Mimbo Pro 4

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

I recently created a promotional video for Mimbo Pro 4 - showcasing the newest functionality from the theme.

I've been really pleased with how Mimbo Pro has done on WordPress.com and a lot of the new functionality and developments have developed because of working with the team and users at wp.com.

One of my goals with Mimbo Pro 4 is to merge the wordpress.com and wordpress.org versions of the theme into one. When we first moved Mimbo Pro on to wordpress.com we had multiple versions of the theme, one for each site, and this made updating the two of them a pain. As such the stand alone version of the theme got left behind. This is no longer the case and will make future update of the theme much quicker and easier for all.

If you're interested in Mimbo Pro 4 then you can get more information from the Pro Theme Design website.

View the original article here

Magnus iPad Stand

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

I really like my iPad, I only got it last year so it's still new to me, but I use it all the time. My biggest complaint is that it's quite heavy (it's not an iPad Mini) and so I've been looking for an iPad stand. Enter MyBanana.

Yep - a rather daft name - but they're a small company based in the south-west of England and they sell premium Apple Accessories. So I ordered a Magnus, magnetic iPad stand.

The package arrived, and I was presented with a hand written envelope that contained my iPad stand and a hand written letter - a nice personal touch.

The stand itself looked nice - it's a single piece of metal with a small magnet in the base. The colour looks suitably Mac like, but it has a grainy feeling and doesn't offer the same level of polish as a genuine Mac component.

Being a geek I skipped the instructions and stuck my iPad straight into the stand... only for it to slide off and get very close to smashing on the floor. I didn't realise that the iPad had to be inserted on a specific side and so very nearly broke it. Naturally the instructions covered this - but I don't think it was clear enough, and could have cost me an iPad

In use the stand works quite well, but since the first mishap it has never felt quite secure (even though it probably is). Also it's not adjustable - and the angle is a touch too steep for me to comfortably use at a desk. As such it's good for holding the iPad when not in use or when watching a movie - but it's not so good when I want to interact with it. I did find that it works well when on my bedside table so that's where it is being used.

Overall the Magnus iPad stand looks nice - but isn't as functional as I would like - so the quest is still on for the perfect stand. Note that I am not looking for a cover with integrated stand - I got an awesome iPad case last year. I'm just looking for something I can use when I'm at home. Unfortunately MyBanana don't offer any other iPad stands currently, but I'd consider them for other purchases in the future - there's a few nice things on there.

View the original article here

Designing Perfection – A Waste of Time?

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

I know it's a little bit old but I read an article on Dustin Curtis blog recently about how perfection is a make or break element of a performance or product - and craftsmanship has been lost... and I don't agree.

In fact, most creative industries throughout history have had this component, called craftsmanship, and it's a bond between creator and user. But it seems to have been lost, somehow, in the expanding bureaucracy and process of modern companies.

Dustin looks back at an article by Teller from the magic duo - Penn and Teller. In the article Teller talks (repeatedly) about how magicians will spend more time and effort than it's worth to fool someone in one magic trick. Dustins theory then, is that perfection takes time, but it's worth it for the overall performance (or in our case website).

I don't disagree that perfection is a worthwhile goal - but I do disagree that it's realistically attainable. Or rather - that we all have the luxury of time and money that people like Penn and Teller (and possibly Dustin) have.

At our small design shops (Pro Theme Design) and at the day job (Miniclip) we don't always have the time to make things perfect - at least not in version 1 - but this doesn't reduce our passion or craftsmanship for the job.

Arguably - on the internet in particular - perfection isn't realistic. No matter how much time and effort you put into a product there is always something that can be improved.

Until your product is in users hands you can't tell how they will use it or what they will do so, in my opinion, there's no point making everything perfect in iteration 1 - since you're going to have to change it again in future versions.

Earlier I mentioned my theme site - Pro Theme Design - and that we don't have the luxury of making things that are perfect. But we sell a product. How do we sell something that's not perfect?

Well, much like WordPress, we sell something that does what 99% of people will want - but there's always going to be something that someone wants added. Luckily WordPress has so many plugins that it can generally be done with them instead - but even then it doesn't answer all the questions.

