Hey there let me ask you

• are you tired of simplicity
• are you bored with what you have on your site
• are you sick and tired of the same old wordpress plugins every other site uses
• are you unsatisfied by the plugins you find on Wordpress.org
• have you considered Wordpress.org’s “popular/featured plugins” to be utter crap

I know how it feels I’ve been there. Trying to feed all the hungers and needs that your website has is a daunting task.

At times you’ll feel like your trying to feed jubba the hut. But as with all things in life “There are no FREE lunches”. So I did you a majority of the work and found some peculiar plugins that are not your every day WP plugin.

The ones I have listed are unique and really helpful in my opinion. Check it out , download and comment on the author’s site so that he knows SOMEONE appreciates his/her work.

I’ve tried a majority of the plugins , I can safely say I haven’t had problems on WP 2.6+.

1	[Linked Image] [Site] -> Download !
		Linked Image is one of my new personal favorite plugins for WP. Ever wish there was a simple cure-all solution for images you place in all your excerpts like I do ? The solution is simple ! The author of Linked Image made a nifty plugin that will make ANY picture included in your excerpt automatically hyperlinked to the permalink of your article.
	[Pros]-> Simple , Easy installation , I LOVE IT ! [Cons]-> Non , Nada , Non-Existant , This is a must have for anyone who uses images as part of their excerpt.
2
	[ShadowBox JS] [Site] -> Download !
		This plugin is quite similair to a previous plugin I mentioned in my other article about “WordPress Plugins“. The only difference is that it is an alternative to MultiBox (another LightBox-esque plugin) if you are having problems while running multiple scripts / plugins. I know that sometimes it is hard to keep a balance between plugins that do not interfere with each other while using Jquery scripts that keep to themselves.
	[Pros]-> Easy to work with , 0 Configuration has to be tweaked. [Cons]-> None that I have found. (Try to not overload your site with plugins otherwise your asking for trouble!)
3
	[SEO Friendly Images] [Site] -> Download !
		This plugin sounds an awfully similair to the other plugin related to SEO . . . . oh yea SEO-ALL-IN-ONE plugin. This plugin searches your article for any <img> you have inserted into the post and will automatically rename the <alt> tag to the name of your article. Very helpful if you want to do everything you can to bring in those extra unique hits , here and there.
	[Pros]-> Pretty Much all automated , and you see results immediatly ! [Cons]-> All images are named based on your title , so variation is sparse. (Then again who has the time to name all the tags)
4
	[Category Icons] [Site] -> Download !
		This is a funky plugin. This let’s you add an icon of your choice and size to be placed on the left of your categories in the sidebare widget. It’s only as useful as your imagination can make it. The icons used on this site are from the popular famfamfam website
	[Pros]-> Makes your category sidebar widget standout with style ! [Cons]-> May be difficult to stylize for newbies of css. Check the author’s website for documentation.
5
	[Samsarin PHP] [Site] -> Download !
		Break the boundaries of standard WordPress guidelines as far as what can or can’t be placed into the text Widget box. With the Samsarin PHP Widget you can make use of any code. The limits are endless with the amount of scripts you could run. I love it to death. You should check this out it may save you time next time you feel you have to edit your template’s sidebar.php file.
	[Pros]-> Very useful , extremley flexible. Can run php scripts as well as others without trouble. [Cons]-> May backfire on you if you put in a PHP code that is bound to give you errors.
6
	[Simalair Posts] [Site] -> Download !
		Similar Posts is a MUST-HAVE plugin if you plan on running a blog/site and want to keep your visitors glued to your site. After your readers finish skimming through an article you wrote you want to keep them interested by showing them related articles that may also tickle their fancy. From my experiences it has worked wonders in reducing visitors bounce % as well as jacking up my page views 4 folds. It is based of a variety of library engines and you can tweak the engine to pull up articles that are related based on keywords , article titles and content keywords. Ah I LOVE extreme tweakable settings , don’t you ?
	[Pros]-> This can only help you in the long and short run. [Cons]-> Don’t download this if you HATE your visitors.
7
	[Snazzy Archives] [Site] -> Download !
		This is one of the most creative plugins I know of Today. It takes one of the most boring sections of a website (in my opinion anyway!) the “Archives” and transforms it into a visually appealing and inviting calender. It styles any pictures or words to fix in its appropriate box according to post date and current date. There are also various variations to the animation such as the caresoul.
	[Pros]-> Spruces up the old Archives section. [Cons]-> May be too new and therefor intimidate new users of the new format.
8
	[WP-PageNavi] [Site] -> Download !
		This nifty plugin by LesterChan aka LC is widely popular all over the net’ where WP is used. It adds the 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 and pageinates your blog / website. It is very easy to work with and is highly customizable thanks to a stylesheet. Further Documentation can be found on LC’s forum.
	[Pros]-> Gives your blog / site a more profesional feel to it as well as increases your page views. [Cons]-> Will look boring unless you stylize it yourself to make it belnd in with your site’s scheme.
9
	[Theme Test Drive] [Site] -> Download !
