A brief nap can not only reduce sleepiness but also improve cognitive functioning and psychomotor performance (the brain telling the body to move). A few minutes of shut-eye also considerably enhances short-term memory and mood. These benefits are similar to those experienced after consuming caffeine (or other stimulant medications), but without the side effects of [...] Read more – ‘Want to boost your memory and mood? Take a nap, but keep it short’.
Stop worrying about the fold. Don’t throw your best practices out the window, but stop cramming stuff above a certain pixel point. You’re not helping anyone. Open up your designs and give your users some visual breathing room. If your content is compelling enough your users will read it to the end. via Blasting the [...] Read more – ‘Blasting the Myth of the Fold’.
In this tutorial, we will learn how to make our own responsive WordPress theme using Bootstrap. Bootstrap is a responsive framework for building web sites and applications, and it’s a great starting point for building a responsive WordPress theme. Read more: How to Build a Responsive WordPress Theme with Bootstrap. Read more – ‘How to Build a Responsive WordPress Theme with Bootstrap’.
Accounts and Profiles Google Analytics account management is a highly flexible system that you can use to track multiple web properties and to set up reporting access for a variety of users. Before setting up an Analytics account or a new profile, read this document to understand how Analytics accounts and profiles work. This document [...] Read more – ‘Accounts and Profiles – Google Analytics — Google Developers’.
Assuming that you have set up WordPress SEO by Yoast as per my recommendations in the first post of this two-part guide, you will now have a very well optimized site. Redundant pages will have been ‘nofollowed’ or removed altogether, your meta titles across all posts, pages and taxonomies will be set, you will have [...] Read more – ‘A Complete Guide to WordPress SEO by Yoast [Part II] – ManageWP’.
Keyword Research Tools Below are links to tools (many of which are free) that provide data about what people are searching for. Marketing in the Age of Google tells you how best to use this data to attract the right customers, engage with them, and evolve your products and business to meet customer needs. Marketing [...] Read more – ‘Marketing in the Age of Google: Resources From The Book – Vanessa Fox’.
Keyword research though is not just done for search engine optimization purposes. Keyword research has one goal, and one goal only: to get you to understand how your visitors think and talk about your product or service, so you can talk to them about it in their language. via From goal to site structure – [...] Read more – ‘Keyword research – quote’.
Determining the goal for the site The process for building a new site, any site, starts with a lot of questions: why are you building this site? Should it be generating leads for you? Or is it purely informational? You should really be going over all the different needs you have for your website, asking [...] Read more – ‘From goal to site structure – WordPress CMS Series | Yoast’.
For your site to perform well in search, Google needs to be able to discover and understand your pages. Here’s how to create rich, Google-friendly content. via Webmaster Academy – Webmaster Tools Help. Read more – ‘Webmaster Academy – Google’.
The Best WordPress Hosting By Joost de Valk – Last update August 21st, 2012 What you ought to know to find the best WordPress hosting I have proudly hosted yoast.com on a VPS.net Cloud Server for over 2 years now. It is fast, affordable & has been rock solid – even as my traffic increased 20-fold [...] Read more – ‘Things to look out for in hosting – care of Yoast’.
My reading list to date from Smashing Magazine publishers: Mastering jQuery JavaScript Essentials Responsive Design Mastering CSS3 CSS Essentials Mastering HTML5 HTML Semantics HTML Essentials Professional Workflow Successful Freelancing User Experience, Practical Techniques, Vol. 2 User Experience, Practical Techniques, Vol. 2 A Field Guide To Usability Testing Practical Approaches for Designing Usable Websites Smashing Book [...] Read more – ‘My reading list to date from publishers Smashing Magazine’.
You know that effective social media promotion is one of the most important factors to building a successful blog. The problem is that you’re not quite sure what you should be doing to better promote social sharing on your blog. It’s a dilemma I’ve faced on many different fronts – with different clients, and on my [...] Read more – ‘Social Sharing for WordPress: 5 Steps to Getting More Social Media Exposure’.
Here’s the deal: there’s no reasonable excuse to avoid using SVG for vector graphics on the Web (with a PNG fallback, primarily for IE < 9 and older Android). While there are legitimate design problems when using one single file with icons at multiple sizes, this is not unique to SVG and in the land of — for [...] Read more – ‘SVG, Use it Already – David Bushell’.