Plus - WordPress is constantly evolving - so we have to adapt and rewrite and reprogram. This is why our perfect version 1 of Mimbo Pro is now on version 4.1.

When we first created Mimbo Pro the WordPress themes marketplace was sooo different to how it is today. Free themes often came with instructions on how to edit the PHP code to add things to your sidebar. It was crazy - but this was how WordPress worked. The fact that we released the theme and it included a control panel was amazing - but now these things are standard and so we have to keep evolving to stay ahead of the game - and keep making our product 'more perfect'.

In addition we added support for all sorts of things, such as contact forms, and google analytics tracking. These are things that are better served by plugins - and so we've, only recently, removed this functionality in favor of a simpler more streamlined approach.

Often there's a fine line between perfect and good enough - but that line can take a lot of effort to cross. When looking at business objectives - it's hard to justify spending time on the details that make a product perfect. What's more - the average user isn't going to notice those fine details.

I am a bit of a perfectionist - but even on this site there are elements I'm not happy with that definitely aren't perfect. There's all sorts of things I haven't finished or need to tweak/ test/ improve - but most people don't care. They just want to talk about my projects, or look at pictures of Disney princesses.

My solution is selective perfection. Focus your attention on the areas that matter the most to your business and your product. Make the sign-up form perfect - pour sweat into the payment screen, make these things (or your equivalents) shine - because they are the things that matter most to your business.

Then - if you have some time at the end - make those other bits perfect as well, but keep in mind that this isn't a magic show, there's always room for improvement.

So - has craftsmanship died? I think that to be a craftsman - you don't have to be the best at your craft - but you do have to be passionate about being the best you can be, and applying yourself to the best of your ability.

I think that most people who work in creative industries want this - despite the bureaucracy and process of modern companies both the team at Miniclip, and Darren and I at Pro Theme Design, are very passionate about creating the best products we can - and we all work very hard with long hours to create the best products possible.

Perhaps we're unique - but I don't believe that. Just because perfection isn't realistic, it doesn't mean that people don't do their best, it just means they have some additional restrictions that they need to work around. It's just another challenge to work around.

View the original article here

How I Averted a Blogging ‘Crisis’: 3 Lessons Learned

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

I'm a bit of a stats junky. I know I shouldn't watch them too closely but I like to keep an eye on the numbers for my blogs. So when my page views, here on Binary Moon, plummeted recently - I had to find out why and fix the problem as quickly as I could.

For Binary Moon in particular I like to keep a close eye on the numbers. Over the last year the traffic has been increasingly steadily - I recently had my biggest month - with over 179,745 page views. That's a big number and I was understandably really pleased that my site is doing so well.

Because I constantly check the statistics - I know where people are coming from, what is most popular, and all the other things a good blog owner should know - which is why I was so surprised to see the change I did. It took me about 15 minutes of hunting through Google Analytics to work out what had happened.

It turned out some of my image attachment pages - which do really well on Google image search - had been removed from the Google search results.

Hmmm - not great.

Once I realised where the crisis had originated I was able to go into fire fighting mode and fix the issue, and now my rankings are starting to head upwards again. It turned out the problem had happened because I had read a 'tutorial' about the WordPress SEO (by Yoast) plugin and how best to optimise it. In following the tutorial I ended up delisting some of my content.

Note: The issue was nothing to do with the WordPress SEO plugin - I would definitely recommend you use it. It happened because I changed some settings I shouldn't have. The plugin did exactly what it was told to.

In working to fix this problem I learnt 3 things:

This first lesson should probably be subtitled - 'especially if they involve SEO'.

I don't consider myself an expert at SEO, but I like to think I know more than your average developer - and so I feel a bit daft for making the changes I did. I was following a tutorial about the WordPress SEO plugin telling me how to 'optimise the settings' - and I wasn't really paying attention to what I was doing.

In hindsight I probably should have ignored the tutorial entirely since I hardly changed anything anyway. The only elements I did change delisted some of my better performing content!

I've not really considered where my traffic comes from before - I know which referrers are most popular, but that's about it. I get a lot of traffic from Google and Google image search - so what happens if I get hit by a Google search algorithm update that penalises my site for some reason? I've not knowingly done anything wrong, but that doesn't mean Google won't lower my rankings in the future.

