Nov
01

SEO and CMS: Proof Your Custom URLs

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Any content management system (CMS) these days should enable you to tailor your search engine optimization (SEO) on a per page (or post, if you’re publishing an article or blog in WordPress) basis. Permalinks are often overlooked, as a CMS will generally create one based on the page title. It is worth noting that a CMS may also strip out commonly used or single-letter words, often replacing them with hyphens if anything at all. Thus, a URL can easily contain a string of 3 or 4 hyphens in a row, such as:

http://www.skillzdesign.com/blog/explaining-why----useful/

This is suboptimal for a number of reasons:

  • It’s immediately obvious to anyone familiar with content management systems that you were either too lazy to take the extra step and optimize your URL, or you simply overlooked it.
  • The URL stub will not be conducive to any human-readable, "URL’s as Sentences" scheme (check your address bar for a live example).
  • The URL will be a challenge at best to speak to someone over the phone or voice recognition software.
  • Perhaps most importantly, it looks ugly.

 

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Oct
28

WordPress Multi-User (WPMU) Logging You Out?

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WPMU had been kicking me out of the administration area almost every time I’d try to publish an edit. I disabled a plugin or two, installed the wp-login-timeout plug (available here) and set my timeout to 10 years, but no luck.

The Solution (I Hope)

Create a new user profile in Firefox specifically for administering the WordPress site. Instructions for using the Firefox Profile Manager are available here.

So far, so good. I’ve been logged in for the past four hours, even installed Firebug (note: you will have to reinstall plugins for each new Firefox profile) which required a Firefox restart, without having to log back in to the WordPress admin. I’m guessing there must be some fighting amongst my cookies happening. I’m usually logged into my Google account. Maybe Google cookies and WordPress cookies need to have a sit-down.

Rumor has it Google Chrome will be offering multiple user profiles in version 15. That will be cause for celebration.

Please feel free to comment and maybe explain the issue in more technical terms. I prefer the image of cookies engaging in gang-related activities.

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Oct
19

Blood Pressure

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Shortly after my youngest daughter was born, I had to drive my father-in-law to the bus station so he could in turn get to the airport. He’d come to stay with us to help us out during that first week. I had to hold one hand over one of my eyes that morning so I could see straight, as my eyes were darting in two different directions. I went straight to the doctor. "You’re not going to have a stroke, Keith," the doctor said, patting me on the back. "You just need to plan." After I explained to him that although I’m no expert, this felt pretty damned close to a stroke, he said, "You might be one of those people that exhibits physical signs of stress." So that’s what the ‘M.D.’ is for.EKG He sent me home with a sample box of Lexapro, ostensibly to bring my blood pressure under control, along with a prescription for Xanax, which was what I was really after in the first place. At some point in the wee hours over the next night or two, I took one of the Lexapro samples. Shortly thereafter, my wife cleaned up some of the contents of my stomach which I missed after I projectile vomited all over the bathroom. Over the course of the next year, my blood pressure remained significantly elevated. I managed to renew a couple more Xanax prescriptions while keeping my doctor at bay, telling him I really wanted to see if I could get it under control myself. My baby is turning four next week. I just recently got a checkup. My blood pressure came in at 120 over 80. In upcoming articles, I’ll talk about some of the things I’ve done and, just as importantly, things I have not done, which may have gotten me to this point.


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Oct
11

Illustrator Script to List All Open Files

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I often find myself with numerous Illustrator source files open for various current projects. To keep track of these open files in the event I have to restart Illustrator or, dare I say it, REBOOT, I wrote a quick and dirty script which grabs all the file names complete with full paths and dumps them into a text box in a new untitled document. It’s simple and does the trick. To download the file for free, please fill out the contact form. You will be directed to the download page. Feel free to leave comments or suggestions for modifications.


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Sep
26

Illustrator: Export Artboards to PNG and PDF

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Thanks to Matthew Ericson, here’s are a couple of Illustrator scripts to save artboards to PNG and/or PDF format. The original script exports to PNG only. The new and improved version provides options to export artboards, layers, or combinations of the two while specifying output filename prefix and suffix.

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Aug
03

Photoshop: Export Layers to Files

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Photoshop comes with a pre-built script to export layers to files, accessible here: File -> Scripts -> Export Layers to Files I modified the .jsx script to get rid of the serial numbers which are added to the output file names. Be mindful when using this script that you should give each layer a unique name. To download the [slightly modified] script, please provide your e-mail address below. You will be directed to our downloads page.


