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I see that Google have a promotion for AdWords on at the moment for New Zealand customers. It is only for new customers so if you already use AdWords, it’s not for you. But if you’ve being thinking about giving it a try, now’s your chance. You won’t run much of a campaign for $75 [...]
The Problem: Sometimes I find stray p or br tags appearing inside a block of content that I’ve enclosed in shortcodes and this can mess up the layout by adding extra spacing where I don’t want it. It occurs because of the default order in which WordPress processes your content – wpautop (the function which [...]
Flicking through Time Magazine on the plane back to NZ, I came accross an interesting read regarding website hacking. It is astonishing how organised these hacker organisations are, so much so that some of them even offer customer support! Here’s the article: Hack Attack So who would you like to hack today? A bank, a [...]
Sending large files by email can be problematic. Email services have file size limits for emails, so if your attached files are over the limit, your email will not reach the recipient(s). Even if you are within the file limits of both your mail server and the recipients’ mail servers, large attachments can clog email [...]
One of my client’s websites got hacked recently but fortunately he was able to restore the website and tighten up security. He also discovered how the attack happened – his own computer got infected with malware which got access to a file created by the popular FTP client, FileZilla. That file contained his FTP connection [...]
Right now Google is rolling out an new advancement in web search that it calls ‘Google Instant’. The difference between Google Instant and regular search is that as soon as you start typing, the search results appear on the page and with every letter you type those results are updated to reflect what Google predicts [...]
Here are ten useful tips for website owners specifically related to usage of keywords to improve performance in search results.
A new top level domain ‘.co’ is now available internationally. Well actually it’s not new, it’s the top level country code domain of Columbia, but the Columbian domain name authorities have released it to international availability. It became generally available on 20th July 2010. The domain registrars are hyping it up as the next big [...]
Google Insights for Search is an interesting tool that is fun to play with and could give you some useful nuggets of information that you can use to your advantage. You can use it to see what search terms are most popular and to see how search terms trend over time. For example if you [...]
I was recently having a beer and a chat with a fellow Nelson web developer and discovered that we shared the same favourite content management system. That got us on to talking about what CMSs the other local web design companies here in Nelson build their websites on. My mate told me of a job [...]
The idea behind mind maps is that you start with a central concept, write it down in the middle of a page, then add nodes as you think of different ideas around that concept. You can further develop any of the ideas by branching out more nodes from these ideas and so on. On paper [...]
Finally, after a long wait of about 3 weeks, Bing indexed the page I created for my regional search experiment. And, as I anticipated, the page shows up in the regional search results for Ireland (with ‘Only from Ireland’ selected). This despite the fact that it’s a New Zealand top level domain and the server [...]
Following up on my recent series of posts regarding my findings about Bing regional search results, this website is finally indexed in the regional search results for New Zealand and performing quite well in the search results for target keywords – e.g. it is listed fourth for the term “web design nelson” (and the first 2 [...]
Following on from my previous post, I’ve posted my findings regarding Bing’s regional failings on the Bing webmaster forum, which happens to be full of similar reports. I got a response back from Brett Yount, Program Manager, Bing Webmaster Center, which seems to acknowledge that Bing has some problems when it comes to regional indexing: [...]
Yahoo and Microsoft announced a 10 year partnership on 29th July where Yahoo Search will be powered by Microsoft’s new Bing search engine. The agreement is currently in front of regulators and could take two years finalise. The move looks to be one solid step towards a merger after the failed attempt in 2008. Google [...]
I have made available another plugin for WordPress. It is a plugin that adds a template tag for creating a navigation menu from links added to the core WordPress links management facility. For more information about this plugin visit the EZY Nav Menu plugin page on this site or see the WordPress Plugin Directory.
I have made a WordPress plugin for displaying quotes, testimonials or other text snippets on a WordPress website/blog available for download on this website. In the past I have modified many plugins for my own purposes, but this is my first foray into releasing a WordPress plugin for public consumption. I had been looking for [...]
Ok, so you’ve got some video on a DVD that you want to put on your web site – should be easy enough to do you would imagine, right? Well it can be easy if you know what tools to use but if you’re trying to search on Google to find out what you need [...]
If you are setting up an e-commerce web site (shopping cart, online store, online shop), one of the decisions you will have to make is what system you are going to use for collecting payment. Payment can be handled off-line (by bank deposit, cheque, etc.) or automatically at the time of purchase by real-time credit [...]
A content management system (abbreviated CMS) allows non-technical people to update and manage a web site without requiring technical knowledge. At Stellar Web Works we specialise in building web sites on content management systems. We have worked with a number of different content management systems and have come to favour using the popular WordPress platform [...]