It's something to ponder for sure, and I am going to think about it more in the coming year.

One quick thing I have done is add some Pinterest buttons on the image attachment pages. Perhaps that will encourage people to Pin my stuff a little more often. This is a small change but it is a first step in increasing the diversification of my visitor referral sources.

Once I found the problem I fixed it quite quickly. And waited. And waited. The images were delisted about 3 weeks ago now, and it's only in the last few days that my website page views have been getting back to their old numbers. I was tempted to keep changing things, tweaking and improving, but if I had done that without waiting then I might have made things worse, or I might have broken something else and not realised.

This whole thing was a bit of a worry. I know it's all vanity and the people who visit these images don't really interact or add to the website in any way - but it's important to me. By staying relatively calm, and approaching the problem in a methodical way - I was able to fix the issue and get things back to normal.

View the original article here

Better Than Grep

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

I'm not that knowledgable about the command line and controlling a server with it. Over the years I have picked up a few bits - I use nano a lot for editing files, and I like to use grep to search my code.

Or at least I used to.

The other day I was trying to work out how something worked in WordPress, and I was using grep to search the WordPress code base - except it wasn't traversing the directory tree properly. So I asked on Twitter if I was doing something wrong. I got this as a reply...

@binarymoon Have you tried betterthangrep.com ?

— Simon Prosser (@prossorguk) January 30, 2013

So I checked out BetterThanGrep.com a quick read and it looked like what I need. Ack is a replacement for grep designed specifically for programmers.

Installing it was easy - just a single line of code to grab a Perl script from an external website (obviously caution is recommended when doing this sort of thing).

curl http://betterthangrep.com/ack-standalone > ~/bin/ack && chmod 0755 !#:3

Using ack is super simple. All you have to do is navigate to the directory you want to search and then type ack 'search_term'.

To go with this there are a bunch of additional parameters that allow you to display and filter the results in the way that works best for you. For me I have only used a few of the parameters so far - I've listed them below. You can read the rest of the commands in the documentation.

ack -A 5 -B 5 'search_query'

The A and B options display the matched line of code, and the lines before and after - with the number of them limited by the size added after the option. In the example above I limited it to 5 lines either side of the result.

ack -l 'search_query'

The l option changes the output so that it only displays the filenames of the files that were found to have the search query. I used this to narrow down my search so that I could work out what directory my problem files were in.

View the original article here

Mimbo Pro 4

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

I recently created a promotional video for Mimbo Pro 4 - showcasing the newest functionality from the theme.

I've been really pleased with how Mimbo Pro has done on WordPress.com and a lot of the new functionality and developments have developed because of working with the team and users at wp.com.

One of my goals with Mimbo Pro 4 is to merge the wordpress.com and wordpress.org versions of the theme into one. When we first moved Mimbo Pro on to wordpress.com we had multiple versions of the theme, one for each site, and this made updating the two of them a pain. As such the stand alone version of the theme got left behind. This is no longer the case and will make future update of the theme much quicker and easier for all.

If you're interested in Mimbo Pro 4 then you can get more information from the Pro Theme Design website.

View the original article here

Learning to Accept CSS3: Creating CSS3 Windows

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

People are resistant to change. It's strange since I consider myself quite forward thinking, but I still find it takes me a while to accept new things. I've been using CSS3 effects for quite a while now - as have many web designers. It's nice to be able to add a box shadow or a text shadow to things. Or maybe to round some corners. But that doesn't mean I always think of using it.

For instance - I was recently updating the Pro Theme Design homepage - and there was an element I wanted to add that would make the screenshots of our themes look more like they were in a web browser. So, I dutifully opened Fireworks, created the window header, saved the image as a png, uploaded it to the server and set things up so it looked as I imagined.

The problem is that I didn't even consider doing this any other way. I was looking at the site - and I liked what I saw - but then I remembered retina displays. It took me a little while to comprehend that, yes, this could actually be recreated using CSS3. So I set about making a CSS3 Window Demo.

I think what I need to do is stop thinking about CSS3 as purely being for decorating text and buttons. It does those things admirably, but I think it can be used for much more. In this case it's styling for a header, but it puts the screenshot in context - and the method means that it will look equally good on all types of screens.