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Apr
28

Determining Whether a Recruiter has Read Your Resume

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Clearly, the Economy is turning around, judging by the influx of unsolicited e-mails and calls from far-flung “recruiters,” though in fairness, I suppose having my resume posted on every job board I can find may negate the term “unsolicited.” Inspired by a recent phone conversation with one such individual who, after speaking with me for at least a few minutes, asked, “Have you ever heard of Graphic Design?” I’ve decided to begin logging my response to some of these inquiries in a desperate attempt to uncover the answer to this burning question: “Have You Read My Resume?” I plan to log responses as well. I’ll get to the bottom of this.

So, I got this one in my inbox at 9:50 am PST Thursday, April 28, 2011 in typical form-letter style

Excerpt from Job Requirements (job is located in Chevy Chase, MD):

Proficiency in Photoshop, Notepad, Illustrator, Firebug, Web developer toolbar, CSS, HTML, Javascript and Dreamweaver is required.

My reply at 9:52am:

I’m a Notepad Expert. Unfortunately, I reside in California. Would this position cover relocation expenses?

Stay tuned…

3:02pm: Still no reply from our Notepad friend. Just received following inquiry (verbatim, including use of emphasized text, which would seem to indicate some sort of search engine was used, but I’m a little stumped with the Document Object Model of MS office reference):

Note: Here client required more advanced automation, and especially Word and PowerPoint advanced automation. We need someone who has the below skills and has worked on the Document Object Model of MS office.

Title: MS Office programmer with expertise in VB / VBA / .Net
Location: New York City, NY
Type of employment: 6+ months

No. Of. Positions: 2

Experience: 5 – 8 Yrs

Job Description:
· Experienced in VB/VBA/.NET
· Have strong expertise in Office automation skills (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Access)
· Experience in MS Office functionality
· Experience in building queries

This candidate will be responsible for project such as:
Creating addins/tools to integrate with MS Office
Build/enhance applications to interact with other RAD tools
Support modifications to new and existing RAD deliverables
QTool – used by GCFO to audit/report workloads
CLE/GCRM Expense – update tool used to calculate GCRM expenses
GCFO CFO Reporting
F&BM RAD projects

Thanks & Regards…

My response:

Document Object Model of MS office is my specialty for 10 yrs. I assume relocation expenses will be covered. I can begin immediately. Please advise me where to report.

Who knows. Maybe next week at this time I’ll be up to my ears in CLE/GCRM Expense and GCFO CFO Reporting. One can only hope.

3:14pm: Received following response:

Could you please send me your updated resume along with Contact details?

Thanks & Regards…

Done, and done! GCFO CFO Reporting here I come. I can’t wait. That QTool sounds like a load of laughs.

More waiting ensues.

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Apr
28

Add Your Own HTML Tag Attributes and Use Them in jQuery

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I tend to believe that if you’re resorting to this behavior, you should probably step away from your computer for a while and rethink your approach to whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish. Nevertheless, it seems to work. So, in the event you find yourself running out of attributes to use on a tag, likely to contain descriptions of some sort, it turns out you can add arbitrary name/value pairs which jQuery can use as search terms. Consider the example: jQuery:

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
$(document).ready(init);
function init() {
alert($(document).find('p[keith="interesting"]').html());
}
-->
</script>

HTML:

<p keith="interesting">Fascinating.</p>

Here, I narcissistically add the "keith" attribute, assigning it a value of "interesting," to a <p> tag which wraps the text "Fascinating."  When the document is ready, I ask jQuery to search the document for any <p> tags whose "keith" attribute has a value of "interesting," then invoke an alert dialog to display the inner HTML of the first tag returned. I would certainly not recommend relying on this technique for anything other than shock value. I’m shocked to have stumbled across this phenomenon. I would absolutely NOT be shocked if this stopped working inexplicably. Use at your own risk.

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Mar
17

Listing Folder Contents in Mac OS X

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Grab TextWrangler (a free download) and drag a folder from Finder into a document window. This will give you a full listing of all files and folders, including subfolders. There’s no formatting or other file attributes, just file names.

Here’s the original article:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20026446-263.html

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Feb
14

Force OS X Spotlight Reindex using Terminal

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Delete the entire Spotlight directory and reindex, running these commands in the Terminal app:

sudo rm -R /.Spotlight-V100
sudo mdutil -i on /
sudo mdutil -E /

Here is the original article from Apple support: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2733259&tstart=105

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