desired folder. Run the WordPress installation script by accessing yourdomain.com/subfolder/wp-admin/install.php.

3. Now you should have done with the installation. Next step is to copy your theme files and paste it to the wp-content folder were you could see the default theme.

4. From now on you need to be very careful, copy you DB tables scripts from your existing blog database and paste it to a notepad. Here you see the links with the original URL yourdomain.com and you need to replace with demo URL yourdomain.com/subfolder/ since you are installing a demo test version in a subfolder. Now you can copy the DB table’s script and execute in your new database that has been created for demo version.

5. Now you are 50% done with wordpress 3.0. All the remaining is plugins and you need to note that all plugins are not compactable for new wordpress 3.0 so do not place all plugin in the wp-content plugin folder if happens then there would be problem in access wp-admin. Through your FTP client you need to create a folder can be named “backup” and place all your existing plugins in the “backup” folder. Then move on your desired plugin one by one to check compatibility by logging into wp-admin. There would be less or more plugins you would have located that are not compactable.

6.  Now you are done with your wordpress 3.0 in your demo version. You should be able to access your demo blog with all the post and as well you would be able to access blog wp-admin.

7. At this instant, you can move your live blog files to a different folder or can move to your local machine just for a support. Through FTP client go to your subfolder were you have wordpress 3.0 file and upload all the files in your root folder were you had the files of your previous word press version. Now download your wp-config.php and open in a text editor and fill in your live database details.

8. Now you need to access your mysql demo database and copy the table’s scripts to a notepad and change the URL from yourdomain.com/subfolder/ to yourdomain.com/ and execute it to your live database.

That’s it, now you can enjoy using wordpress 3.0 for your live blog.

When we launched our business/technical blog system under this domain/url, it was done with WordPress version 2.7 and later we upgraded it to 2.9 (Carmen McRae release) last year. Now WordPress announced its version 3, with major revisions.  WordPress community announced that 1217 bugs were fixed (which means our present blog system has 1217 bugs) which is not a small number. It has 4 digits.

WordPress 3

Next week, we will be upgrading to the new WP 3.0 and we when have started planning now few things come to my mind.

• The first thing would be Database backup.
• The only major task involved in WP upgrades is theme and plug-in compatibility checking. We may need to change our present theme and sacrifice some plug-is if they do not work with the new version. The directory of plug-ins for 3.0 is yet to be displayed, we are waiting for that.
• We are preparing a list of plug-ins, I have asked team to give up some of the plug-ins like ‘Listen Now’, i do not see any use in it. We will also remove the video comment plug-in even if it is compatible with 3.0.
• WordPress has detailed guide for version upgrades, simply following up http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress helped us before.
• Finally we will check the site for validations, in a previous blog we discussed this too. 4 site design validations you should do before you deliver

Now why would we want to upgrade while the present 2.9 is working fine. Not just for the terrible figure 1217, But I like the following list of features which I see in WP3.

1. Create multiple blogs/sites with single control panel. This would be a boon for company like us, who run more than 4 business sites and blogs. But we need to find how easy it would be.
2. Contextual help in the same page. You get what is what within that section. I am sure this will help our customers who use WordPress or any blogging/CMS for the first time.
3. Custom Menu management: We so far used third party plug-ins for Menu based navigations. Some plug-ins works well with some WordPress versions, and some are not. This is the graceful feature which I welcome.
4. Support for short URLs: We need to check is the short URLs are automatically created or we need to use a service like bit.ly

Before we recommend the upgrade to our customers, we want to try and practice it in our system first. Can’t wait!

WordPress control panel has Auto upgrade at : http://blog.macronimous.com/wp-admin/update-core.php , we will try it and post it soon.

Have you thought about the right Data type which you should use?
Is VARCHR bad? Do you review the SQL statements that you have written? Do you know what sort of impact indexes produce? How to leverage the query Caching techniques? Do you follow the naming standards?

This simple slide teaches you the best mySQL practices to be followed up within 15 minutes.

Taking out the best from mySQL will improve the application performance, if its part of your day to day life get into these standards and practice the everyday. This presentation s from Ronald Bradford. Thanks to Ronald for sharing.

1. Validate HTML

W3C provides HTML validations, which checks the validity of HTML, XHTML etc.

http://validator.w3.org/

2. Validate your CSS

You should use W3C’s CSS validator tool to validte your style sheets.

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

3. Validate site links

Check broken links across the site with W3C’s Link checker tool

http://validator.w3.org/checklink

4. Cross browser compatibility

Check the site on multiple browsers with this tool (You may not have a MAC, but you can you can test the site Mac Safari

http://spoon.net/browsers/

Even if its a simple static site, do them to make the site perfect.

Not all the web clients are tech or web savvies. Many times you should pave them their success path online. Here are few a list of 4 important things which you should let your client know, if they trust your web development skills.

1. Flash: When they ask for a fully flashed website, let them know the adversity it might make. By doing this you are helping them to establish the right online presence. Unless your client is Coca cola or Burger King ( I mean,  :-), an establish brand), they will really want to establish better Visibility to the Search Engines.