Select2 is a jQuery based replacement for select boxes. It supports searching, remote data sets, and infinite scrolling of results. Look and feel of Select2 is based on the excellent Chosen library. Source: Select2 2.0. Read more – ‘Select2 2.0’.
We have now added a new free service with Loud Mountain web hosting: Daily backups of your website’s database for past 2 weeks. Weekly backups of your database for the past month. Monthly backups of the entire website files and database for the past 6 months. This only applies to websites running on the WordPress [...] Read more – ‘Backup service’.
Quick tip on how to spice up your menu with CSS3: add an image to every menu item and slide it out on hover. How to spice up your menu with CSS3 | Codrops. Read more – ‘How to spice up your menu with CSS3’.
Quite often I give people the advice to change their WordPress permalink structure, this post details the why and, more importantly: how to make such a change without losing the traffic that you already have. It includes a new tool built by yours truly to help you create the necessary redirects. Keep on reading! via [...] Read more – ‘Redirect tool for changed permalink situations’.
I found this article covers most of my customer questions about security. This is an introduction to the many threats that computer systems and users face on the internet. Methods that users can implement to protect themselves are also explored. Article by Kevin Rio. via Internet Security Threats And Protection Methods | Krio Media. Read more – ‘Internet Security Threats And Protection Methods’.
In this selection, we’re pleased to present Homestead, Bree Serif, Levanderia, Valencia, Nomed Font, Carton and other quality fonts. Please note that while most fonts are available for commercial projects, some are for personal use only and are clearly marked as such in their descriptions. Also, please read the licensing agreements carefully before using the [...] Read more – ‘New High-Quality Free Fonts (2012 Edition)’.
The heading structure of your pages is one of the very important aspects of on-page SEO. It defines which parts of your content are important, and how they’re interconnected. Because they have different goals, a single post needs another heading structure than your blog’s homepage or your category archives. This post intends to give you [...] Read more – ‘HTML heading structure & your blog’s SEO’.
If youre in the camp of integrating SEO functionality into your theme, youve got yet another choice to make: do you “yield” for site owners that have an SEO plugin installed, disabling your own SEO functionality or do you deny them that choice. For those who do decide to yield and for those who do [...] Read more – ‘WordPress SEO Plugin Theme Integration Guide’.
One of the most fundamental requirements at planning stage of a website, is it’s structure in terms of URL’s. WordPress gives you many options to control that. This article from Yoast is particularly relevant to the newest version WP3.3 How to change your WordPress Permalink Structure • Yoast. Read more – ‘Changing your WordPress Permalink Structure’.
Made popular by the International Typographic Style movement and pioneered by legends like Josef Müller-Brockmann and Wim Crouwel, the grid is the foundation of any solid design. The Grid System is an ever-growing resource where graphic designers can learn about grid systems, the golden ratio and baseline grids. The Grid System Read more – ‘The Grid System website’.
“I study the effects of the internet on society. I’ve written two recent books on the subject: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (2008) and Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010).” via Clay Shirky’s Internet Writings. Read more – ‘Clay Shirky’s Internet Writings’.
Alignment diagrams reveal the touchpoints between a customer and a business. Illustrating these helps a company shift its inward-focusing perspectives outward. Alignment diagrams make the value creation chain visible. visit: Alignment Diagrams – Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design. Read more – ‘Alignment Diagrams’.
Here’s the problem: organizations are the context for our work, and when it comes to the web, organizations are broken. via A List Apart: Articles: Web Governance: Becoming an Agent of Change. Read more – ‘Web Governance: Becoming an Agent of Change’.
Since “Part 1” was published, content strategy has gained a lot of ground in the business world. However, justifying budgets and resources for content projects is still a major challenge. So, here, at long last, are seven tips to help you measure content effectively… via The Value of Content, Part 2: Nobody’s Perfect « Brain Traffic [...] Read more – ‘The Value of Content, Part 2: Nobody’s Perfect’.
Although we’re comfortable with the idea that the web is critical to organizations, we often miss the corollary: the web has changed the way organizations operate, and in many cases it’s changed their business models, too. When executives can’t see that, it causes a crisis. Welcome to your daily web-making reality. A List Apart: Articles: [...] Read more – ‘Daily web-making reality’.
Print Friendly Browser Tool Add the Print Friendly bookmarklet to your browser, and make any webpage Printer Friendly. It’s free & easy to install. http://www.printfriendly.com/browser_tool Read more – ‘Print Friendly & PDF’.
