I love the ease of use and rich feature set of the AddThis social media service. However, due to it’s popularity the design has become overused and mundane. I decided to see if I could customize it to match the overall experience of kevinleary.net.
The results came out pretty nice in my opinion. I may eventually swap out the [ + ] icon in the future, but for now I think it works. I’m always a bit hesitant to re-design consistencies.
Widget Code (trimmed)
Here’s the trimmed down XHTML/JavaScript I’ve used for kevinleary.net:
<!-- AddThis Button BEGIN -->
<a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&pub=kevinlearynet" class="addthis_button_compact"></a>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js?pub=kevinlearynet"></script>
<!-- AddThis Button END -->
Note that kevinlearynet is my AddThis username, so you’ll need to change this if you plan on using this for your website.
I also wanted to remove the “Bookmark & Share” message at the top of the rollover window/tooltip, so I’ve used CSS to hide it. I’ve also used CSS to hide the footer as well.
CSS for the The Rollover Window
body #at15s_head,
body #at16pf
{
display:none;
}That’s it!
I had a great time tonight speaking at the Boston WordPress Meetup. The hour and half presentation covered WordPress SEO and Marketing, along with general SEO best practices. We also talked about web analytic’s and how they can help you measure your business goals on the web.
If you were there, I want to thank you for coming and for all the wonderful feedback. I would also like to thank James for putting this all together. I’m glad I’m able to be a part of it. It was a pleasure meeting everyone, and I look forward to next months’ event.
Resources Related To Tonight’s Presentation
If you have any questions about tonights presentation, or have suggestions for future meetups I would love to hear them.
If your having issues importing a large (more than 20MB) WordPress XML File (WXR) you can fix it by increasing the amount of memory PHP is allowed. Here’s how:
- Open up your wp-config.php file
- Add the following line:
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '96M');The WP_MEMORY_LIMIT option allows you to specify the maximum amount of memory that can be consumed by PHP.
I’ll be presenting at this month’s Boston WordPress Meetup. General topics I plan to discuss include:
- General WordPress Overview
- Get Found: SEO & SEM For WordPress
- Power a website, not just a blog: Using WordPress as a CMS
- Affiliate Marketing and WordPress
For a more in depth outline of what will be presented take a look at the live Google Doc outline.
WordPress is incredibly powerful as a blog platform but can also be used as a CMS (content management system). I’ve often found that because of it’s easy setup it is often overlooked as being inferior to other CMS solutions.
With it’s expandability through the use of plugins WordPress has the ability to be even more powerful than some of the other open source solutions out there. With it’s recent rise in popularity, reputable brands and high end sites have finally begun to embrace WordPress as a CMS. As time goes on I predict the list will only grow.
Reputable Brands
High Quality Websites
High Quality Blogs
If you have anything you would like to add, or have seen WordPress used in new and creative ways please feel free to add to this list.
All in One SEO for WordPress is a powerful plugin that will quickly make your WordPress Websites’ SEO (search engine optimization) rock solid. Here’s how you can begin to setup All in One SEO:
- Download, upload and install the All In One SEO pack.
- Go to Settings > All in One SEO
- Enter your settings
The default settings that come with the installation are pretty solid, but if you want to add some better <title>’s for clarity and a better user experience you can. Click on any of the form labels to get a dropdown of the accepted All in One SEO tags / variables.
For kevinleary.net I’ve used the following settings:
Continue Reading…
One often overlooked, very important step to setting up a WordPress website is creating a solid backup process. Here’s a nice setup I’ve found to be the best for my circumstances. I wanted something that would backup everything, by everything I mean:
- Plugins
- Uploads
- Themes
- All Content (database backup)
Continue Reading…
Browser Testing with Xenocode
One of the toughest things about developing a website on a Mac is cross browser testing. Luckily, a company called Xenocode has released an interesting browser based solution that works better than any other method I have seen.
Check it out here
With Xenocode’s Browser Plugin you can load:
- Internet Explorer 8
- Internet Explorer 7
- Internet Explorer 6
- Firefox 3
- Firefox 2
- Safari
- Google Chrome
- Opera
It requires the installation of a *.exe file, which in my opinion is a little unsettling. Since I’m using VMware to run a copy of Windows XP on my Mac I’m not too worried; I barely use Windows.
So far I have had no problems, and I absolutely love the convenience of it.
WordPress is an amazing platform but sometimes it is on the slow side in terms of speed (or page load time); at list this is the case for kevinleary.net. I’ve decided to experiment with a few plugins to try and improve the speed of the site. These are my findings so far:
Before The Addition of Plugins
- 2.02 seconds of DB queries.
- 10.415 seconds of page load according to YSlow
Continue Reading…
Custom Field Template Result
WordPress is great for dynamically managing the content of a website, but sometimes you encounter situations that require advanced management to handle different sections of a single page. It’s would be great if we could manage separate chunks of content with more than one WYSIWYG. Well guess what, you can, and it’s easier than you may think.
Continue Reading…
I love the ease of use and rich feature set of the AddThis social media service. However, due to it’s popularity the design has become overused and mundane. I decided to see if I could customize it to match the overall experience of kevinleary.net.