2. SEO – If a client just wants a website, let them know what SEO is and how it is going to help them. Make the site SEO friendly within the design scope (Eg. Image tags, XHTML validations, designing without tables, etc). Most of the clients will not say NO to make their site ready for SEO.

3. CMS – Ask how frequently they want to change the content, and if they do, let them do know how to do it themselves with a CMS. You may also need to let them know the advantages of fresh content. I believe instead of providing them a static site of 20 pages, you can introduce them Joomla and how to use it, for some additional but onetime investments.

4. Advantages of Opensource - Do they need a CMS or Ecommerce, You can justify why you charge less. Let them know that you can cut cost by using WordPress or Magento and still make their site professional. By doing this you are introducing standards – if your client goes to some other developers, it would not be difficult for them to take up the work.

I recommend you to keep a short write up (with some references) or articles on the above mentioned (you may keep that under your client section of your website) and ask the client to refer them. It also helps them to understand that you know what you tell them.

What is Keyword cloud?

Keyword cloud represents most used keywords in a site visually, by showing it in different font sizes and it is known to be a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) term. It differs from larger to smaller in font sizes. Keyword that has been used more around the site and blog, which we call as keyword density, are shown in larger fonts. According to the keyword density the font size varies from larger to smaller. On looking at the keyword cloud size variation, users can see the importance of the keywords that relates to web site or a blog.

Benefits of keyword cloud

Keyword cloud is benefited to find relevant and useful web pages for user who looks for certain information. 

By using the keyword cloud, popular words (density rich words) are shown and it is as well clickable for users. When users find a keyword listed in keyword cloud useful then he will be going for a click on the particular keyword and he will be taken to the category search results page were all pages or blog posts will be listed related to the tagged keyword.

Make sure the keywords in the cloud section are not overlapped and ugly. Have it in a place were users could find it easily. The better option is to have it in the side bar of a site or blog. 

Keyword cloud generators

Here is a site that helps to generate a keyword cloud by mentioning your web link.

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-cloud/

WordPress Keyword Cloud generator plugin

The below WordPress plugin helps you to install keyword cloud to your blog or site

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/resize-tag-cloud/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/keywords-cloud-for-wordpress/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-tagging-plugin/screenshots/

How Keyword cloud will look like?

If you find any other interesting information about Keyword cloud, you may share through comments.

Codeigniter is an open source web application framework for building dynamic websites with programming language PHP. Its main aim is to facilitate the developers to develop projects much faster than writing code from the scratch. If you are a developer who want to meet the clients’ deadline and tired of tediously large and painstakingly undocumented frameworks, Codeigniter is the way to go. When compared to other PHP frameworks, Codeigniter is often distinguished for its speed.

CodeIgniter

Now is the real time to know about the power of Codeigniter. So ignite yourself and initiate reading to know why you want to choose Codeigniter. It will suit if:

• You require a framework which can be set up very quickly and efficiently.
• You need an outstanding performance.
• You are a developer who needs methodical and clear documentation.
• You need a framework that does not call for sticking on to restrictive coding rules.
• You want a framework that needs nearly zero configuration.
• You need a framework which is compatible with many environments

Some of our developers always prefer to use  CodeIgniter, write me if you want to see some samples and know why they used CodeIgniter. If you want to start using CodeIgniter start right here at: http://codeigniter.com/

3. Frameworks we like: 2. CakePHP and why?

2. PHP Frameworks we like 1. Zend and why?

1. PHP Frameworks we like

Months back, I made a post similar to this, But I believe another post emphasizing on the best practices is not considered bad.

Working with PHP is something you enjoy everyday!. You always wanted to do your best to your clients. But when the deadlines are pressing and when the clients are on your shoulders people start doing messy codings, and the standards got ignored. But you practice the best ways of programming everyday, it becomes your style and you have no alternate choice of doing quick and dirty work. Here are some simple best practices discussed by Matthew Weier of Zend technologies. Use them when you get an opportunity, and they will become your style of programming.

There  1.4 million free and paid applications already exists in the iTunes app store. Though this count is very high, there is still plenty of scope for more applications to be developed and it will only stop when we humans quench our thirst for creativity.

More than a mobile phone, iPhone is looked upon as a lifestyle accessory, which is fun and exciting to use. The main strength of iPhone would be its retaining capability. Similar to most MAC users who would find it difficult to work in other platforms like Windows, most iPhone users will find it difficult to use other mobile phones. This will make the device and its applications to grow for a long time.

iPhone application development is unique in a way that it is not mandatory to have a group of people working under an organization to create iPhone applications. It is also well suited for individuals to unleash their creativity and earn a handful of money and fame too. There are applications like tossing a coin, which has attracted a lot of downloads- Kudos to the thought.

Why not you be a part of this revolution? All you need to do is a MAC machine, an iPod or iPhone preferably, Internet connection and Click here to view our first part of the article – “Getting Started with iPhone Development”