		Our friend Vladimir has yet created another plugin that is so useful it’s insane. The idea behind this plugin is while all your readers and users are on your site with the default theme. You can essentially activate this plugin , choose the template you would like to “test drive” and see it on your site. But anyone else without “admin” or site permissions (aka your every day users) will see your regular default template.
	[Pros]-> Very easy and helpful prior to going into launching phase of a template/theme. [Cons]-> I don’t beleive there were any cons to this plugin when I tried it a month ago.
10
	[Recent Comments] [Site] -> Download !
		Recent Comments , is an obvious plugin that needs little expanation. It allows you to put a widget in your sidebar that pulls up the latest comments on all of your articles. It’s useful and is a first step in making your website more of a community
	[Pros]-> Easy to work with , customizeable via php. [Cons]-> If you don’t have samsarin php widget it may be difficult to styize 100% to your liking.
11
	[NextGen Gallery] [Site] -> Download !
		This plugin is one of the brand name plugins out there and well known by the masses of WordPress users alike. It makes arranging your albums and galleries very very easy to manage. I strongly reccomend you download this if you have a lot of pictures on your site then this is a MUST-HAVE plugin to have.
	[Pros]-> Highly customizable and this plugin can handle more than 70 pictures at once without any problems. [Cons]-> May be hard to customize at first but once you get the hang of it it’s very simple to use.
12
	[Popular Posts] [Site] -> Download !
		Now I always ask myself why can’t people be more creative and make sweet plugins such as this one. This plugin shows off which of your posts are the most read, most popular. It tells your users “These articles are the cream of the crop” , Based off my heat maps people are very interested in checking out the hot articles I gaurntee you it will generate some extra traffic.
	[Pros]-> Show off your popular articles to everyone. Boost traffic. [Cons]-> If your site is new , your articles will make your site look like a ghost town.
13
	[IntenseDebate Comments] [Site] -> Download !
		The long awaited arrival of Auttomatic’s recent acquisiton of Intense Debate is here. In short it is a comment system similair to others such as Disqus and is aimed at bloggers. It’s kinda nice in the sense that it’s micromanaged and has its own dashboard in regard to who’s commenting on what , where and when almost like a google analytics only for comments. It also applies under one roof if you have more than 1 blog.
	[Pros]-> Customizable , clean , fast . [Cons]-> Haven’t had enough time to find any.
14
	[WP Tuner] [Site] -> Download !
		WP Tuner plugin for WordPress is a powerful and easy to use way to answer many hard questions about why your blog is slow or cranky. What’s causing the slowdown? Is it a plugin? Is it your host?
	[Pros]-> This plugin breaks down every load time , what more could you want [Cons]-> May be a bit difficult understanding all the reports since there are a lot of numbers to look at and compare with.
15
	[Upgrade IE] [Site] -> Download !
		As a designer I hate IE 6.0 , I’m sure other designers will agree. Hopefully it’s swift death will arrive sooner than later. Unfortunately people at the workplace , school , 3rd world countries still use this defunct browser for various reasons. This is where this plugin steps in and drops a pane above the website suggesting IE users to upgrade. Personally I don’t mind pestering users who use outdated technology.
	[Pros]-> If you have a lot of IE 6.0 users this will send the message. [Cons]-> Might tick off some users.
16
	[WP-NoSpamUser] [Site] -> Download !
		“WP-NoSpamUser” is all about blocking potential spammers from registering on your blog. It compares the username and the email-address with the ones in the database at http://www.stopforumspam.com. If it gets a positive result, it immediately prevents the potential spammer from registering on your blog.
	[Pros]-> Anything that supplements Askimet is a good thing. [Cons]-> 0 cons , I hate spam , you hate spam , we all hate spam.
17
	[Redirection] [Site] -> Download !
		Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation.
	[Pros]-> I haven’t personally used this yet , but I strongly beleive to keep your website in top notch shape you have to keep a close watch on how many 404 errors your readrs are encountering. [Cons]-> Sounds like a promising plugin with minimal to no flaws.
18
	[WPtouch iPhone Theme] [Site] -> Download !
		WPtouch formats your WordPress blog with an iPhone application-style theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects. The theme only shows when viewed from an iPhone or iPod touch.
	[Pros]-> Looks great , very user friendly [Cons]-> It may take some time to get use to.
19
	[OpenID] [Site] -> Download !
		OpenID is an open standard that allows users to authenticate to websites without having to create a new password. This plugin allows users to login to their local WordPress account using an OpenID, as well as enabling commenters to leave authenticated comments with OpenID.
	[Pros]-> I love this plugin , eventually it should be a one pass/user system less headaches. [Cons]-> This will probably become the new haven for ID theft.
20
	[Multi-page Toolkit] [Site] -> Download !
		Multi-page toolkit This plugin is the ultimate companion for people who use the multi-page capabilities of wordpress. Easy to use fully integrated in to the wordpress visual editor (tinyMCE) (Wordpress 2.5 and above) and simple to use options page to create great navigation links. No coding required !!!!
	[Pros]-> Pagination is a great way to break down very long articles into smaller edible pieces for your readers. [Cons]-> Some people alwasy want the whole article upfront.

