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Today at work I was creating a form. I’m not a big JavaScript buff, but one of my tasks was to use a checkbox to toggle a form field between “enabled” and “disabled”. So, after browsing the web for a solution, I decided it would be simpler to roll up my sleeves and get dirty writing my own function.

Here is what I came up … Read More »

Now that I have been at the freelance web-design business for the last several years, I have had some experience with a variety different programs. Some of them are very expensive, others are free. Here I have tried to make it easy for you and compiled a list with links to their respective locations:

Design & Image Editing:

Adobe Photoshop – $649 or $999 for the extended version

Photoshop is the most expensive program you need- but you will want this piece of software. There are a lot of different image editing tool but this is the industry standard. Sometimes you can get a student discount, or even get your company to buy it for you.

Text/Code Editing:

Mac

TextWrangler – Free: This is a great piece of software for writing your code if you don’t want to spend any money.
Read More »

People – especially people of business – want websites. If you asked them why, most would say that they want to “Attract more clients”, “Generate customers”, or “Show off my business”.

Imagine that you are an architect. Someone asks you to build them an office. You ask, well, what do you want in an office? The equivalent answer to “Attract more clients” is: “I want to be able to put my employees there so they can work.”

As you can see, this is not a helpful answer. How many employees do you have? What kind of resources do they need? What kind of environment should they be provided?

The same goes for a website. The following are some basic steps to designing a better and more focused website that will accomplish the goal of your client.

Step One: Define a specific goal.

Some good example … Read More »

As was recently pointed out to me by Andy in the comments, this post was quite out of date. I was fairly new to WordPress and had found a hacked way to modify the core of WordPress to return a short version of wp_title(); — but this is a method far from necessary and will always get removed when you update WordPress.

I opted to delete the out-of-date method, so that you only get the stuff that makes sense!

There is a simple script you can use to implement a short blog title without modifying the base WordPress code. Open up your functions.php file within your theme and add the following:

[php]function short_title() {
$title = get_the_title();
$count = strlen($title);
if ($count >= 25) {
$title = substr($title, 0, 25);
$title .= ‘…’;
}
echo $title;
}[/php]

You can now reference short_title(); anywhere within the … Read More »

By the way, I have run across various articles before on DoshDosh.com and I have absolutely loved every single one. A special thanks to DoshDosh for all the great information you have provided me!

So it is DoshDosh that has the credits for this information. Here are some of the coolest points from the article I liked:

First of all, we point out the importance of being listed on Wikipedia. Targeted content, as well as credibility and branding- and hey- we all know that this is the ultimate source of information for students. Welcome .edu links! Great for PageRank.

It goes so far to say that people will trust you more if you are listed on Wikipedia. True? Probably. “Credibility… increases customer and visitor trust”, which may lead to more traffic and a larger audience.

Secondly, it is important to note that … Read More »

A friend gave me a tip the other day- when you are creating a website or writing a blog you should know what people are actually looking for.

My question: How do you know what people are looking for?

For bloggers:

Out of ideas? Want to write about the latest buzz? Check out google.com/trends and see for yourself just what’s hot! A sweet graphic shows you whether the search rates are still going up or if people have stopped searching for a term so much.

For website developers/designers:

So you’re working for a client who wants an SEO website for their main key terms. You don’t want to spam the whole site with the same exact phrases and you want to phrases you choose to use to be solid terms. How do you find out? Check out Read More »

Everybody is looking for lightweight code with a maximum effect. JavaScript rollovers just don’t cut it anymore- they take too long to load, they’re kinky the first time you rollover, etc. etc. and CSS using multiple images can be kinky if you aren’t using an image pre-load. The solution? CSS image rollovers using only a single background image.

If you don’t have a solid understanding of using lists for navigation, then you may want to review that concept before tackling the single-background-image rollover.

Download the example to follow along.

The concept

You have, for instance, a navigation bar (vertical or horizontal, it doesn’t matter). Very simple. There are only four buttons but you can obviously change and edit this concept to fit your own site.

How is it done?

Well this is what the HTML in the example … Read More »

One of the most revolutionizing things I ever learned about building websites with HTML and CSS was the concept of using lists for my navigation. I was flabbergasted! Using lists for navigation? Why, that would look horrible! But then my eyes were opened to the real power that you have to control the way your navigation looks and behaves, as well as the very SEO friendly navigation the list will provide.

The HTML

If you are following along with me in your own document, you will need to make a list, much like the one below (depending on your file structure):

<ul id=”nav”>
<li><a href=”index.html” >Home</a></li>
<li><a href=”about.html” >About</a></li>
<li><a href=”contact.html” >Contact</a></li>
</ul>

And that is your basic list for navigation. It looks kind of ugly in the browser right now, but that’s alright because we’re going to fix that in a minute.

Now there are two ways to … Read More »