Just wanted to get a quick post up to say Happy New Year to everyone and thank you all for the continuous support. I have been slow to post recently, however, I promise with 2015 that I will make a valiant effort to post at least once a week. I am also going to be making some changes to the blog with a new theme and look for the new year. I will continue to post on topics such as WordPress, Bootstrap, and other technology related topics. So hope everyone had a safe and happy new year and looking forward to what the new year has in store! … [Read more...] about Happy New Year!
WordPress MailChimp Plugin – PressChimp
PressChimp is a WordPress MailChimp plugin unlike any other! With PressChimp you can easily manage every (well almost every) aspect of your MailChimp email marketing lists directly from within the WordPress dashboard. PressChimp allows you to easily add, edit, import, export subscribers. Add groups and segment subscribers based on your needs. Create custom signup forms for use as widgets in the sidebar, posts, pages, and footer. Create campaigns using one of the over 100 included pre-built themes and templates, design your own template, or import a third-party template. Include posts and images directly from your WordPress blog within the campaign. Schedule campaigns to go out with new posts using your template or theme. Set goals and engage your subscribers through built-in conversation management features. When it is all said and done view reports directly from within WordPress on your campaign performance. Compare your own campaigns or against industry averages. If you are using … [Read more...] about WordPress MailChimp Plugin – PressChimp
Implementing Google Adsense with WordPress
Including Google Adsense ads within WordPress used to require actually editing WordPress theme files with the appropriate code to insert the ads where you wanted them. Luckily this didn't last long and quickly many plugins were released to make implementing Google Adsense ads within themes easier. In January this year Google took note and released a WordPress plugin to make implementing Adsense ads within your blog even easier. The Google Publisher Plugin, although still in beta, is a welcome plugin to the WordPress community. I recently decided to give the plugin a test and implemented it on this blog. I have to say aside from a few little issues I have with it, for the most part I really like the plugin. As an added plus the plugin also integrates Google Webmaster Tools into your blog, although I had already done this through the Yoast SEO plugin I had previously installed. It is nice to see that Google is moving in a direction that will make integrating your WordPress blog directly … [Read more...] about Implementing Google Adsense with WordPress
Using schema.org metadata for WordPress SEO
What is schema.org metadata? If you have used Google Webmaster Tools and have explored the various options one that most likely stuck out to you was the Structured Data option in the menu for your blog. If you are lucky you installed a theme that was developed with the proper schema.org metadata tags already in place and used correctly. If this is the case when you click on this option in the Webmaster Tools you will see no errors and Google happily indexing your metadata. However, the more likely case is that you will notice some errors here. This is not to say that the theme developer did a poor job or didn't know what they were doing. Unfortunately many of the themes currently available through the WordPress site do not have the proper metadata tags in place. While having errors or not having the proper tags will not necessarily hurt your search rankings, having them and having them implemented correctly can make a big difference for you, especially if your keywords are highly … [Read more...] about Using schema.org metadata for WordPress SEO
Using the Select2 JQuery Plugin with Bootstrap 3
This is going to be a quick post about integrating the Select2 JQuery plugin with Bootstrap 3. Maybe it's because I have been staring at the same code for over 8 hours now or because I am just an idiot, but I was trying to get Select2 to display properly with Bootstrap 3 and just could not get it right. If you are not familiar with Select2 it is a JQuery replacement for select boxes. It gives you some added functionality and also makes the select boxes a little more user friendly in my opinion. I encourage you to check it out if you are not familiar. You can see some examples and download the plugin here: http://ivaynberg.github.io/select2 Anyway, the default install of Select2 has some issues with displaying properly with Bootstrap 3. After hours of fighting I finally stumbled upon another developer who had built a CSS plugin to fix these display issues. Obviously I am not the only person with this problem, so in case you are having the same problems, you can check out the CSS … [Read more...] about Using the Select2 JQuery Plugin with Bootstrap 3
Using Laravel 4 App Bind to bind classes
When developing large applications one of the most frustrating parts can be keeping track of whether a class is loaded or not and if you have created an instance of that class. With Laravel 4 there is an easy solution to this problem by using binding classes to your app. When you use the Laravel 4 app bind combined with the autoloader you not only don't have to worry about whether the class file was loaded, but you don't have to worry about initializing the class either. You may think this is going to be some long, technical post, but this is probably one of the easiest things to do, however, the Laravel documentation is a bit limited with the exact use so I thought I would take a minute to explain. Let's say your application needs a helper class. You want that helper class to be available throughout your app without having to load the class each time you need it. For purposes of this example, let's call this class Foo and here is our little … [Read more...] about Using Laravel 4 App Bind to bind classes
Comparing Stripe vs Braintree vs Balanced vs Dwolla
Choosing a Payment Processor You have heard the names, Stripe, Braintree, Balanced, and Dwolla, but how do you know which one is best for your e-commerce site? Deciding on an online payment processor can not only be daunting, but choosing the wrong one can greatly impact your business in the long run. Before you even begin to evaluate the various payment processors such as Stripe, Braintree, Balanced, or Dwolla you need to have a clear understanding of what your products are, and who your target customers are and how they are most likely to pay for your products or services. What Are You Selling? The first question to answer is what are your selling? Are you offering a physical product, a service, a hybrid of service/product, or a marketplace for other sellers to list/sell goods and you take a percentage/amount of the sale? Will you need to hold payments in escrow while you wait on the seller or buyer to complete a specific action? Selling a physical product or offering a … [Read more...] about Comparing Stripe vs Braintree vs Balanced vs Dwolla
Responsive Multi level Drop Down Menu Bootstrap 3 – UPDATED
As you are aware support for multi level drop down menu was removed in Bootstrap 3. I previously posted a tutorial and the necessary code to allow you to support multi-level menus in WordPress using Bootstrap. However, in my rush to get the post up, apparently I made a few errors in the code and CSS. Since the changes I made were rather significant I have just uploaded the new files to my Github. You can check it out there: https://github.com/jeffmould/multi-level-bootstrap-menu. To see the menu in action you can go to http://theboot.fenwickmedia.com for a demo. … [Read more...] about Responsive Multi level Drop Down Menu Bootstrap 3 – UPDATED