50 Reasons Why Your Website Sucks !

There are just so many websites out there today on the internet that really suck n’ blow beyond the imagination of any single person. But if your a webmaster who is truly dedicated to their website then you should read a few lines and learn something.

Keep in mind some pieces should be taken as a grain of salt or for satirical humor while others are accurate.

Enjoy the Knockout list

Premier launch of Rohin.net (The financial Ranting Blog).

I have created a side blog where I will discuss various topics talking about the

• Stock Market
• Futures
• Forex
• High Yeilding Savings accounts

As well as current Hot Deals that are too good to pass up such as the $299 priced laptops that are on for sale at BestBuy! during their pre-Black Friday sale.

So take check it out and subscribe , You won’t be disappointed.

[Rohin.net]

By now everyone out there knows who , what and where Mozilla’s Firefox is. Although I have to admit that recently one of my own friends didn’t know or had even heard of Firefox before. For those of you who need a quick 4-1-1 here it is

Firefox is a highly customizable - intuitive web-browser. It is essentially the Alpha-Male’s choice to browse the inter-web with. I would go as far as saying I bet Chuck Norris uses it as well.

Today I’m going to share with you a list I have personally picked out some of the very best Firefox addons to be very helpful and you will all soon become dependent on features you have been missing out on.

You can find more addons , extensions & plugins at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

Enjoy & Share your own thoughts on which plugins you think is the best !

Make Your Own Abstract Wallpapers !

I’ve asked our good friends over at a 10Steps.sg to show us how to create professional looking Abstract-Wallpapers. They were more than happy to write out a tutorial in regular 10step fashion . . . Enjoy !

