HeadsetOptions Web Design, SEO, WordPress, Etcetra

Using images in place of text can be tempting especially since an image can offer you more visually than just text does. However, most of us end up using text for the simple reason that Google and Yahoo’s search engines are not able to read your images effectively (even with alt text?). Here’s a quick, simple, tried and tested SEO friendly CSS only Javascript free fix for one such scenario; replacing your navigation menu text with SEO friendly images:

Let’s start with making our images that will be used in place of menu text, in this example I am using images 30px tall and of varying width. I make two images for each menu item, one for mouse-over or hover and second for all other conditions.

If your site gets any traffic at all, chances are your RSS feed is scraped and misused by some one trying to score on SERP for the work you have toiled on. This very blog is constantly ripped by sploggers who have no regards to intellectual property rights or just plain simple dumb to realize they are stealing. Here are three sites where you can find the entire content of our blog scraped/ripped/stolen and posted as their own. Of course I did not link to them because I really don’t want you to visit them:

myblogmix.com (this m^*&*0 f$%*r even uses one of our themes on his splog!)
frenzygraphics.com
urlfan.com

How do you stop them?
Jonathan Bailey, a security expert (Plagiarism Today) who also writes on Blog Herald, lists 6 steps to identify and fight content theft. We religiously followed the suggestions for months now (that post on BH was from last November), but none worked thus far. Google is yet to acknowledged our letters (used his cease and desist letter templates, which is a good source, thanks!). I even took solace in thinking maybe they have a backlog or that they will eventually write back, but nothing really happened.

I worked on a site a while ago for a famous West Coast Kora Musician and Master Teller of Tales, Baba. Yesterday, out of the blue he sent me a nice piece of story which I thought I should share with the world. With everything that is happening around us, the war and our economy, this story offers a welcome break and a much needed dose of wisdom, wit and wonderful storytelling all in one; so without much ado, here’s the story.
[audio:fool.mp3]
Visit Baba at babathestoryteller.com for more.

When a client of mine upgraded to WordPress 2.5.1 from WordPress 2.5 she encountered an issue where the database will not upgrading, resulting in the “WordPress 2.5.1 is available! Please update now.” flashing in her dashboard and every other admin pages. On initial search of the WordPress support forum, we found the following strings that pointed us in a certain direction:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/172004
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/168964

Neither strings suggest solutions that are easy or safe, however, I urge you check these posts and then search your install via file manager/FTP/WebFTP to ensure you do not have files with the following extensions anywhere within a writable …

For good SEO, it is preferential to open your comment authors URI in a new page. Why you might ask? Google and other search engines track sites you visit, they can tell what that site contains (obviously), how long you stayed there and where you went next. The intended use of this information is to find if the sites you visited were relevant to your search keyword and/or if all the sites you visit are related. That could also work against you if your site get a lot of spammers commenting on it. Here’s how.

Let’s say you get a comment on your site that look legit, so you want …

WordPress 2.5.1 is already out, so the blog you upgraded last month, is outdated and worse, could be vulnerable. A Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE 2008 1930) which reads as below is now known to be the reason for this hastened release:
An attacker, who is able to register a specially crafted username on a Wordpress 2.5 installation, is able to generate authentication cookies for other chosen accounts.

This vulnerability exists because it is possible to modify authentication cookies without invalidating the cryptographic integrity protection.

If a Wordpress blog is configured to freely permit account creation, a remote attacker can gain Wordpress-administrator access and then elevate this to arbitrary code …

I get this question a lot; do you web design or blog design? and I say, is there a difference?

Most new site that I work on are built using free CMS like WordPress and Textpattern so they tend to have a bloggy feel to it, so I see where this question might arise from. But to me, a work done specifically to be published online, irrespective of the site being a blog, is considered “web design”, if it’s on the web and it involves designing, its web design.

With that said, there are many interpretation of what constitutes as web design. Not all web designs are created equal. …

The site is in transition to a simpler and visually engaging design, in the mean time, experience what a free theme and a sleepless weekend can do to your site! This mid-spring pre-reboot reboot is just an idea mash-up. The true reboot will be available on May 1st 2008 and will be built using hand tossed XHTML/CSS, a dash of PHP, some Javascript and home made grid.

Here’s a super fun-tastic super hero super game. The Superest offers hours of entertainment as you follow the trails of superheros, their triumphs and eventual defeat by a new hero. The objective is not to determine who wins, because in this game, just like in politics, eventually everyone is defeated.

Here’s another absolutely Free Magazine Style Theme! This theme is not only full functional, it’s also completely customizable, all without touching any code.

So what features come standard with this magazine WordPress theme
The theme includes all the cool functions we have come to expect from any paid premium theme, only now you can have it for free, here’s the short list:

Advance edit options allows users to edit the style without learning or knowing CSS. You can even change the header image without touching a line of code, all from the options page….