With browser support the way it is it should look good for most people as well, and for those where it does't work 100% it will look ok.

So I set about converting my image windows over to CSS3. In the end I managed to convert almost everything using a single div (with the power of the before and after pseudo selectors, and a liberal sprinkling of css3. And once done I had something that, arguably, looked better than my fireworks created image. What's more it will scale beautifully - and look great on retina displays. Ok, it might not work perfectly in older browsers - but I set enough of the old properties that it should still display just fine.

I won't describe how the code works, but I have put together a demo showing how the CSS3 Windows could be used.

Note: there's only 2 window buttons. This is because I was making use of the :before and :after pseudo classes. Works nicely and doesn't require any extra elements, but does mean there's one less button than needed. I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff.

View the original article here

The Ethics of WordPress Automatic Content Aggregration (Autoblogs vs Splogs)

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Anyone who knows me knows that I like to automate everything. I'm sure it's a common trait with programmers - in fact it's the reason I started programming online. My first online application was a very simple cms - that allowed me to easily edit the content on my website. I wanted to save time doing repetitive things so that I have more time for the important things.

So recently I have become really interested in automating content creation on my WordPress sites.

It all began a few months ago because I wanted to turn bengillbanks.co.uk into an automatically updating directory of all the stuff I create online. It's not finished yet but I think I am making some good progress.

The system I had used to pull in the content was written as a plugin - and I soon realised I could add the plugin to wpvote.com - allowing me to update the site more regularly from sites that create good content.

Often autoblogs are seen as bad. They are often called splogs (Spam Blogs) because they copy content wholesale from other sites - remove attribution (steal the credit) and then hope to get extra traffic through Google. This is bad because unethical users can create many sites in a short amount of time essentially by stealing content.

However I like to think I do things ethically. I am sure I'm not perfect but I try my hardest to be an upstanding internet citizen.

For example, on bengillbanks.co.uk, I am loading only my content, and most of the time I am loading excerpts and then pointing to the original content. This creates a link to my content and allows anyone interested to see what I am doing - it doesn't steal content (not even my content), and it attributes the original source.

WPVote.com on the other hand acts as a demo for my commercial WordPress theme - Nominate. The reason I think what I am doing is ethical on WordPress Vote is because I am only pulling interesting content from sites that are entirely focused on WordPress (ie - the content is related to a single niche). In addition I only post an excerpt - and then I link back to the source. All of which means the original website should benefit from a strong link on a Page Rank 6 website. From a personal point of view the site has been more active and so more people are posting content that isn't automatically generated which in turn is creating more interest in the site and creating more traffic. So I think this is good for everyone involved.

So my problem is that I have this awesome plugin that I would like to release. I know it will be used by genuine people who just want to simplify their lives - but I am also concerned about the less ethical users of these types of products. I don't like the idea of releasing something that could be used in a bad way - and so I don't know what to do.

I know people are interested in the plugin - I've had at least half a dozen emails from users asking for it since I published the post about the Aggregator theme late last year. If it wasn't for this nagging doubt in the back of my head then I would have released the plugin already.

At the moment I am not sure what to do - but I am going to continue pressing ahead with the plugin development. I will be using it on another of my websites to create more (hopefully worthwhile) content - and I'd love to get some feedback from the wider WordPress community to see what you think?

View the original article here

The Ethics of WordPress Automatic Content Aggregration (Autoblogs vs Splogs)

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Anyone who knows me knows that I like to automate everything. I'm sure it's a common trait with programmers - in fact it's the reason I started programming online. My first online application was a very simple cms - that allowed me to easily edit the content on my website. I wanted to save time doing repetitive things so that I have more time for the important things.

So recently I have become really interested in automating content creation on my WordPress sites.

It all began a few months ago because I wanted to turn bengillbanks.co.uk into an automatically updating directory of all the stuff I create online. It's not finished yet but I think I am making some good progress.

The system I had used to pull in the content was written as a plugin - and I soon realised I could add the plugin to wpvote.com - allowing me to update the site more regularly from sites that create good content.

Often autoblogs are seen as bad. They are often called splogs (Spam Blogs) because they copy content wholesale from other sites - remove attribution (steal the credit) and then hope to get extra traffic through Google. This is bad because unethical users can create many sites in a short amount of time essentially by stealing content.