		Preparations:In this tutorial, we will try to mimic the nice abstract preview (shown on the left) that Axeraider70 made for his Ultimate Brush Pack 3. Hope this will give the beginners a better idea on how to use these great resources.Download Ultimate Brush Pack 3 here.All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners.
		Step 1 - Setting Up Background:Create a document of size 750×550 pixels then make a new layer and name it as Back Glow.Select Soft Brush tool, set its size to 700px and foreground color to #752341. Paint a large dot of pink at the center like the one shown on the left.
		Step 2 - Brush Layer Masks:Other than simply stamp the brushes around, we can use them to create simple effects on layer mask too.Select the Back Glow layer and create a New Layer Mask.Load all the brushes in Ultimate Brush Pack 3. Select some of those grundgy brushes and paint them with black (#000000) around the border of the mask.
		Step 3a - Setting Base Colors:Create a new layer and name it as Base Color 1.Using the same grundgy brushes used in Step 2, set the foreground color to #FF99B4 and paint a few spots of pink as shown in the diagram.
		Step 3b - Setting Base Colors:Set the Blend Mode of Base Color1 to Soft Light.Now set the foreground color to #FED2DD and repeat Step 3a and 3b.
		Step 4a - Colors and Contrast: Create a new layer and call it as Black Shapes. Briefly identify a center point on the document and find those brushes that stretch out in various directions. We will need to make these shapes look as they diverging out from the same point.Set the foreground color to #000000 and use those brushes in different sizes as shown in diagram. Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Soft Light.
		Step 4b - Colors and Contrast: Create a new layer and call it as Blue Shapes.Using the same grundgy brushes in Step 3a, paint a few spots of blue around.
		Step 4c - Colors and Contrast: Set the Blend Mode of Blue Shapes to Linear Dodge (Add).This will blend the blue spots with those black ones under them and added some glow at the same time.
		Step 4d - Colors and Contrast: Create a new layer and call it as Pink Shapes.Set the foreground color to #E25884 and repeat Step 4a with other brushes. Leave the Blend Mode of this layer as Normal.
		Step 5a - Adding Glow Subjects: Create a new layer and name it as Glow 1.Set the foreground color to #FFFFFF and choose those brushes that you wish to make them your main glowing subjects. Paint them on this layer.
		Step 5b - Add Glow Subjects: Right-click on the layer and choose Blending Options. Activate Outer Glow and set Mode to Color Dodge, Color to #FF0000, Size to 30px and leave the rest as default settings.Repeat Step 5a and 5b with a larger brush.
		Step 5c - Add Glow Subjects: Repeat Step 5a and 5b with random sizes all around.Try not to overdo the addition of these glow subjects else they will “steal” the focus of those colored shapes at the background.
		Optional: There you have it! Your abstract art is done.You can create different variations of the piece with the use of Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. For the Blue, I am using -140,0,0 and for the Yellow, I am using 43,0,0.Hope you will find this tutorial useful.Click here to view the final image.

Inspiration in and out of the ordinary

There are hundreds of places to find inspiration on and offline these days, but in the world of design being inspired can be one of the most important things. What is crucial is where you get inspiration from.

Personally I like to keep a continual eye on the world of design by reading blog posts, browsing galleries admiring product design and so on. There are other times when searching for inspiration needs to be specific to what you are doing.

You may love admiring the art work in comics and find that inspiring but if most of your work comes from building corporate websites you may need to start looking elsewhere. Andy Clarke gave a great talk (called Underpants Over My Trousers - <Audio [linked from the Vivabit Website]) about using the grid layout from the watchmen comics as a basis for a news site that he was working on, but this might be the only exception (though a site colored like Dr Manhattan might be pretty cool!).

I think that following trends too closely can be a dangerous thing, but it is a fine line. Certain types of site are expected to look a certain way and therefore it is important to be aware of other sites of the same type, but taking this too far can lead to the production of carbon copy sites.

A lot of sites talking about sources of inspiration will discuss why you shouldn’t rely on websites for inspiration, whilst others will be a list of web galleries. Both points of view are valid but it is a balance between these approaches that is important.

I thought that I would try and help with that balance by bringing you a few sources that I use for inspiration.

Web galleries

Web galleries are ubiquitous and often derided these days but there is certainly still a great deal of value to them. One of my personal favorites is Design Meltdown. I particularly like how it is divided into categories. This accepts that there are trends (and there always will be) and catalogs them. If you are making a restaurant site you can see a selection of what other sites are doing, you can look for things that are expected on sites of that type. So if a person is looking through 20 different restaurant websites they will not become confused because you have designed yours like a government site.

I know this sounds like I am suggesting you make your site generic but I do not think that is a good approach at all. Once you have seen what types of site have what in common you can start making yours stand out. The ideal effect would be to make the user go WOW! without making them have to think about how to use your site.

