In web design, characters and symbols that are not keyable via a standard keyboard require special html codes or ascii codes in order to display them on a web page. And, in other situations, certain symbols such as a forward slash /, quotation mark “, pound sign # and many others, are used in web programming, and keying such characters in a web page can break the web design code. Therefore such characters must be represented in text by an html or ascii code instead of the actual key character. The table below is useful list of various HTML and ascii codes for various special characters. read more…
When you create a new web page in WordPress, the order for the new web page defaults to ‘0′, which positions the display of it’s navigation menu at the beginning of the stack. To change the web page order:
- Open the web page in the editor.
- On the right column there is a panel titled ‘Attributes’.
- This panel includes two menus: ‘Parent’ and ‘Order’.
- The ‘Parent’ menu allows you to make the web page a child of another web page.
- The ‘Order’ menu is where you specify the numeric web page order.
- Set this to whatever you want the respective web page’s order to be.
- For example if you have five parent web pages, set each web page’s ‘Order’ numerically from 1-5 respectively.
- When adding a new web page, set the new web page’s ‘Order’ to ‘6′ if you want the web page navigation menu to display after all the other web pages, and so forth.
- Another example would be that you want a new web page to display fourth in the middle of the current web pages. To accomplish this, set the new web page’s numeric order to 4, then open the web pages that were previously set as 4 and 5, and change them to 5 and 6 respectively.
When performing a web design production, or a website design rework, there may be situations where both index.html and index.php are active in your root website directory. During a website transition, you may need to keep these files active until youv’e completed the web design production. Your webserver will default to one or the other, and it may not default to the one you want it to.
You can force the file you want with your .htaccess file.
For instance, to force index.html:
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
To force index.php:
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
That will make your web design transition a little bit easier.
CSS Reset or Reset CSS are one of the best ways to ensure you have a consistent web layout and design across all browsers. In this post we discuss the different ways and the advantages or disadvantages of using them.
What is CSS Reset and Why use it?
CSS Reset has been around for quite some time now (thanks to Eric Meyer)and the means to achieve the same are numerous.
Smashing Magazine says
Global Reset is needed to ensure the more or less identical cross-browser presentation of your web-sites. By default different browsers use different values for margin, padding or line-height. Global Reset makes sure all (or probably most) browsers render sites identically.
Let me try to explain why the it is important. Let us assume that a browser decides to change the way the visited links are displayed in violet to black. Now imagine you had been using a non resetting CSS. Once the page is viewed in the new browser, what used to violet links will now be black. The problem is not with the fact whether the link should be violet or black, but with the fact that it will not be what you would have wanted them to be. To add to it, the same element could be different in different browsers leading to confused users. read more…
Google’s Chrome browser will no longer include http:// as part of the URL field. In October of 2009, the creator of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, admitted that the double slash we see in every website address was a mistake, and that if he could go back and do it again, he would remove this double punctuation. Google has apparently acknowledged this revelation by retiring the http://.
When you think about it, you rarely hear the use of ‘http://’ in television, radio, or print media. That’s because it’s basically unnecessary. Search engines like Google and Yahoo usually insert the http:// for you by default. I haven’t typed http:// for years, as using ctrl+enter, shift+enter or ctrl+shift+enter will automatically encapsulate the domain name with the http://and .com, .net, or .org respectively.
Secure or non-standard protocol is where problems could arise. Sceptics of this retirement raise the issue of what if a user needs to specify a secure protocol such as https or ftp. Some users claim they verify a secure connection by visually confirming the https in the browser’s address bar, while others say that practice is a legacy habit, as the Padlock icon confirms a secure connection.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
To disable the rss feed and redirect to the home page in wpmu:
Add this code to functions.php
/**
* Disable Our Feed Urls
*/
function disable_our_feeds() {
wp_redirect(get_option('siteurl'));
}
add_action('do_feed', 'disable_our_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rdf', 'disable_our_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss', 'disable_our_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss2', 'disable_our_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_atom', 'disable_our_feeds', 1);
and/or
open wp-feed.php, wp-rss.php, and wp-rss2.php and change the following line:
wp_redirect( get_bloginfo( 'rss2_url' ), 301 );
to
wp_redirect(get_option('siteurl'));
Another method is to create a folder in the Wordpress root directory called ‘feed’ and post a custom index.php page. When accessing feed this page will be displayed instead of a feed.
Are you or someone you know still using Internet Explorer 6?
The first decade of the 21st century has witnessed monumental advancements in technology. The latter half of this decade has specifically seen incredible improvements to Internet and mobile communications. 2009 is to the Internet what 1969 was to space exploration.