However I like to think I do things ethically. I am sure I'm not perfect but I try my hardest to be an upstanding internet citizen.

For example, on bengillbanks.co.uk, I am loading only my content, and most of the time I am loading excerpts and then pointing to the original content. This creates a link to my content and allows anyone interested to see what I am doing - it doesn't steal content (not even my content), and it attributes the original source.

WPVote.com on the other hand acts as a demo for my commercial WordPress theme - Nominate. The reason I think what I am doing is ethical on WordPress Vote is because I am only pulling interesting content from sites that are entirely focused on WordPress (ie - the content is related to a single niche). In addition I only post an excerpt - and then I link back to the source. All of which means the original website should benefit from a strong link on a Page Rank 6 website. From a personal point of view the site has been more active and so more people are posting content that isn't automatically generated which in turn is creating more interest in the site and creating more traffic. So I think this is good for everyone involved.

So my problem is that I have this awesome plugin that I would like to release. I know it will be used by genuine people who just want to simplify their lives - but I am also concerned about the less ethical users of these types of products. I don't like the idea of releasing something that could be used in a bad way - and so I don't know what to do.

I know people are interested in the plugin - I've had at least half a dozen emails from users asking for it since I published the post about the Aggregator theme late last year. If it wasn't for this nagging doubt in the back of my head then I would have released the plugin already.

At the moment I am not sure what to do - but I am going to continue pressing ahead with the plugin development. I will be using it on another of my websites to create more (hopefully worthwhile) content - and I'd love to get some feedback from the wider WordPress community to see what you think?

View the original article here

A WordPress News Website Resurgence

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

I know that I am most productive in the winter months and tend to churn out a lot more of my personal projects than I do during the summer months. I suspect this is due to the fact that I go out less and so spend more time sitting in front of my computer.

It seems others have this condition as well - since the new year seems to have brought with it some gifts. Notably there have been a small handful of new WordPress news sites (not to mention the more frequently updated Pro Theme Design blog ).

These sites have been started by people that have been active in the community for a while, and all focus on news and opinion pieces about WordPress and the community that works with it. I particularly like that, of the sites I have been reading, they don't all repeat the same content and offer different angles and perpectives on different topics.

WPDaily opened it's doors on December the 1st and was started by John Saddington and the team from 8Bit. They have started strong with a swathe of opinion pieces, quite a few guest posts, and even an interview with me.

WordPress Realm is a news site created by a group of keen WordPressers from around the world. So far the site has a slightly more technical slant than WP Daily - featuring code tutorials and technical opinion pieces. This makes it a nice complement rather than a competitor.

Post Status is a WordPress content aggregator (not unlike my own site WPVote ) - with a few short editorial pieces. The content is submitted by the readership - and then is curated by Brian Krogsgard, the owner of the site.

Ok - slightly selfish - but I've started a little site as well. It's actually a bit of an experiment so I'll likely talk about it more later

Unfortunately, as has been pointed out on WP Daily recently, there are some sites that haven't weathered so well. In particular WPCandy and WPTavern aren't doing so well. In fact WPTavern, one of the longest running WordPRess news sites officially closed this weekend.

I'm really hoping that the new sites mentioned above continue to develop and grow and don't stagnate as others have in the past. I know how hard it can be to maintain momentum when blogging - hopefully these sites don't just turn into list posts and roundups, or even vanish entirely.

Are there any other new sites that I've missed?

View the original article here

Pro Theme Design Blogging

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Over the winter holiday break I did a bit of a splurge on Pro Theme Design and posted a bunch of blog posts about WordPress and blogging. This is something I want to do a lot more of as I think it benefits my website users quite nicely. Below is a selection of the blog posts I think are most interesting.

Check out the Pro Theme Design blog for more.

View the original article here

Paperman – Animated Short Film by Disney Pixar

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

A wonderful blend of Disney and Pixars storytelling skills with a traditional animation style makes Paperman a unique animation.

Like the Pixar shorts that they play before movies this is a technical masterpiece. It uses a rendering technique that turns the 3d objects into a 2d pencil drawn style. I've seen loads of these different renderers before and this is by far the best.