I guess this is in essence what makes a good designer but I think the balance gets lost discussing what trends to follow or how you should to avoid web galleries when looking for inspiration.

Another gallery I really like is Pattern Tap, this takes a different approach to many galleries as in concentrates on various parts of a web sites interface (buttons, contact forms etc). I think this really allows you to see usability best practices for specific parts of your design while avoiding over used trends on the whole site.

Erm… stuff galleries

Sorry I didn’t know what else to call them! There are a few sites I have come across that just seem to catalog all sorts of things. It is kind of the polar opposite to Pattern Tap as it gives you a broad overview of everything. The Awesomer is a great example of this. It is a collection of beautiful product design, incredible toys, stunning games and humorous t-shirts.

Will this help you design your next site? Possibility not. Will you see a robots eye that makes you think up a button for your latest app interface? It’s incredibly likely!

Another similar site is Ffffound. Ffffound is a site where users bookmark images that they have come across. Again you may not find anything directly useful but it will certainly encourage you to think outside of the box. In fact the photo at the top right now is a bird box made around the handle of an axe, how can something so great not make your day better and push you to think out of the ordinary.

Out and about

I am sure you could tell by the introduction to this post that I wasn’t just going to link a load of galleries!

Unfortunately I currently have a rubbish camera on my mobile phone but on my last one I had a pretty decent one, having it was a great way of keeping myself inspired. I know it sounds obvious but being able to take a photo of anything that catches your eye can be really inspiring. For a while I took way too many photos of taps in toilets (not sure I should have confessed that in public! There weren’t that many pics but anything more than one is weird).

I know, I know that sounds weird, but I just started noticing a few that were really different. They all had different shapes, different ways of handling how you use them, had a different color metal. This was a weird and short lived obsession, but it high lights that anyone can be inspired by anything, and capturing that even for a short period of time will keep you motivated to design new and wonderful things.

Other Media

I also have more normal hobbies than photographing bits of plumbing. I am a huge consumer of films and music. I watch and listen to all sorts, as a general rule, the weirder the better. I am sure there are countless articles about the ways in which films and music are inspiring.

One thing I find particularly interesting is when a film has consistency, when every last detail has been thought of to make the whole film look and feel like a single, tight piece of work. I find color to be a big part of this (see you knew this would be relevant to design somehow!).

A great example of this would be City of God. It’s in a bright, hot, dusty place and the whole film has a yellowy color, sometimes things almost look over exposed. It is designed to be that way and it brings the whole film together, so that every scene is pretty much identifiable as being from that film.

Another example of this would be Sleepy Hollow. All the colors are de-saturated till they almost look monochrome other than bits intended to stand out (mostly blood!). It really impresses me to see things like this, with so many disparate parts pulled together to be given a consistent feel.

I think here again there are lessons to take away in terms of design, even though they might not be that direct. Something in particular would be having consistency throughout out a page and throughout a site.

I am sure that, unless you are a genius like Jason Santa Maria, you have a common design throughout your site, but taking the example of the color in films it is possible that you could make sure everything just feels right within and throughout the site.

I am struggling to explain myself here because I am talking about an unquantifiable thing so I shall try to give you an example.

Dan Rubin gave a talk called “Designing User Interfaces: Details Make the Difference” [Audio and Slides - linked from the Vivabit website] where he discussed the benefits of having a pattern to your margin and padding widths. He suggested picking a number and sticking with. The example Dan used was based on a “rule of 6” where all his margins and padding were 6, 12 or 18 px. Again he talked about it giving everything an unquantifiable feeling of being tighter and more consistent.

When he demonstrated by taking an existing site and applying his rules to the design and compared the 2 you could see the difference it made. The re done version was vastly improved just from changing the margins and padding to be consistent.

Conclusion

I hope that this post has not been to long and rambling, but hopefully there will be something interesting, motivating or even inspirational in some of it. I hope that everyone has some little thing that regularly inspires them. It is important to both be aware of what the industry and to be able to find inspiration from out side to help the industry to develop.

Please let us know in the comments where you go to find inspiration, what web sites you visit, what silly little things do you photograph or collect.

