Penguin 1.1 gives us record referrals, causes mushiness, inspires desire to present

by James Farmer May 31^st, 2012 6 Responses

One of these days I’m gonna put together a presentation on this.

On what it feels like to have the traffic you’ve worked hard on for years (without tricks!) almost completely disappear.

On what a significant challenge it is to then get attention for that.*

And to then sit tight for weeks seeing nothing change.

Only to rock up to work on Monday and, well, do a happy dance.

And last, but not least, to rock up at the end of the week, check your stats, and note the largest day of Google referrals ever to this very site.

Yeh, there’s definitely a presentation in there somewhere :)

Miscellaneous

Calling All WordPress Enthusiasts – What is Your Favorite Website?

by Tom Ewer May 25^th, 2012 2 Responses

Back in February we published the 1st edition of the WPMU 100 – a list of the top WordPress related blogs on the internet.

At the time there were several suggestions made regarding potentially worthy sites that had not been included in the list. The inclusion criteria was simple – any site that focused the majority of its content on WordPress was a candidate. This time around, I want to make sure that every worthy site is up for consideration.
Coming Soon…

Calling All WordPress Enthusiasts - What is Your Favorite Website?

Miscellaneous

Redirect WordPress Visitors to Full Post if Only One Post in Category

by Joe Foley May 24^th, 2012 3 Responses

This is nifty little piece of code I found on Shailan.com. If there is only one post in a category, then when someone clicks on the category link, it will take them directly to the full post instead of taking them to the category page (where there will only be one result). In short, it eliminates the unnecessary extra step that the default WordPress set up would take you through.

This also works for tags.

To add the code below to your functions.php file, go to Appearance > Editor > Theme Functions – functions.php.

function stf_redirect_to_post(){
global $wp_query;

Miscellaneous

The Truth About Browser Compatibility, and What You Need To Do

by Tom Ewer May 24^th, 2012 1 Response

Are you concerned about browser compatibility? Most people are. These days there are 101 different browsers across multiple platforms, and people are seemingly screaming about it.

But what if I told you that you don’t need to worry that much about compatibility? That there are some simple practical steps you can take to ensure that your website is enjoyed as intended by the vast majority of your audience?

Compatibility checking needn’t take that much time, and today, I want to show you how.
Considering Compatibility ROI

The Truth About Browser Compatibility and What You Need To Do

Miscellaneous

12 Free Services for Monitoring Your Website’s Uptime

by Sarah Gooding May 15^th, 2012 12 Responses

When your hosting fails and your site is down, you could be losing potential new customers and sales. Maintaining 100% uptime is critical to your business’ success. That’s why it’s a good idea to sign up for a service that will monitor your uptime and notify you the minute your site is down. This will enable you to get your site back in business as soon as possible to minimize the downtime. We’ve selected a few of the top services for monitoring website uptime. Browse a few and get your most important sites signed up for 24/7 monitoring.

Pingdom

Miscellaneous

Add Up to 16 Buttons to Your WordPress Visual Editor

by Joe Foley May 10^th, 2012 2 Responses

The buttons on the WordPress visual editor are convenient, but perhaps you’d like a few more. You can place the following code into your functions file and add up to sixteen extra buttons. (Appearance > Editor > Theme Functions – functions.php)

Of course if you don’t want a particular button, then just delete it from the list.
function extra_editor_buttons($buttons) {
$buttons[] = ‘fontselect’;
$buttons[] = ‘backcolor’;
$buttons[] = ‘image’;
$buttons[] = ‘media’;
$buttons[] = ‘anchor’;
$buttons[] = ‘sub’;
$buttons[] = ‘sup’;
$buttons[] = ‘hr’;
$buttons[] = ‘wp_page’;
$buttons[] = ‘cut’;
$buttons[] = ‘copy’;
$buttons[] = ‘paste’;
$buttons[] = ‘newdocument’;
$buttons[] = ‘code’;
$buttons[] = ‘cleanup’;
$buttons[] = ‘styleselect’;
return $buttons;
}
add_filter(“mce_buttons_3″, “extra_editor_buttons”);

Miscellaneous

Top 25 Beautiful Food Blogs Using WordPress

by Sarah Gooding May 3^rd, 2012 2 Responses

Whether you celebrate a gourmet palate, rejoice over crafting beautiful dishes, consider yourself king of the grill, queen of the casserole or duke of the dutch oven, WordPress is definitely the solution for building a beautiful, customized food blog. Even if you simply enjoy judging the culinary concoctions of others or just love taking pictures of whatever crosses your plate, WordPress has become a favorite tray for serving every type of gastronomic enjoyment. So put on your lobster bib, grab a glass of wine, sit back and feast your eyes on this delicious assortment of foody WordPress sites. Hopefully, you’ll gain some inspiration for cooking and baking, or perhaps even starting a food blog of your own. Bon appetite!

Misc

One Little Reason Why I Love WordPress 3.3.2

by Tom Ewer May 2^nd, 2012 Leave a comment

Regular readers of my posts here on WPMU know that I have a bone to pick with the visual editor. Nay, several bones. Practically a whole skeleton’s worth. If i’m not just generally moaning about how much it irritates me, I’m looking at any alternative under the sun.

But today I am delighted to say that the most recent WordPress version has apparently eliminated one of the visual editor’s most frustrating bugs – what I call the “dastardly post-list div”.

One Little Reason Why I Love WordPress 3.3.2

Miscellaneous

20 Fantastic Health and Fitness Blogs Running on WordPress

by Sarah Gooding May 1^st, 2012 8 Responses

Every morning, millions of people across the world wake up and work out. Many of those people are blogging about their experiences and some of them have even turned their sites into full-fledged, highly-trafficked magazines. We’ve collected some of the top health and fitness blogs from around the web that showcase the power of WordPress publishing. Grab your favorite health drink and get ready to be inspired!

Greatist

Tara Stiles

Tony Gentilcore

Sodium Girl

Time Healthland

Fit Bottomed Girls

Well + Good NYC

Kath Eats Real Food

Run Eat Repeat

Lululemon Blog

Daily Cup of Yoga

Just Roni

Blogilates

Nerd Fitness

Men’s Health News

Thrive Personal Fitness

The If Life

Zen to Fitness

Elephant Journal

Crude Fitness

Miscellaneous

Introducing Paydirt: A Beautiful New Invoicing App for Freelancers

by Sarah Gooding April 26^th, 2012 2 Responses

We recently discovered Paydirt, an exciting new app with a beautiful interface that will help you get organized for invoicing and time-tracking. Paydirt was created in January 2011 by a freelance partnership between Tristan Gamillis and Nicholas Firth-McCoy. They’re located in Abbotsford in the newly established shared workspace, the House of Commons and they’ve come up with a very unique service that we think you’re going to love.

I had the opportunity to interview Tristan Gamillis this week about how Paydirt was created and where the team is headed.