Open the index.php file for your theme in a HTML editor and look for a line similar to this:

<?php comments_popup_link(’0 Comments’, ’1 Comment’, ‘% Comments ‘); ?>

Change this to:

<?php comments_popup_link(”, ’1 Comment’, ‘% Comments ‘); ?>

You’re just deleting any text that should be displayed when there are no comments so if there are none, then nothing will be shown. Geddit!?

You might need to edit this line in several other template files also such as Archive.php, Category.php, Search.php, Tag.php and anywhere else comment numbers are displayed.

Leon.

After some Google research, I came upon an excellent and mostly free form building site called JotForm.com which presents you with an easy to use WYSIWYG form builder with all the options you could ever need. The most important option I found at the end was that you can generate Facebook specific FBML code that is guaranteed to work in your FBML app tab. Jotform doesn’t stick it’s logos all over your form, in fact, there’s no clue it’s there at all through the whole process. It also redirects any data entered to an email address of your choice.

I tried it and here are the results after very little time messing around:

www.facebook.com/ReverbStudiosDesign?v=app_4949752878

I then got to wondering if it was possible to Email pics to Dropbox and found a few sites/apps that can do it well. This one seemed best – SendToDropbox.com.

So, armed with the above knowledge, here’s what I done:

Contact Form 7

This is one of the most popular FREE form plugins for wordpress and the current version includes the ability to add File Upload fields to a form. As many as you want. I setup a new form with standard questions like Name, Email, etc..and included a few upload file fields with specifications as to File Type, File Size, etc.. I then pasted in the automatically generated email address from SendToDropbox.com in the “To” field. Contact Form 7 also has the option to send the results of the form submission to a second email address and I setup a duplicate of the first email to go to the proper contact email address of the website, minus the file attachments, just so the website admin would get notification of newly uploaded files. Of course, the Dropbox PC software also alerts you straight away when new files are added to your folder. See below for Contact Form 7 settings:

SendToDropBox.com

This is a simple but cool site that connects to your Dropbox account and provides a custom email address that you can send emails and file attachments to. It also has a copule of extra features that process emails received such as: Automatic Unzipping, Email Content Inclusion and control over Dropbox Folder Names/Trees for emailed files, ie – files uploaded in this way can be added to folders named by Date, Email Address, Subject, etc..handy for keeping thigs organised and finding customers uploaded files! See below:

Result

The end result is a normal looking contact form on the customers site that allows basic personal info to be uploaded to Dropbox along with files and photos. The website admin gets instant notification of new files added to his Dropbox account as well as email notifaction of the customer’s details. Nice!

Of course, it can be even simpler. If you just add an email address to the site like Upload@SiteName.com and have that forward on to the custom SendToDropbox email address then people can use the methods they already know for sending emails and attaching files and it will work just as good. I personally think it’s best and more professional to use the form method but perhaps a choice can be given.

Leon.

The trouble with these logos and thumbnails is that while the logo can be 200 x 600, the thumbnail that Facebook auto crops for you can only be 50 x 50 so the chances of the thumbnail not looking exactly as you’d like it are quite high! This thumbnail is all over Facebook if you post a lot so it might be worthwhile making sure it looks decent. You have a small bit of control over the thumbnail content. Once you’ve uploaded your new logo, hover over it and you’ll see a “Change Picture” link. When you click this you’ll see an “Edit Thumbnail” link that allows you to drag and select the best 50 x 50 portion of your logo for use as your thumbnail.

What Johnny pointed out is that if you purposefully design your logo to take the thumnail into account right from the start you can kind of engineer it to look good as a thumbnail. Johnny suggests designing your logo with a 200 x 200 ‘box’ at the top into which you put your main company logo or symbol, which should be smaller than 200 x 200, ie – with white padding around it, possibly about 150 x 150 or 175 x 175. Now when you upload this logo and click “Edit Thumnail”, you should be easily able to select a nice uniform portion for a thumbnail instead of grabbing a bit of text too, etc..