James Abney-Hastings

James is a web designer from Cardiff in the United Kingdom. He blogs and displays his work at www.mancub.net and regularly talks nonsense and post to things he is inspired by on www.twitter.com/jahcub.

November is up on deck and October is just about ready to bid farewell to our 2008 calenders. With November coming up fast it also means that more news and price ads are being released. Here are the latest links that I found most interesting.

(Please keep in mind that the accuracy can not be taken for 100% but I would take it as a estimation of what will be going on for sale as well as the prices of this year’s hot items.)

One last note you may want to save the page immediately because if you have been following the recent trends of retail stores sending threats to black Friday websites . Once you visit the page , save the entire page by pressing “Ctrl+S” via “Save Page As” (Web Page , Complete)

The boys and girls over at WordPress.org found a low-risk bug that malicious hackers could use to take you down. The hole is within the WordPress’s admin dashboard in specfic “Snoopy to fetch the feeds shown in the Dashboard”.

You don’t have to download the whole pack instead you can just download 2 files they have posted and replace them within your directory. Other than the security issue there is no changes I have seen or heard of.

So get your butt over there and update the latest patch to 2.6.3 !

SEO Ranting on the subject

Over the past month or so  I have been searching for ways and techniques to increase traffic to my site. This included checking out already well known blogs such as ProBlogger but after reading those crazy e-books all the way to going to my local borders and reading books on SEO , taking advantage of Google etc etc.

What surprises me the most is that every time I read a new source claiming to be the cure-all to increasing traffic is that all they do is reiterate and recycle old ideas or useless ones that a majority of web developers either already know or consider it to be common sense.

I mean take this for example , “Google is very important for your traffic”. Yes this is true but I think everyone including my GRANDMA already knows this , Give me a break. Then the next statement usually made is that the “DMOZ will make or break you depending on your acceptance into the directory”. You’ve got to be joking me , no directory such as the DMOZ will give you non-stop traffic. You’ll be lucky enough if you even get 50 or more unique visitors in 1 week’s time. So I figured it was up to me to talk to friends who blog as well as consult for others about the best way to market yourself.

The majority of their answers sent me to one word “Social Networking”. I know you’ve probably heard of this well over a million times , I was actually disappointed to hear this simple answer as most of you would agree. You may have some misconceptions from people saying things such as I have heard of Digg and I think it sucks because I submitted my article 100 times but never got the Front Page or StumbleUpon is too complicated.

My friends in various niches` of the blogosphere then told me after my sarcastic remarks that everything takes time but unless you take time to market yourself in high-traffic social sites then no one will never know you even exist or read your article that you spent all night long writing.

So I’ve listed a few social-networking sources and will go into detail on how to use them , how to expand your reach. Be prepared to burn an hour a day or more marketing properly. You know you can stop when your website’s traffic is increasing on a daily basis without you the owner doing 1-ounce of work I call this web-traffic-nirvana. But be aware that it’s best not to leave your blog tend to itself for long periods of time. It’s kind of like your puppy , if your away from the house for too long then it will mess up your house and rip your pillows up.

Resources

1) StumbleUpon - StumbleUpon is more friendly in my opinion as well as my friends I’ve spoken to. The only gripe on it is that to have an effect you have to spend some time building your friends network.They offer a toolbar you can download to stumble sites you enjoy and would like to share.

• Advantages the great part about this is that unlike Digg traffic that spikes to 30k the first day then just dies off quickly, traffic from StumbleUpon is spread out and doesn’t die out for weeks to months at a time depending on how great of an article you wrote. From my analysis StumbleUpon traffic is more quality traffic. By quality traffic I mean that the users don’t just come on to your site then leave it in under 15 seconds.
• Disadvantage DO NOT submit or stumble your own website , SU has an algorithm built in for that each time you stumble your own site , it becomes less effective till no one comes on your website. What I you could do is suggest an article to your friends and it could start a chain reaction of stumbles as well as other social sites posting your article.

2) Digg - What I think - Personally I have used Digg for experimental reasons at first and have gotten the front page on my second submission , but albeit the users over there can be pretty nasty. Some comments may even offend you. That’s why I have listed them at #2. If your article is of low-quality or not helpful to the average user , expect your blog to be marked as spam and get lots of hate comments if at all any depending on how much visibility your Digg has gotten.

