The Wordpress Codex keeps an list of update services, and DailyBlogTips.com has an extensive ping list posted as well.

Don’t know what a ping is in this context? Wikipedia defines it best:

"In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated."

Those servers will, in theory, create a list of blogs with new content. As I understand it, though the information may be out-of-date, wordpress will automatically ping when it has new content EVEN IF IT IS& SCHEDULED FOR PUBLISHING AT A FUTURE DATE. According to MaxBlogPress, the ping command sends a link to your homepage each time you edit a post even if it has not been published yet.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer claims to manage all this pinging in a better way. I can’t attest to that but I do like that the plugin logs all its pinging activity for you to see.

Related posts

• what to do when IE8 is breaking everything (0)

And not in  a good way.

If your blog looked just fine until you published that last post, if your blog post suddenly makes looks weird and the blog no longer lays out properly,  if you suddenly find that you made the background of your post area dissapear, then you probably have a bad case of msword garbage code.

let’s peek at the source code for a healthy happy webpage:

Healthy wordpress text should look like this:

notice the occasional < p > or < br/ >? that’s healthy wordpress text

1.) click on the button that says "source" ( it may say "html" - i use dean’s fck wysiwyg editor plugin so i have  a more cohesive editing tool bar. yours may look different depending on what editor you use)

notice all the < p style="text-alig: left   crap arial; font-size: 13 px   crap?

i call that garbage code- it’s unnecessary and you DO not need it. in fact, that garbage formatting may interfere with the formatting provided by the stylesheet accessed by wordpress.

bad msword garbage code text looks like this:

see all that garbage code? bad stuff. 

it interferes with automatic formatting written into the stylesheet for wordpress and will sometimes screwup the php coding of wordpress itself. mixed into that msword garbage code are little div tags. tehya re the ones that look like <div> or </div>

those tags are really really bad, wicked bad within a wordpress post.

all the formatting and styling of a wordpress website is defined by a series of < d i v > tags so to introduce from another source will cause all sorts of problems. these div tags are the most probable reason the site looks weird.

ALWAYS PASTE CLEAN TEXT!

if you want to paste an article that you copied from an email or from microsoft word- you need to paste it using this button called "Paste from Word". It will open a window and you can paste the text in the window and the program will strip the formatting and divs.

If you have dean’s fck wysiwyg editor plugin installed, the "Paste From Word" button looks like this:

If you are using the built-in wordpress editor, the "Paste From Word" button will look like this:

Related posts

• No related posts.

i am still trying to figure out how to make a post paginate. it didn’t work properly in wp 2.5 or maybe i’m just an idiot. hence the name of this blog.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_link_pages

more information to come.

Related posts

• No related posts.

Take a XANAX.

And reconsider why the theme is breaking. the latest IE 8 beta release is as close to CSS compliant as possible.

I have had less problems making IE * look right than I ever had with IE 5.5 and IE 6.

As I was struggling to make a site browser compliant, i ran across stats that said I was just not thinking about anything in the right way.

FORGET ABOUT IE 5.5!

www.w3schools.com says that less than 1% of internet traffic is using IE 5.5

DON’T GIVE UP ON IE 6 JUST YET.

AND FIREFOX RULES!

some other interesting stats from www.w3schools.com:

So if IE 8 is really giving you a headache, you can visit these sites for more information:

MSIE readiness toolkit  -  has code to ensure that IE8 reads content meant for IE7 properly

CSS Discuss

IE8 Bugs

Position Is Everything

Doctype & Header Switching

the nasty breakup of the two-column float

Related posts

• Pinging (0)

This is part of my endless list of free stuff from the web. 

Believe it or not, most of the graphics offered on the sites listed below are free. HOWEVER they are all offered under different licensing agreements- some require a link back to the designer’s website, some required copyright credits, others require nothing at all. Make sure you read the licensing agreements carefully. Don’t abuse an artist’s intellectual property rights and they will keep sharing their work with us.

VectorPortal.com

Their slogan? "everything vector- everything free"

And they mean it.

There is an endless selection of vector files (eps and ai) files- from backgrounds to silhouettes to logo elements. It has the most comprehensive selection of vector images and it doesn’t pass you off to a download site that tries to sell you a membership.

Snap2Objects

Mauricio Duque, a Colombian web designer. is the force behind Snap2Objects. On regular basis, he offers free designs, tips and tutorials. A must have for all wordpress designers are his rrs and wp icons.

30 Free Wordpress Icons

http://www.snap2objects.com/2007/06/15/30-free-vector-wordpress-icons/

30 free rss icons

http://www.snap2objects.com/2007/06/10/30-free-vector-rss-buttons/

It will save you time matching those pesky icons with your working color scheme.

If you do a lot of corporate work, don’t miss out on the Businessmen silhouettes:

http://www.snap2objects.com/2008/04/25/12-free-vector-businessman-silhouettes/

DragonArtz

Wow.

From snowy holidays cards to gorgeous backgrounds to buildings, and kids, and butterflies, and computer chips, this site has just about everything. The downside? It uses DepositFiles or Rapidshare for the downloads. Granted, the artwork is so good , the transfer bandwidth alone would bankrupt the artist.

If you do a lot of tech sites, you might want the computer chip vector.
http://dragonartz.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/computer-chip-vector/

The fireworks are pretty great too
http://dragonartz.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/fireworks-vector/ 

Bittbox

By his own admission, Jay Hilgert is an Oklahoma-based Apple Geek and designer who likes to give stuff away. He’s got fonts and vectors packages and photoshop brushes and regular news of other free art available around the web. 