Introducing a groundbreaking technique that seamlessly merges computer-generated and hand-drawn animation techniques, first-time director John Kahrs takes the art of animation in a bold new direction with the Oscar®-nominated short, "Paperman." Using a minimalist black-and-white style, the short follows the story of a lonely young man in mid-century New York City, whose destiny takes an unexpected turn after a chance meeting with a beautiful woman on his morning commute. Convinced the girl of his dreams is gone forever, he gets a second chance when he spots her in a skyscraper window across the avenue from his office. With only his heart, imagination and a stack of papers to get her attention, his efforts are no match for what the fates have in store for him. Created by a small, innovative team working at Walt Disney Animation Studios, "Paperman" pushes the animation medium in an exciting new direction.

Oh - and the actual story is really nice too

View the original article here

My First Website

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

My first website was terrible. Not intentionally I hasten to add - but because I was told to make it bad...

I started university in 1998, the internet was just starting to become more mainstream. It was still a few years before the first dot-com bubble burst - and AOL were still sending everyone copious amounts of drinks mats (trial cds). I was studying digital art - I wanted to be a video games artist - but web design was involved in the course.

My first web design teacher was a Java programming computer science person. He taught multimedia computing but his lessons involved Java, Object Oriented Programming, computer hardware, HCI, and all sorts of stuff that you wouldn't really think of as multimedia. He wasn't a creative.

He started by teaching us the basics of HTML - nothing wrong with that and I found it all quite easy. However what he was teaching was already going out of date in 1998. In among the required elements like paragraphs, images, headings and tables - we had frames, and playing a midi file in the browser (remember those? This was before Youtube and HTML5 media formats ).

To pass the course at my University was easy. You looked at the project brief - and then went down the list of requirements and made sure you did all of them. Of course doing more than required got you a better mark, but you knew you weren't going to fail if you did everything. The project for my first web design course involved making a site that used all the elements we had been taught.

Including Frames, and embedded midi files.

Unfortunately I don't have a screenshot or the code so I will paint a picture in your mind with the power of my words. The site was split into 2 frames - a large one at the top for the site content and a small one at the bottom for the navigation. It had a tiling image of stars in the background (another need - tiling images), the bottom frame had a different image - it was actually the same image but with a fade to black gradient - I was trying to add a bit of class. The text was yellow (inline font styles - it took me another year to get into css). The content was laid out in tables - and I think there was an animated gif somewhere. And the best bit?

When you loaded the page it automatically played the Axel F theme tune from Beverly Hills Cop. Oh yeah!

I passed my course - and I never made another website that embedded midi sound files that autoplayed. I spent the next 6 years trying to get a job as a 3d video game artist but never quite got there. I did make a bunch of games on my own though .

In 2004 I decided to change direction and because of my self-published games I managed to get a job at Miniclip as a Flash game artist - transitioning into a web development role that I still have today.

I like to think my websites have improved since 1998.

Axel F - the soundtrack of my childhood... and my first website.

View the original article here

Voice Based Image Editing – PixelTone

The request channel timed out while waiting for a reply after 00:01:00. Increase the timeout value passed to the call to Request or increase the SendTimeout value on the Binding. The time allotted to this operation may have been a portion of a longer timeout.
AppId is over the quota

So - this is really cool. You have to ignore the actual editing that is shown in the video - it's pretty poor. In particular the 'retro' effect they show at the end. Technically though - it's amazing and brings to mind the sort of things we've been promised in sci-fi movies for decades.

Being developed jointly between Adobe - that little company who make Photoshop - and the University of Michigan as a research project. You can read more about it, and the research that went into it on the research website.

I'd certainly be interested in using something like this - it certainly beats Instagram and other apps like that.

View the original article here

The Amazing Art of Flipping Websites

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Recently I have looked at expanding my internet empire. I have all sorts of ideas and never enough time - so I thought I would see if I could buy some websites relatively cheaply, improve them, and then either flip them, or profit from them because of the benefit they bring.

I don't know how commonly known the phrase is - but essentially 'flipping a website' involves selling a website. The types of people who flip websites generally fall into 3 camps.

Creators: people who build a website purely with the intention of selling it.Buyers: people who buy the created websites.Flippers: people who buy created websites, improve them further, and then sell them for a profit.

