It’s the little things

Chris Cummings    CSS, Web Design    

Sometimes those little touches can give you a nice feel to your site.  Here’s one…add this code to the top of your CSS:

* {  -webkit-transition: all 0.2s ease;  -moz-transition:    all 0.2s ease;  -ms-transition:     all 0.2s ease;  -o-transition:      all 0.2s ease;}

Wherever you have hovers and similar things, it will transition between the 2 states. Try it out!

The idea for this came from one of my favorite sites, CSS Tricks. Article is here: http://css-tricks.com/things-it-might-be-funuseful-to-try-the-universal-selector-on/

Converting a site to WP but doing the right SEO stuff

Chris Cummings    SEO, Web Design, Wordpress    

Mainly what you have to do is:

1. Convert the site to WP
2. Once all is good with WP edit .htaccess
3. Above all the wordpress stuff you have to add this type of thing: Redirect 301 /myoldurl.html http://mydomain.com/newpagename
4. You have to add that for each old file that you want to redirect to the new file
5. There is info all over the net, including here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3696002/converting-a-static-site-to-a-wordpress-site-how-to-transfer-convert-seo-ranki

301 Redirect and Canonicalization

Chris Cummings    SEO, Web Design    

This is a bit web design related and a bit SEO related but basically watch this video:

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=canonical+matt+cutts&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=canonical+matt+cutts&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=imvnso&source=lnms&tbm=vid&ei=VpYhT57qHcqBgwfXy4D1CA&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=4&ved=0CBEQ_AUoAw&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=cb0215ac689da41e&biw=1089&bih=1024

Then check these sites on how to fix it.

http://knowledge.freshpromo.ca/seo-tools/301-redirect.php

http://www.barrywise.com/2008/10/seo-canonical-urls-and-301-redirects-in-windows-iis-6-iis-7/

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/hwoto-canonical-headers.html

Install WordPress in sub-directory, run in home directory

Chris Cummings    Web Design, Wordpress    

It’s been a while since I posted.  I’ve been a busy bee!  This post will be short and sweet.

I work on a lot of existing sites that I’m converting to WordPress. I want to leave the current site in place and work on WP in sub-directory until its time to go live.  This link will tell you how to do it:

http://www.optiniche.com/blog/145/wordpress-tutorial-install-wordpress-in-a-different-directory/

That’s it…see short and sweet!

Super Helpful Nerdy Web Design Type Links

Chris Cummings    CSS, HTML, Javascript, jQuery, Web Design    

I love CSS-TRICKS.COM.  Always interesting, usually helpful…but today its MEGA HELPFUL!  This post in particular:

http://css-tricks.com/12389-one-page-apps-i-actually-use/

Why?  Because I’m always looking up the code for rounded corners or trying to find the exact link to jQuery…here are some great links from that article!

• http://border-radius.com/ – Quick and easy…LOVE IT!
• http://scriptsrc.net/ – I’m always looking for the links to jQuery and jQuery UI…I even posted on it recently.  But this is the current version.  Yee-haw!
• http://css-tricks.com/examples/ButtonMaker/ – Quick and easy button!
• http://css3please.com/ – Throw ya hands up for CSS3.  It’s a little hard to read but good because it throws the kitchen sink in there.

That’s it.  Have fun.

Comments and Firefox: Watch How You Form Them!

admin    HTML, Web Design    

I had a WordPress theme I was modifying and like a good little coder I kept adding these types of comments

<!– HERE IS A COMMENT —————————————————————->

I make that long line so all my comments line up down the page.  While my page was working fine everywhere else, it kept breaking in Firefox and I couldn’t figure out why.  Finally I ran across this post:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3050317/can-comments-in-html-and-css-ever-create-rendering-problems

which leads here:

http://weblog.200ok.com.au/2008/01/dashing-into-trouble-why-html-comments.html

and explains that while all other browsers render –> as the end of a comment, FF thinks –> OR — is the end of a comment.

Problem solved!  Code on, coders!

Helpful Tip: Moving a static site to WordPress

admin    Web Design, Wordpress    

I had a bit of delima…I had a current static site that I couldn’t get rid of, but wanted to replace with wordpress.   Putting WP in a sub-directory, then moving to the home directory is a nightmare so I couldn’t do that.

Basically what I wanted to do was if someone went to www.site.com they would be redirected to www.site.com/oldsite (where I had moved the current site to).  But I needed some people that I’m working with to see the wordpress files in action so if you go to www.site.com/index.php I wanted the wordpress to show…but only if you typed in the fully qualified URL.

I thought this would be an easy set up in .htaccess but either my hosting provider has some behind the scenes stuff going on preventing it or it’s just not easily doable.

After much fighting with HTACCESS, I finally figured out how to do this by going backward with it.  Wordpress plugin to the rescue!

So here’s what I did, start to finish:

1. Original site at www.site.com, moved it to www.site.com/old
2. Installed WordPress at www.site.com
3. Change permalinks to a custom structure of /%postname%
4. Create a page called WELCOME…in the end this will be my real home page
5. Created a page called REDIRECT (you can change your page names)
6. Made REDIRECT my home page under SETTINGS in WordPress
7. Downloaded this super awesome redirector plugin: http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/
8. Activated that sucker and set it up to where www.site.com (which is the redirect page, default WP home page) goes to www.site.com/old
9. To view the new home page now you go to www.site.com/welcome

When I’m ready for the WP site to go live:

1. Make WELCOME my home page in Settings
2. Delete REDIRECT page
3. Deactive that plugin.

PROBLEM SOLVED…thanks Urban Giraffe for a cool plugin!

CSS3: The Wonder Years

admin    CSS, Internet Explorer, Javascript, Web Design    

If you build websites, CSS3 is slap-awesome.  Rounded corners, gradients, transparencies, drop shadows…oh my!

As we know though the good ol’ “red headed step child yet still mamas favorite”, Internet Explorer doesn’t do these things.  Well, correction, IE9, which has recently dropped, does do some of the cool new stuff.  But as of right now a lot of IE users are still on 7 or 8…some even on 6 (Egads!)

If you are building with IE in mind and want all those cool roundy boxes and droppy shadows, here are a couple of links that will help you  get those on IE:

http://css3pie.com/

http://www.modernizr.com/