Lately, he’s on a font binge. (I have been known to binge on fonts as well…) 

QVector

They say:

"QVectors.com is a Showcase site for free quality vector images from around the net. its also a sister site of Qbrushes.com which showcases quality photoshop brushes ."

I say: 

The vector and photoshop brushes available at this site are phenomenal. Take a look at Qbrushes before you buy a commercial brush.

Createsx8

Some of the cooolest skateboarding graphics I’ve seen- lotsa swirly grunge graphics, patterns, and brushes by an artist names LostFayth. 

DinPattern

DinPattern is the love child of Evan Eckard  of www.evaneckard.com.

This site has an incredible selection of background tiles for websites, all free, designed by Mr. Eckard,  and it has a cool function that allows you to see the webpage with the tile of your choice as the background.

Icon Archive

A gazillion icon sets at your disposal.  

DryIcons

Desiging icons requires that great design be reduced to its most essential so it can be shrunk down and still recognized. Its a tough job- one the designbers and at DryIcons seem to manage effortlessly.

AND they have a free download area:

http://dryicons.com/free-icons/

I recently spent 5 hours creating social networking icons that looked like they were suspended inside glass marbles. I am lucky that the client didn’t see theSocialize Icons  this site has available in their free download area. For the cost of a commercial license ($11), they might have just substituted DryIcons work and I would have lost out on a gig.

BG Patterns

Make your own background at this site- the possible combinations of colors and sizes make this one of my favorite isnpiration sites.

Sxc.hu

SXC is my absolute favorite free stock image site on the web.  They have an enormous selction of free stock- below are just 5 of the more than a 1000 rose images to choose from.

They are  associated with Stockxpert (http://www.stockxpert.com)- a micro stock site(http://www.microstockforum.com/)- which will show you some of their options as well. Their images are priced between $1 and $8.

Dreamstime: Another Micro Stock Site - carries many of the same images and illustrations as StockXpert. I use them pretty regularly as well. Their images are priced between $1 and $8.

Vector Stock:  Their prices start at $1 (up to $10) and they have a free download section. Good selection.

Okay. I’m done for now.  If anyone wants to pipe in with some other suggestions….

Related posts

• No related posts.

 i love the idea of this and i tried to apply it to the latest version of the digitalapplejuice.com theme but i couldn’t make it work and i was in a time crunch. will get back to it later.

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=544531

Related posts

• No related posts.

Follow these instructions to personalize emails sent to people who sign up to your feedburner feed

you have to log in to feedburner account
then, go to "my feeds"

click on your feed title

click on publicize

click on email branding

then fill this form to design your feed welcome email.

there is an area to specify the content of the welcome email as well.

while you are there, look around. lots of interesting stuff you can do to promote your website.

Related posts

• No related posts.

 i couldn’t make this work- may have to do with

$recent = new WP_Query("cat=27&showposts=1"); while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post()

i wonder if i replace that with

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

hmmm…

i emailed the author and asked where he placed the code within the loop. he said it should work just about anywhere.

http://wordpresshacker.com/changing-excerpt-size-dynamically/

Related posts

• No related posts.

The most common IE problem is:

• Layouts look different. Columns are wider or narrower between browsers or move down the page.

this is usually caused by the content being larger than the space alloted for that div- resize the div or the content.

specific info how to fix this:

http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer/expandingboxbug.html

============

This is an excerpt of iBloom Studios‘ IE troubleshooting guide.

The ones below are the mistakes I normally make.

• Elements are disappearing
  When dealing with floated elements in Internet Explorer it is possible that some elements seem to completely disappear. This is commonly referred to as the peekaboo bug. If you apply position:relative to the vanishing element it should pop right back into place. I’ve also seen elements disappear in print and not screen despite using the same stylesheet in IE7.

• Margins seem to be doubled
  Another float issue found in Internet Explorer. Some people might be tempted to take the easier way out and deliver different CSS code to Internet Explorer, whether by hacks or comments. It’s best to avoid these practices and try an alternate route. Although Internet Explorer can become clueless with margins and float, it will still understand padding. If possible, set the margins to 0 and try to compensate with padding either on the element itself (if it doesn’t affect the appearance) or on a parent element.

• Element with a height of 1px, but Internet Explorer increases it to 10px
  Internet explorer uses the line-height of an element as a kind of unintentional min-height. So, if you try to set a div to height:1px for example (such as a decorative element) and the default line-height (probably inherited from parent elements) for that element is set to 10px, the height of that element will be forced to the line-height in Internet Explorer. To get around this, you can set line-height:0 and manually set the height.

• An empty anchor tag is not clickable
  It may seem unusual, but in my experience I have come across this more than once. Say you have an anchor element that you’ve given display:block and some dimensions with no content or background image, in order to make a clickable area, but in Internet Explorer it’s not clickable. In order to keep the anchor invisible you can add a transparent 1px background-image. Suddenly, Internet Explorer understands that this is a clickable element.

• An element’s text is squished, causing it to flow downward
  More than likely this is caused by floating an element without setting a width or by a floating sibling element’s width being slightly too small where the squished element can’t break out. Try setting a width on the squished element, or a larger width on the sibling element. If these methods don’t work, use clear to break the element away from the floated sibling element.

==============

For a concise list of IE browser bugs and examples visit:

http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer.html

Some additional pointers:

•  Absolute positioning - Try not to use it

IE CSS Rollover Flicker issues:

http://www.ibloomstudios.com/articles/css_rollover_flicker_in_internet_explorer/

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/sprites

Related posts

• No related posts.

Displays the post excerpt in in the post editor’s optional excerpt field followed by "…"-  unless followed by additional code, will NOT include a "Read More" link.

If there is no excerpt in the excerpt field, it will display the first 55 words of the post’s content.

Related posts

• No related posts.