Disadvantages are the users have a bounce rate of 80-90% or higher. So if you were to get like 1000 users from a Digg article expect only 50-75 to actually stick around.

3) Consider joining blog networks ;

• blogospherenews
• blog carnival
• 9rules
• b5media

4) Submit your RSS Feed n’ spread the word!

• blogpulse
• feedfury
• feedbomb
• millionrss
• icerocket

5) If you are using WordPress I suggest you use the SEO All-In-One Plugin. This plugin will optimize each article’s keywords , meta data , and title. You should also use “SEO Friendly Images” WordPress Plugin , this makes all the images placed into your article/post optimized to be included in search engines such as the image section of Google.

I will be posting more on this topic and sharing details on how to further promote your blog using unorthodox techniques that you most likely have never heard of before.

In this example I will show you how to create a Custom tag in ColdFusion. The idea of a Custom tag is to allow you to package chunks of code into reusable modules that you can then reuse through out your project. They are similar to UDF (User Defined Functions) with the exception that Custom tags are self-contained, have a specific purpose and goal-oriented. In addition, one does not have to understand how exactly the Custom Tag works, all you do is plug in the variables and watch the tag do it’s work.

Now to put Custom tags to good use, you will want them to accept variables and return variables. You do that by using the ATTRIBUTES scope, and the CALLER Scope. The ATTRIBUTES scope accepts variables and the CALLER scope is what returns the variables. These only pertain to Custom tags and should not be used anywhere else ex: UDF, or inside a CFC. The only place these scopes should be used is in a Custom Tag.

In addition, your Custom tags should be placed in the specified folder that can be found in the ColdFusion admin panel. If you cannot access the ColdFusion admin panel due to being on a shared host service then you place the Custom Tags in the current folder of where your tag is used. For Example if I have a folder called admin, and in the admin i have login.cfm and I am using a Custom Tag then the custom tag would be in the same folder as the login.cfm file.

After you place them in the right folder then you can use the tag like this . To have the template accept attributes and return attributes you do

 
<cf_nameOfTemplate myName="#myInputName#" returnedVariable="myNameReturned">
//you can then use it like this
<cfoutput>
#myNameReturned#
</cfoutput>

Inside the Custom Tag, you would have something like this

 
<cfparam name="ATTRIBUTES.myName" type="string">
 
//notice the variableName type
 
<cfparam name="returnedVariable" type="variableName">

To return the variable you can do something like this

 
<cfset CALLER[ATTRIBUTES.returnedVariable]=Attributes.myName>

This is just scratching the surface of Custom Tags, I will explain more as this week progresses but this should give you enough rope to try some stuff on your own.

Here is the source and a working example. Click Here for the Example
Custom Tag

<cfparam name="ATTRIBUTES.returnVariable" type="variablename">
<cfparam name="ATTRIBUTES.searchName" type="string">
<cfparam name="ATTRIBUTES.datasourceName" type="string" default="cfartgallery">
 
 
<cfquery name="myQuery" datasource="#ATTRIBUTES.datasourceName#">
	SELECT Description ,ArtName
    FROM ART
    WHERE Description LIKE '%#ATTRIBUTES.searchName#%' OR ARTNAME LIKE '%#ATTRIBUTES.searchName#%'
</cfquery>
 
<cfset Caller[ATTRIBUTES.returnVariable] = myQuery>

Main Index.cfm

<!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>
 
<cfform>
	<cfinput type="text" name="mySearchName"/>
    <input type="submit" value="Search"/>
</cfform>
<hr/>
<cfif isDefined("FORM.mySearchName")>
<cf_myCFXTAG  searchName="#mySearchName#" returnVariable="myReturnedQuery">
 
<table border="2" align="center">
    	<tr>
        	<th>
            	ArtName
            </th>
            <th>
            	Description
            </th>
        </tr>
<cfoutput query="myReturnedQuery">
	    <tr>
        	<td>
            	#artName#	
            </td>
            <td>
            #Description#
            </td>
        </tr>
 
</cfoutput>
 </table>
</cfif>
</body>
</html>