I need first apologize for the length of time between updates. I have no excuse other than an insane work schedule. I, initially at least, was also trying to hold off releasing a new version until I had some significant bugs to fix or features to add. Perhaps it's a testament to the simpleness of the plugin, but bugs are few and far between.
That said, an encoding bug has been the bane of the plu…
A friend of mine just forwarded me this video by The Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper), and I enjoyed it so much that just had to break my DBD blogging silence to share it here.
The song lays out, with some slick verse, the importance of Web standards and proper design -- both for how it relates to the look of the site, and the way the site gets indexed by search engines. Check it out and see t…
I recently stumbled upon Stuart Bruce's "Top ten ways not to choose a social media consultant". Bruce offers some solid advice for anyone looking to hire a consultant, advisor, or otherwise "expert" in the social media field.
My favourites:
They describe themselves as an expert. This space is so new and changing so rapidly it’s impossible to be an expert, at Wolfstar we only claim to be ahead o…
Just stumbled upon this list of humorus taglines for the newly "officially named" Windows 7 and thought I'd share. The list contains more than this, but I wittled it down to my top 20:
Windows 7: We heard it’s a lucky number
Windows 7: Like Windows 6 — wait, there was no Windows 6
Windows 7: Correct iterations be damned!
Windows 7: Apparently 13 versions of Windows + 1 = 7
Windows 7: Experie…
I've been using Drupal quite a lot recently, and one of the things that was bothering me was the Recent Comments block. It's excellent that Drupal includes this functionality right out of the box, but that it offers no way to template or otherwise customize it (in Drupal 5.x at least) is a pain in the ass.
Specifically I want to display the comment's author (as a link) and be able to customize th…
One of the first posts I wrote on this blog was a tiny little script that detects whether your visitor is using a particular version (or less) of Internet Explorer and then redirects them to a page explaining that they should get their ass in gear and get a better browser.
Well, my loathing of Internet Explorer has not lessened, but I have begun employing a much easier way of notifying my visitor…
Man, since I released SEOSimple v1.2 a few weeks ago I've learned a massive lesson - WAY too many people are still using servers that employ PHP4 - the php engine that was replaced with PHP5 four years ago.
For anyone that tried to use the plugin with PHP4, I'm sorry about breaking your site. Actually it's an old PHP4 bug that broke your site, but I'll apologize anyway. So sorry I sat my butt dow…
As some know, Dao By Design doesn't just create sites for others, we began with and continue to develop sites for ourselves, generally based on my wide-spanning interests.
One such site is the Hao Hao Report, a Digg-like social bookmarking/link sharing site that focuses on blog posts and news articles related to China (I live in China, so there's a vested interest).
Virtually since its inception…
Close on the heels of the release of v1.1 I'm releasing v1.2 of the SEOSimple Joomla 1.5 plugin.
I've just tweaked a few things to better support UTF-8 encoding, word wrapping of the descriptions and better handling of the Section and Category page descriptions.
Please report any problems you have either on the SEO Simple Support Forum, or in the comments on the SEOSimple home page.…
Just a quick note to say that version 1.1 of the SEOSimple plugin has been released. This was just a quick release to add some additional front page title tag configurations.
You can now totally and independently control your Joomla 1.5 front page title tag using the following options:
[optional fp title] | [site title]
[site title] | [optional fp title]
[optional fp title]
[site title]
*…
Hey all - just wanted to let everyone know about what essentially amounts to a virus being spread via Facebook.
If you get a message on your wall reading:
"hi XXX, howdy?? lisen i got a new friend here..shex kinda new here..maybe you can give her a lil tym so she can enjoy here?? not forcin u but u can chk out =)
her profile is
http://www.facebook.com.profile.id.17lgot00.jn95fk.e77c98037.com/fac…
It is a testiment to my own foul forgetfulness that I am endlessly hunting the Joomla forums for the post that explains how to reset the admin password for Joomla.
Rather, it's not that I can't remember how to do it - doing it is quite simple - it's I can't remember the values to insert.
The only way to "reset" your Joomla password is by editing the database directly. Simply:
Access your datab…
A while back I whipped up a little script to detect and redirect visitors if they were using an old version of IE. In the comments I went on to say that a more effective/professional way of handling IE users is using Conditional Comments.
As at least one commenter was curious how this is done, here's how.
The Problem
Internet Explorer, particularly versions less than 7, is quite simply a pain to…
Bored? Fire-up your copy of Firefox 3 Beta 5 and type about:robots in the address bar.
Funny stuff - but I think the FF3 devs could be using their time more productively, namely, to get the damn thing out the door already! ;-)…
One of the least satisfying bits about my job is watching would-be Internetpreneurs come up and attempt to pitch the Next Big Thing, which is just like the Last Big Thing, just renamed and re-domained - with a bit of reflection added to the logo.
Such is the nature of the industry, I suppose, but with the exception of a few great leaps (Wikipedia, YouTube and blogging in general) - I find most of…
I've released a new version of autoMetaDescSEO, fixing many of the problems - including the stupid name - of the first release.
I've changed the name to SEOSimple to better reflect the fact that the Joomla 1.5 plugin project has expanded to include a few more useful SEO features.
Briefly, features of SEOSimple include:
- Auto generation of meta description tags for all pages/articles that don't…
If Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were alive today, their infamous sketch, 'Who's on First?' might have turned out something like this:
COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM ABBOTT.
ABBOTT:Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?
COSTELLO: Thanks I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a computer.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: No, the name's Lou.
ABBOTT: Your computer?
COS…
When I initially began this blog as an extension of my design business, I wanted a place where I could write about various tips and tricks I come across due to spending an overly large portion of my day online.
Recently I've begun to refocus this blog as being more an outlet to discuss the happenings of Dao By Design, as well as other related news or topics from the field - including design, maki…