My own logo isn’t really suited to this as it’s not square so this may not work for everyone. Here’s mine and Johnny’s Facebook pages so you can see how we’ve done things:

Facebook.com/ReverbStudiosDesign

Facebook.com/JohnnyBeirneSocialMedia

Essentialy I have 2 main sources of content, this Blog and Twitter. It’s rare that I would post content directly in any other network. From my blog, posts go out to all the other networks and indeed Twitter but I also microblog from Twitter directly. Doing things this way, ie – only creating content in 1 or 2 places max but routing that content to multiple different places, is a fantastic and efficient method of having an active precence on the main social networking sites without the hassle of manually going in and creating content on them all individually.

I find using Dlvr.it a great help in routing my content but it relies on your main source having an RSS feed.

I believe these methods or routes are fairly common for most active networkers right now:

I’ve recently added some detection code to my main (Non WordPress) site that basically looks to see which user agent or mobile phone platform my visitors are using and if it’s a non-iPhone phone then they get redirected to my other site ReverbStudios.Mobi, a site I built specifically to render fast and well on most mobile browsers. If they are not on a phone and at a normal PC or Mac then they just get to see the main site ReverbStudios.ie

As far as building an optimised site for mobiles is concerned, here’s my best advice:

• Have very few, if any, Images and Scripts,
• Make any images you really do need to use smaller than 200px wide max,
• Specify the dimensions of all images used,
• Only include basic content such as an outline of services and contact details,
• Use “Callto:” links on any phone numbers you include so people can click the number to initiate a call,
• Add links to your main site or social networking precences for users with smartphones.

I use the  WP-Touch plugin for my WordPress blog to allow Smartphone users to choose either a normal view of the site or a simplified version. The plugin handles detection and design.

Here’s the code I’ve used on my main, static site to detect people’s browsers, it’s courtesy of Richard Shepherd but with a few changes with help from Justin Knecht.

Mobile Detection.txt

There’s a new breed of spam that escapes filters like Akismet and appears to be a bit more real than traditional spam, ie – no mention of viagra or no funny email or web addresses with foreign lettering. They look and read like a manually created comment by a real person and probably are actually created in this way. Typically they take the form of complimentary comments about your content. Here’s one I got today for example:

“I loved this post. Very informative.”

The commenter added this web address – http://articledominance.com/freereport.html which appears to be a get rich quick offer/site asking for your email address and name, possibly to spam you some more!

My basic, common sense advice when you get comment notifications from your blog is to have a quick look at the commenter’s url/website and see if it looks legit. Also see if the commenter’s text is generic or actually relates specifically to something you’ve said in your post. As another general rule of thumb, if the comment doesn’t contribute anything interesting, related or useful to the discussion on your article then I’d delete it.

Here’s a few things, specifically to do with the commenter’s website that I would delete or mark a comment as spam for:

• Overselling something,
• Get rich quick content,
• Asking for signups/email addresses,
• Advert heavy sites,
• Sites with tons of Google adverts,
• Completely unrelated site.

Leon.

Multitasking/Orientation Lock:

To acces the Multitasking screen just press the Home button twice. This brings up a bar at the bottom of the screen which lists your currently running apps. If you swipe all the way to the left you’ll see some cool new iPod controls and the button for locking the screen in either Portrait or Landscape mode. A very handy feature that will prevent unwanted rotations in bed!

Folders:

To create new folders, simply hold down on any app to enter the edit screen and drag an app on top of another one to create a new folder pair. You can then name this new folder and drag more apps into it.

Digital Zoom:

I know digital zoom is kinda silly and low quality but it might come in handy the odd time. To access the new zoom features, tap just above the Take Snapshot button and you’ll see the zoom slider appear.

Hope this helps.

Leon.

• Make sure your hsoting server is decent/fast.
• Build your site with CSS/DIV’s rather than with Tables.
• Be efficient, tidy and semantic with your HTML and CSS code.
• Validate your code.
• Compress all images as much as possible.
• Avoid Flash/Video/Audio files embedded on the home page.
• Don’t use to0 many unnecessary fancy scripts or widgets just to show off, eg – Facebook, Live Chat, Google Gadgets, etc…
• Merge your external CSS files into one (the less external file calling the better).
• Merge your scripts files into one (as above).
• Place script calls at the footer of your page so they load last – WordPress Plugin.

