A Tutorial about how to create a slider with images and text content in WordPress using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin Advanced Custom Fields is a brilliant plugin for WordPress which can be put to so many different uses; this article will take you through using the Repeater Field add to build a slider in [...]
Retina displays, or high pixel density displays are becoming more mainstream, so it’s time to start adopting techniques to ensure our websites don’t start looking fuzzy around the edges with pixelation. SVG images If you have spent time designing for mobile, no doubt you have delved into the device-pixel-ratio media query for loading 2x images [...]
A tutorial about how to build a dropdown menu in WordPress using Twitter’s Bootstrap framework. Step one outlines how to create a static mockup of the Bootstrap dropdown functionality. Step two explains how to integrate this into WordPress by making some amendments to how the wp_nav_menu output is generated.
A tutorial about how to build a slider in WordPress with Flexslider using NextGen Gallery for image management. Step One: build the slider As usual, we’ll start by building a single page mockup with just the slider, so we know that it’s all working properly before integrating WordPress. Head over to the Flexslider site and [...]
Everything is an app. Well, maybe not, but it seems that we’re heading that way these days. Whilst there are obvious merits to developing native iPhone or Android apps, the alternative approach of building a cross-platform mobile website also has its advantages, primarily being one system to maintain. The jQuery Mobile framework makes this easier [...]
An adaptation of the grid based responsive web design techniques, simplified into four different layout states for design: widescreen, traditional, tablet and mobile.
There are now thousands of articles online about WordPress custom post types, however this guide aims to distill all the information into a handy reusable boilerplate file that you can use each time you need to implement a custom post type into a client project. In part one of this guide I will outline the key components to the code required for creating a custom post type (CPT) and show how to implement the code as either a standalone plugin or as part of your theme’s functions.php file.
Helvetica is a popular font among graphic designers, however it is not commonly installed on Windows/PC devices. An alternative approach is to use a hosted webfont which will result in a more consistent cross-browser appearance of text. See a comparison of Helvetica, Arial and two similar webfonts.
A case study demonstrating the difference between ‘organic’ search engine results via SEO and Google AdWords advertisements via CPC, and the comparitive effectiveness of traffic generated by the two types of listings in search results from a particular keyword phrase.
Web design is undoubted seeing a shift towards “device agnostic design” thanks to the proliferation of mobile devices and tablet computers, which essentially means the beginning of the end for designing a website solely for a fullsize desktop screen. We are now entering a new era of responsive web design, a term coined by Ethan [...]
Hub pages link together similar content, presenting a central page to your website visitors of related pages. Not only does this provide an opportunity to optimise a page for a specific keyword phrase, but by linking related pages back to your hub page, you add authority to the hub page in the search engines.
How to customise page title and meta description for optimising your store. Below is a short how-to guide for setting your own page titles and meta descriptions for the default homepage, a custom homepage and a product page in the Interspire Shopping Cart online store software. See more related articles on the SEO fundamentals page.
How to create your own image slider or fade slideshow with the jQuery cycle plugin using NextGen Gallery for image management.
Making the tracking code work with Interspire Shopping Cart 6 Chances are that you’ve landed here because you’ve got a store running Interspire Shopping Cart and you can’t figure out why the ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics is not receiving any data. Before you implement the fix below, you’ll need to ensure that you have: [...]
Check out my recent article about using Flexslider with NextGen Gallery here. How to customize thumbnail links in NextGen I recently did a client project featuring a catalogue of product images using a custom WordPress theme with NextGen Gallery. The site showcases products (fabrics) each with a swatch thumbnail and the requirement was for the [...]
Custom post type breaks after upgrade to 3.1 I routinely upgraded a client website to WordPress 3.1 today and upon clicking the menu title of my custom post type in the back end, I was met with the error “Invalid Post Type”. On the front end side the permalinks were not working either; it was [...]
The new kid on the SEO block has blown away the competition, in my opinion. This WordPress SEO plugin is packed full of great features. This post covers some of the key features of this impressive SEO plugin for WordPress. Now there’s no excuse not to get your SEO into great shape.
I am excited to introduce Mike Tate, a link building consultant and online marketing strategist, to whom I have begun referring clients wishing to focus on improving search engine rankings for their business.
A short video demonstration of how to use the Wordpress 3 menu manager. The demo shows how to reorder your menu items using the drag and drop function, as well as adding new pages to the menu and assigning pages as submenu items in a drop down menu.
How to create a drop down menu using the new Wordpress 3 menu function, combined with the Superfish jQuery plugin. This guide shows you how to register a menu in your functions.php file, call the menu in your theme, manage your menu via the Wordpress back end and apply the jQuery drop down function.
This is an incredible interactive video for a song by The Arcade Fire, who have teamed up with Google to create an interactive experience that makes use of emereging HTML5 technology, as well as Google maps information and probably some other cutting edge stuff. You’ll need to install the Google Chrome web browser to really experience this in all its glory, but its well worth your time.
Watch a short video walk-through about how to create an email marketing campaign using the incredibly easy to use Astronaut Email Marketing system. It’s as easy as selecting your custom designed template, then adding your headings, text and images. You can easily preview your email campaign in a browser or send yourself a test email to review it before sending to you list.