I fall into camp 2 or 3. I've not yet sold a website, but I like the idea of doing it and may try it in the future. So far, however, I have purchased 2 sites - and I'll mention them below.

Since I've only done the purchasing side so far I can only comment on this. There are many places online that let you advertise and sell your website but the most popular seems to be Flippa.com - and that's where I bought my first 2 sites.

I signed up to the site years ago - but it's only recently that I started looking seriously. Late last year I signed in and had a look into how I could find websites that interest me. I found out that they have a system for sending you daily emails of new sites that come on the market - so I entered my details, selected the categories that interest me (web design and entertainment), and then waited for the first message.

I now get one email a day from Flippa telling me the latest deals in my chosen categories. Normally there's only 5 or 6 sites - and I just ignore them all because they don't sound relevant or interesting. But, about 2 or 3 times a week something catches my eye so I click-through to the listing page and have a look.

In the email there's a few bits of basic info about each site, things like page rank, traffic, income, and the asking price of the site. Generally if all the numbers are 0 I ignore that site. If the numbers are higher, and the topic sounds interesting then I take a look.

Often the starting bid (set by the seller) is crazy high. They seem to think that because their site has a page rank of 3, and no income or traffic, that it's worth $5000 - that's clearly not the case so I ignore these. If the starting bid is 0, and I'm interested in the subject matter, then I will watch the auction and make a bid towards the end if there's been no interest.

Since I am not in this to profit, it's more of a learning experience for me, I don't worry about how much money the site is earning - but I like it to be getting some traffic since it makes things a bit easier.

And that's what led me to buying 2 websites on Flippa.

Yep - I have purchased 2 sites - one for $40 and one for $35 - in both cases I was purchasing more for the domain than anything else. They were sites around topics I am interested in, and that I thought I could bring some value to.

The first site I bought was HTML5Directory.com - it's a gallery site for html5 sites.

So far, besides updating WordPress and rejigging the theme I haven't done much to it. In fact the content is still the same as when I first bought it as well. I plan to do more though - introducing new articles and showcasing more sites. The problem I have with it currently is I am not sure how to promote it but I'll start by updating it and see what happens organically.

I also want to do a bit more with it from a design point of view, but it's nice and clean now so I don't think there's any hurry.

The second site I bought is a WordPress site called ThemesHunt.com. The original site was an autoblog - using the WPRobot plugin to fill the site with spammy auto generated text that sounds like it was written by someone who has only just started to speak English.

I am now using the site as an experiment to see how much I can do with a WordPress site without doing any programming - everything on the site is controlled with free themes and plugins.

I am using a standard WordPress theme (from WordPress.org) - and a variety of plugins. I've not touched a line of code - besides the Content Aggregator plugin that I am slowly preparing for a public release. Any theme customisations are happening through the Jetpack plugin with it's built in css editing module.

Below are a few things I have learnt that might help when buying sites on Flippa.

Don't buy anything immediately. Watch the site for a week or so and get an idea of the types of sites being sold. You'll find their are patterns and certain types of sites keep being build by people who want to make a quick buck.Don't worry about being sniped. If someone puts in a bid at the last minute then the auction gets extended. This means that you have an extra hour or two to go back in and up your bid if you want.Pick a budget and stick to it. Like all auctions you should have a maximum bid in mind and not go over it without good reason.Pick sites where you can add value. Don't buy sites because you think they are pretty or interesting. You should be able to improve them in some way else they won't get the attention they need and so won't offer you any return on your investment.Make sure to check the stats properly. Check things like the page rank, and copyscape stats to make sure the site has some sort of visibility in the wider world - and more importantly - that it's not a direct copy of another website.Don't be afraid to ask questions. Sellers want to make as much money as possible to feel free to ask them to clarify things and they generally will.

I don't yet know what I will do with the websites above. I will continue developing and updating them for the foreseeable but I may well try selling them as a further experiment in the art of flipping websites. I suspect I will end up buying another site or 2 in the future as well.

Have you bought any sites like this? What did you do with them? Did you make any profit from the purchase? Would love to hear your experiences.