In with the new, out with the old.
As with any technology advances, the old tecnology becomes obsolete and is discarded in favor of the new technology. This is especially relevant to the Internet technological evolution. Most modern Web 2.0 applications are not compatible with obsolete browsers like Internet Explorer 6. Microsoft issued mandatory updates to Internet Explorer 8 to resolve this issue. Many popular Web 2.0 websites such as Gmail, Facebook, and MySpace (among others) require Internet Explorer 6 users to upgrade to a Web 2.0 compatible browser.
The latest update for Internet Explorer 6 is dated June 29 2006. The Internet has changed drastically over the last 4 years. A CSS web style standard has been adopted. Web 2.0 blog applications such as Wordpress are used religously by millions of users worldwide. Mobile Internet devices simplify our lives by providing on-demand access to the Internet. Web 2.0 software modernization is at the core of these advances. And these modernizations are typically made readily available to the public for free, with easy download and simplified, step by step installation instructions.
So web developers are often surprised to still receive requests from web design customers to downgrade their website in order to support the obsolete web browser Internet Explorer 6. The excuses most often come down to two mindsets:
- The client simple does not want to upgrade due to fear or lack of motivation.
- The client has outdated proprietary software that only works with Internet Explorer 6.
The first reason is easily solved. Upgrade to a modern browser.
The second reason is convoluted. The client can’t ugrade their web browser due to the client’s internal proprietary software systems that are dated and thus, not compatible with the newer web browsers. It all comes down to money. The client doesn’t want to spend the money to upgrade or replace their outdated proprietary software. There is nothing wrong with that decision and it is completely understandable. However, this choice has uncompromising circumstances. The client must accept the fact that they will be operating in an obsolete environment. They will not be able to take advantage of the new features and applications that modern day Internet users have become accustomed to.
It’s very simple. The Internet cannot be downgraded in order to support Internet Explorer 6. That is why new software releases are created and why browser updates are free. Keep your software up to date and you won’t have any problems. If you choose to not upgrade due to proprietary software incompatibilites, you must accept the fact that you will not have access to the ever growing landscape of tools and experiences that Web. 20 has to offer.
The ability to import existing blogroll links from one Wordrpess website into another could be a big timesaver. Manually recreating Blogroll links in Wordrpess can be a tiresome task, especially if you have many links. Fortunately, Wordpress has an easy way to automate this task.
First, export the links:
OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is an XML format for outlines. In wordpress, OPML is already created for you. You can access it using the below mentioned URL:
http://yourdomain.com/wp-links-opml.php
You can save this file for storage
Second, export the links:
Import the existing blogroll from the OPML URL or the file you saved to your local system.
1) Login to your Wordpress dashboard.
2) Click on Tools>Import.
3) Select Blogroll.
4) Enter the OPML URL of your blog or select the file from your local system.
5) Click on Import.
The Blogroll links have now imported to the new Wordrpess website
Here is the default Wordpress functions.php:
--------------------
<?php
/**
* @package WordPress
* @subpackage Default_Theme
*/
$content_width = 450;
automatic_feed_links();
if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') ) {
register_sidebar(array(
'before_widget' => '<li id="%1$s">',
'after_widget' => '</li>',
'before_title' => '<h2>',
'after_title' => '</h2>',
));
}
?>
----------------
Here is a customized functions.php:
----------------
<?php
/**
* @package WordPress
* @subpackage Default_Theme
*/
$content_width = 650;
automatic_feed_links();
if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') ) {
register_sidebar(array('name'=>right.'Right',
'description'=>right.' The Right SideBar',
'before_widget' => '<li id="%1$s">',
'after_widget' => '</li>',
'before_title' => '<h2>',
'after_title' => '</h2>',
));
if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') ) {
register_sidebar(array('name'=>left.'Left',
'description'=>left.' The Left SideBar',
'before_widget' => '<li id="%1$s">',
'after_widget' => '</li>',
'before_title' => '<h2>',
'after_title' => '</h2>',
));
}
?>
------------------------
WordPress has been voted “Best CMS of 2009″ in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. WordPress was awarded the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award. This is a landmark, and it marks a shift in the public perception of WordPress, from blog software to full-featured CMS.
Every day thousands of new people are discovering why WordPress is the software of choice for websites, blogs and communities. Unlike other CMS software, Wordpress empowers a website owner without compromising on usability or scalability. New users discover that Wordpress has the easiest CMS administration interface, and authoring a page is similar to writing an email.
The Open Source CMS Awards received over 12,000 nominations and more than 23,000 votes across five categories.
