technical ramblings
Mastering SEO can be a time-consuming thing. Whilst there are a lot of options available and many ways you can increase your Google search rankings, sometimes you need to simply get started and are looking for some basics, some general tips and explanation of the various options seen when editing your page or blog. Well, here is a beginners guide to Yoast SEO. Read more A beginner guide to Yoast SEO
As you may know, as of April 21 2015 Google will rank mobile-friendly websites higher than those that are not mobile-friendly. If you’re not sure whether you pass the mobile-friendly test, Google provides a link where you can simply enter your site URL, and see some general results. If not mobile-friendly, Google offers some advice but often these pieces of advice can’t be directly applied to a WordPress site, although it does go some way to explain general design principals of making a WordPress site more mobile-friendly.
Read more Making your WordPress site mobile friendly for Google
Sadly, the nRelate WordPress plugin, a simple yet effective related articles plugin, will soon cease to be. Support for this plugin will come to an end on 31st December 2014.
With nRelate often appearing in the list of best related article plugins, this has forced many people to search for a new product, perhaps something just as simple or something with a few more options. Read more Options to replace nRelate related articles plugin
Recently found a list of WordPress tutorials on the Creative Bloq website, that has a vast range of well explained “how to” articles, for the beginner as well as the more experienced WordPress user.
I am still working through the list myself, and sometimes find that links are not working (for articles linked to Smashing Magazine in particular. The link has wp. at the very beginning, if you replace this with www. then it tends to work as expected).
Yes I admit, I play Clash of Clans. Much to the chagrin of my wife. It’s one of few things I actually use my iPad for. My 2 and 4 year old daughters have a far more impressive array of apps. However, sometimes it isn’t handy to use the iPad, whether one of my kids has it, or it is busy charging, or I am already at my computer desk it’d just kill me to have to get up and retrieve my tablet. Recently I have discovered how to play Clash of Clans on PC, and indeed, any Android game or app available in the Google Play store. Here’s how. Read more How to play Clash of Clans on PC (or Mac)
When taking on Responsive Web Design (RWD) and looking to cater for screens of all different shapes and sizes, I think it is largely lost on the consumers that screen resolution does not equal how big a website can be and will appear (and look good) on their mobile device.
Whether it be tablets / iPads, smart phones / iPhones, there seems to be a misconception that whatever the resolution the device lists on its specifications page, well now that’s the dimensions that the website should take on. Or more to the point, should be able to take on.
But this assumption is incorrect and with good reason – if a website strictly followed the resolution of a device (such as an iPad with Retina support) then it would look teenie tiny (technical term). Read more Screen resolution vs viewport in Responsive Web Design
Except for perhaps most people on my street, nobody could hear my cries of anguish when met with first of all the “white screen of death” in a WordPress site I was working on.
Couple this with also being unable to access the Dashboard area of WordPress, with an error such as:
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at //home/htdocs/wordpress/wp-config.php:1) in /home/htdocs/wordpress/wp-login.php on line 12
Or something similar.
Both on a live site. Whoops.
Read more When there is a space in your php file no one can hear you scream
When it comes to web design trends, square web design is back.
What I, at least partially, put down to the move away from table layouts for design (and thank whomever you like that we have moved away from that horror) we saw rounded corners on everything web related. But there is no doubt in my mind that square web design, or Flat Design, is making a strong return.
Considering myself something of a web and WordPress developer, of course I looked into using HTML5 in all its much vaunted and promised glory of cutting edge yet backward compatible technology, and see what it was all about.
I was quickly confused, and somewhat put-off.
Read more Inspired about HTML5 thanks to “The Truth About HTML5”
Working on a rebuild of a site, I wanted to challenge myself with a fancier looking navigation menu than what I had done previously in WordPress, and deploy something that utilised CSS transitions to create some nifty hover effects. CSS3 comes into play here.
Read more Navigation Menu Hover Effects with CSS Transitions in WordPress