Compressing via Gzip:

I’ve just done this belatedly for both my main static site and my WordPress blog. To turn on Gzip for a static PHP page for example, I’ve used this code:

<?php if (substr_count($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING'], ‘gzip’)) ob_start(“ob_gzhandler”); else ob_start(); ?>

Your server and the visitors browser both need to support compression for the above command to work. Test whether your site is compressed or not here:

www.gidnetwork.com/tools/gzip-test.php

For my wordpress blog I’ve used the WP HTTP Compression plugin. There are a few excellent Caching plugins for WordPress such as WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache which both handle compression too but I found both of them a bit over the top and they played havoc with my auto publishing to Twitter and Facebook.

Try this website page speed tester to see where you’re at now!

www.iwebtool.com/speed_test

Leon.

To create an ad in Facebook, login and click “Ads & Pages” in the left menu of the home page.

Create an Ad:

Click “Create an Advert” top right and you’re presented with a simple form/wizard to guide you through the process. You will have a choice of creating an ad from scratch or ‘advertising something you already have on Facebook’ like a Business Page. For a new advert you are asked for a Destination URL, Ad Title, Body Text and Image and as you type you see how the ad will look to others on the right hand side.

Design your Ad:

Be creative with your ad text, title and image, after all you need to catch people’s attention! Facebook doesn’t allow too many capitals or symbols so just say something interesting. The Destination URL is important in that it is where ad viewers will end up after clicking your ad. You need to make sure this page relates to what you have said in the advert and is easy to read and navigate with perhaps a large ‘call to action‘ button or link to get people to buy your product/service or just contact you.

Targeting options:

This is where Facebook advertising is really interesting for me. You can set the ad up to only show to Facebook users in a certain country or even city or group of countries/cities. You can also target people by Age, Gender, Relationship Status, Birthday, Language, Likes & Interests, Education level, Facebook Friends, Fans of a Page/Event/Group, etc.. The cool thig is that as you make these selections, Facebook tells you exactly how many people you are targetting based on your choices so you get to see your ad reach as you go!

Spend:

Finally, choose your ad duration and max daily spend to avoid getting an unexpectedly high bill and choose a cost per click that gives you a realistic chance of your ad being pushed to the top and actually seen. You will be asked whether you want to pay for Impressions or Clicks. I’ve never understood why anyone would want to pay just for the ad to be shown when there’s no guarantee people wil actually look at it. Better instead to just pay for actual clicks surely!?

Analytics:

One of the main benefits in using online advertising channels like Facebook over traditional methods like print and other media is that you will have access to detailed statistics on the performance of your ad. Everything from the number of times your ad was shown to how many times it was clicked on to average cost per click and total spend is available so you can evaluate how effective the campaign was.

Just remember to ask inquirers where they heard about you!

Leon.

For WordPress powered sites and blogs there are many great plugins to automatically render a stripped down version of the site but I really wanted my design to be visible. I found out that the iPhone Safari browser automatically resizes elements on a web page including text and background images so to combat this simply add the following to your body tag:

-webkit-background-size: 2000px 1024px; (The exact size of my background image in this case)
-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; (Stops the iPhone from resizing any text on a page)

“webkit” is specific to the Safari browser so adding this code will not mess up anything in other PC based browsers.

You could take this a stage further and try to detect iPhone visitors with the following code and give them an iPhone specific stylesheet and viewport:

This goes in your <head> section:

<!– iPhone Detection –>
<?php
if (ereg(‘iPhone’,$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) {
$iphone = 1;
}
elseif (ereg(‘iPod’,$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) {
$iphone = 1;
}
else {
$iphone = 0;
}
?>

<!– If it’s an iPhone, show the Viewport Meta tag and iPhone CSS –>
<?php if ($iphone == ’1′): ?>
<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=320px” />
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”iphone-style.css” media=”only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)” />

<!– If it’s NOT an iPhone, show the normal CSS and no Viewport Meta tag –>
<?php else: ?>

<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”normal-style.css” media=”screen” />

Leon.

Here’s how to do it:

With a recent version of standalone WordPress and the NextGen Gallery plugin both installed and activated and using a HTML editor like Dreamweaver, try to locate the lines/div’s in your WordPress template’s Header.php file or Stylesheet that control the template’s banner image sizing and position. Inside this div replace the existing image code with the following NextGen php hard code and upload to the server:

<?php echo do_shortcode(‘[Gallery not found]‘); ?>

Replace “Gallery not found” with slideshow id=x where ‘x‘ is the ID of the gallery/slideshow you wish to display.

