by Donovan on Feb 06, 2010
Today I discovered WPBeginner, an excellent site devoted to the WordPress beginner.
"Everyone starts out as a beginner. We have created the perfect guide for you so you can maximize the potential of your blog."
A post I found on the site, 21 Most Useful Time Saving WordPress Shortcuts, is especially handy since I'm a firm believer in using the keyboard as much as possible instead of the mouse. For instance, when you are typing your next post, try this command to make a word bold: Alt+SHIFT+b.
I've added WPBeginner to the hand-picked assortment of WordPress specific blogs that flow through Become the Media. Just click on the 'WordPress Blogs' tab and you'll always find the latest posts from the best WordPress focused sites on the net.
by Donovan on Feb 04, 2010
Nokia's User Experience Programme: "Nokia has put together a rich and informative website covering the key elements of user experience. Remarkably helpful, no matter what kind of gadget you're working on."
(Via UsabilityNews)
by Donovan on Feb 03, 2010
A list of five twitter plugins for WordPress. For Become the Media, I use Hootsuite, which automatically polls this site for any posts and then sends a tweet out automatically.
Which Twitter/WordPress plugins do you use?
by Donovan on Jan 31, 2010
Written by Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr, Digging Into WordPress is available as a spiral bound book for $67 or as a downloadable PDF for $27.
The book promises 400 pages of practical information, sample code, maintenance tips, and more. I'm tempted to purchase the PDF and will post a review here on Become the Media if/when I do.
Have you purchased this book? What are your thoughts?
by Donovan on Jan 30, 2010
I'm a fan of the AllTop style of website, whereby rss feeds are aggregated and grouped into categories. For a while, I've wished that I could apply this type of design to Become the Media and now, with the release of the Accumulo theme by Pro Theme Design, I can.
The theme, priced at $59 for a Single License and $149 for a Multi-License easily installs into WordPress and provides you with custom control panel screen. From the control panel, you can easily set up tab names and add your Google Analytics code. You can also configure which tab will represent your WordPress Blog.
Adding feeds to your newly created tabs isn't intuitive at first. I had to dig around the FAQs on the website to figure it out. Basically, you visit the Widgets section of your WordPress Dashboard, drag the 'Accumulo RSS' widget into a 'home tab' sidebar and then add the details such as Blog Title, Website URL, Feed URL, and a link to the site's Favicon. Once you've added one, it's simple to add the others. However, as a paying customer, I would have expected this kind of information to be made available in a readme file that accompanied the theme rather than having to visit the Pro Theme Design site FAQ for the answer. Perhaps there is documentation that accompanied the theme but I can't find it.
The good news is that Pro Theme Design has a forum where you can get support for whichever theme you've purchased. I left a few support questions after purchasing this theme and they were answered in a short period of time. However, one of my questions, 'how do I get an RSS feed for a Google search?' resulted in an answer that hasn't led me to figure out how. I'm still hoping to figure out how to do this. And since one of the examples on the Accumulo theme demo site shows Google searches aggregated onto a page, I once again wish Pro Theme Design would go the extra mile and provide step-by-step directions for their customers on how to make the best use of the theme.
These nit-picks aside, I'm extremely happy with the Accumulo theme. It was well worth the money and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants this style of aggregated website.
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