View the original article here

WordPress Query: Exclude Posts With No Featured Image

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

So - I make WordPress themes - lots of them

Something that's bugged me for a while is that I can't easily use the WP_Query to select posts with featured images. This isn't functionality that's needed that often - but it can be desirable for things like image carousels where you need an image to make everything look good.

Today however - I finally found a solution - and it's surprisingly simple. All post data - including the featured image url - us stored in WordPress post meta, it's a shame I hadn't made the connection before. All I have to do to select posts that use featured images is check for the existence of a meta property that is typically hidden.

To do this the query would look something like this:

$args = array( 'meta_key' => '_thumbnail_id' );$query = new WP_Query( $args );For more information on the WP_Query I wrote this post with some WP_Query features you might not know.

View the original article here

How to Add a Simple User Password Generator in WordPress

View the original article here

How to Add Numeric Pagination in Your WordPress Theme

View the original article here

How to Display Instagram Photos in WordPress Sidebar Widget

View the original article here

How to Import any XML or CSV file to WordPress using WP All Import

View the original article here

How to Search By Category in WordPress

View the original article here

How to Show Your Skype Contact and Skype Status in WordPress

View the original article here

How to Split Large XML Files in WordPress

WordPress comes with built in import/export functinoality that allows you to import or export your WordPress posts in XML format. When moving your site from WordPress.com to WordPress.org and in other transfer scenarios, sometimes these export files are larger than your web host’s upload limit. In those cases, you really have two options. You can either ask your WordPress web hosting provider to increase your maximum upload limit. The second option is to simply split your large XML files into multiple smaller files, so you can upload them one by one. In this article we will show you how to split large XML files in WordPress.

Even though you can manually split your large XML files by creating multiple XML files with the same header, category, and footer information and dividing the rest of the items. But who has time for that? There are really nice free tools that allows you to split your XML files with just a few clicks.

For Windows users, there is a tool called WordPress WXR File Splitter. Download and run this utility. When you run this program, you will see a screen like this:

Click on the open WXR file button to open your WordPress XML file. This tool will then read your XML file and show you some useful information about the data in it. It will get the header, the footer, and it will show you the number of items in the file.

You can adjust the size limit for when you split your large file into smaller ones. Alternatively, you can provide the number of files you want this to be split into. Either way, the goal is to get the files to be small enough, so you can upload it on your host without surpassing the limits. Finally when you are ready, press Split Files button, and it will split the files and store them in the same folder as your original WordPress XML file.

For all you Mac users, you are not left out. There is a similar WordPress WXR Split utility available for Mac users. It does the same thing, splits large XML file into smaller file sizes.

We hope that this article helped you split your large WordPress XML files, so you can import them into your WordPress. Let us know if you have any questions by leaving a comment below.

Our HD-Quality tutorial videos for WordPress Beginners will teach you how to use WordPress to create and manage your own website in about an hour. Get started now »

View the original article here

Full Post vs Summary (Excerpt) in your WordPress Archive Pages?

View the original article here

What are the Best Ad Management Plugins and Solutions for WordPress

View the original article here

Instruction of C#.net with visual studio.

Instruction of C#.net with visual studio.

Please setup first visual studio 2010 or 2008. And lunch the software please.And see the instruction 

Instruction of C#.net with visual studio.

Instruction of C#.net with visual studio.

Please setup first visual studio 2010 or 2008. And lunch the software please.

FUNCTION PARAMETER

FUNCTION PARAMETER

Function Parameter এর কোডিং নিয়া আলোচনা করবো । নিচে কিছু কোডিং দেয়া হোল আসা করি দেক্লে বুজতে পারবেন

কোডিং  

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>Untitled Document</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript"> function mam(x,y)   // x,y is a function parametter {           z=x+y;                  document.write(z);//result } mam(50,40);     //And input your value.  </script> </body> </html>

Download

function mam(x,y) ফাংশন  এর মধ্যে x,y  ২ তা পেরা মিটার যোগ করা হোল।

এইখানে x y  এর মান নিচে  ৫০ ০ ৪০ দিয়ে দেয়া হোল আপনি শুদু ফাইল এর কোডিং টি কপি করে পেস্ট করো । এবং ফীলে টি সেভ করে দেখুন তবে ই ফলাফল দেখতে পারবে।

ধন্নবাদে

নাজমুল  হাসান