This gallery should be created beforehand using images that match precisely the dimensions of the template’s existing banner image.

Next, go to the NextGen options in wordpress and specify slideshow dimensions that match the width and height of the template banner image. You can specify other options here such as order, image display time, next/previous controls, etc..

That’s it! Refresh your front end and hopefully you now have a flash banner!

Here’s an example of it working – www.Gaelink.ie

Leon.

I’ve been using Dlvr.it for a while to take my Blog’s RSS feed and articles and distribute them out to other social media sites and they’ve recently introduced the ability to brand their short links with your own custom domain so that instead of people on Twitter seeing a link to your blog post like “dlvr.it/12345″ they will see (in my case) “rvb.ie/12345″ (rvb stands for Reverb Studios!).

All you need to do to set this up and running is purchase a new domain name and add a DNS record pointing to the Dlvr.it site, then login to Dlvr.it and add the new custom short url to your RSS sources. Here’s some simple instructions on how to do it:

http://support.dlvr.it/entries/171525-how-do-i-set-up-a-custom-short-domain

Step 1

Gather the new Registrants details including the following:

• Business name,
• Company Registration Number (or other claim to the domain as per ususal .ie purchase),
• Business contact details.

Send these in a FAX or Email to the IEDR together with a few lines on company stationery belonging to the existing owner stating that they “authorise the cancellation of the domain name for the purpose of having it reassigned to future holder”. The existing owner must sign this document. More info.

Step 2

Presuming the IEDR have approved and changed to the new ownership details, you can then do a WHOIS on the domain in question to find the  new owner’s NIC handle which you can then use to request a password on the IEDR site. The password will be sent to the new owner’s email and can then be used to login and change Nameservers etc..

Step 3

The Biling contact or reseller details will then need to be changed or updated. The IE Reseller should also be listed in the above Whois and can be contacted to change details or setup a new account in the new owner’s name. Alternatively the new owner can now transfer to a new reseller by Faxing a request on company headed paper to the IEDR naming the reseller they wish to transfer to. The IEDR and new reseller will handle the rest but a transfer payment will be required. More info.

Not hard at all!!

Leon.

I vaguely remember using this plugin a few years back just to test but since I’m comfortable editing HTML/PHP files and manually adding Google Analytics code, I didn’t really have a use for it. Now that I was actively looking for an external link tracker plugin and found that this one did it, I was happy.

The plugin once activated in wordpress asks for your “Google Analytics UID” which is easily available next to your account in the Google Analytics dashboard. There are various options in the settings on what to track such as:

• Admin users.
• External Links.
• Downloads.
• Google AdSense.

You can even specify which types of file extensions to track by adding them to a list. This is handy for seeing how many people might rob your images! There’s widgets for adding stats to both the admin dashboard and public sidebar but I had issues authentication with  Google and couldn’t get them to work. Perhaps a hosting issue.

After a few days I checked the Content – Event Tracking section in my Google Analytics account and was happy to see detailed stats on what exact external links people were clicking on and which exact files were being downloaded.

My intended use for this will be to try to monetize the clicks from my site by agreeing click costs with the companies/sites I link to.

Leon.

the most important readers of your Twitter Business posts are the Search Engines

Here’s my own conflicting and simple opinion on the best way to use Twitter:

1. READ other people’s tweets and get excellent and relevant info for free.
2. Return the favor and give your own valuable content to your followers.
3. Interact with people on Twitter and make valuable friends and business connections.
4. Brand your business effectively.

I think the above will guarantee longer lasting benefits to your business than simply hammering twitter for SERPS although this is beneficial too of course! Google has publicly stated that it will be indexing ‘live’ content from social networks even more in the near future. Here’s a recent article from the Google Blog about this:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/relevance-meets-real-time-web.html

What’s your opinion?

In summation so..

The step by step process I personally use is as follows:

1. Choose a Domain Name/Web Address in consultation with the client. Use an Availability checker and Google’s Keyword Tool to help choose.
2. I purchase the Web Address on behalf of the client and setup Website Hosting for them.
3. I install the Website Framework/CMS and plugin the template.
4. Client picks a Design Template upon which to base the look and feel of the site.
5. Client provides text and image content.
6. Client adjustments/suggestions.
7. Site goes live.
8. Client pays (sometimes!).

Simple, Fast and Efficient I think.

Download the WordPress Manual PDF

Get the Free Adobe Reader to view this PDF if you havn’t already.

* Update: The value pasted into the “Mail – From” field and the “Message Body” should be [name] and not [text* name] as outlined in the video.

SEO

Are you sure your site has been properly optimised to do as well as it possibly can in search results. Have you got the right keywords, url and relative content? Here’s some more info on SEO.

Call to Action

You need to decide what the most important part/page of your site is and make sure its easily accessible. That might mean putting a call to action button or link in a prominent place so visitors are left in no doubt about what to do or where to go to enquire or buy your products.

Analytics

You should have some decent system of checking your website stats to see how many visits you are getting, at what times, for how long, what pages viewed, what keywords used, etc.. I use Google Analytics for this. It’s free and fairly comprehensive.

Refferal URL

You should have some kind of form on your site with a question that asks people where they came from or how they found your site. Also, if someone rings, get into the habit of asking them how they found your number.

Internet & Social Media Marketing

Once you’ve done all of the above you need to tell the world about your website and product/service and the best methods of doing that these days are the likes of Blogging, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Online Advertising.

Website ineffectiveness can be caused by ignoring the above but it might also be a reflection on your product or market so don’t rule that out!

Leon.

Personally, I’ve found that if you just update 2 of those, your Blog and Twitter, then the rest can get updated automatically. Here’s how..

If your Blog is WordPress based then get the Twitter Tools plugin or some other good Twitter plugin and set it to post all your Blog articles to Twitter automatically.

Next, go to Linkedin and add the WordPress application and give it your Blog address so it can pull in your posts automatically.

Next go to Facebook and add a Twitter application and give it your Twitter credentials and it too will pull in both your Twitter updates and subsequently your Blog articles.

For both Facebook and Linkedin, if you don’t want all your Blog or Twitter posts coming in but rather a select few then you’ll need to add your Twitter details to Linkedin and prefix (or suffix) your Tweets with #in. For Facebook, you’ll need the SelectiveTwitter application and then prefix Tweets with #fb.

If you’d like to send all your Business Blog posts to both Linkedin and Facebook, but not your sillier Tweets, then you’ll need to do all of the above AND add both the tags #in and #fb to the Tweet Prefix settings in your wordpress Twitter plugin settings.

Hope that’s all clear as mud!

You can use the Twitter site itself to search for Friends to follow. Simply login and type in a keyword related to what you want to know and you’ll get a list of people with the keyword in their name or who have posted a tweet containing your keyword then simply add them as friends. This will allow you endless information gathering possibilities but what’s wise from a business point of view is to search for things like “latest web design news”, “web design tips”, etc.. and you will undoubtedly be returned a pile of people who tweet nothing but all the latest and best news and tips from the web design world!

It might also be wise to search for Tweeters close to your location as its always nice to know whats happening around you. You might even make a friend or business partner! Try www.tweetmondo.com to search for local users.

I’d also like to mention a service for Twitter similar to Google Alerts where you can be alerted via email whenever anyone tweets about you or your business name or any keyword you pre specify. Its at www.TweetBeep.com

The basic rule of thumb or modus operandi for me with all these Social Networking sites is as follows:

1. Register a FREE account (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Friendfeed, MySpace, Bebo, etc are all free to use),
2. Add some relevant profile information and be sure to add a link to your web address somewhere,
3. Find some of your existing friends on the site and connect to them,
4. Find contact in your market area by searching for related keywords and connect to them also,
5. Import dynamic content (Articles, RSS feeds etc..) from your main site or blog to each site using site applications or widgets.

It’s the importing of content from 1 central location (preferably your own site) that makes these things manageable and apart from the initial profile setup on each site and networking you shouldn’t have to visit each site too often.

Within your Facebook, Linkedin, etc.. accounts there should be some section where you can add an application to your profile, so look for any RSS, Twitter or Blogging applications  and add these to your home page. Then, whenever you write an article on your site/blog or Twitter, it goes straight into your social networking profile automatically, saving you some time!

Some of these networking sites can also communicate with each other so check out the settings in each.

Some applications I use and recommend are:

Facebook -”Simply RSS” and “Twitter”

Linkedin – “WordPress”

MySpace – “RSS Reader” and “iTwitter”

Bebo – “Twitter”