I read a ton of useful articles and posts on websites and blogs that have never charged me a thing. That’s simply amazing to think about.

It’s all made possible by placing ads against that awesome content, so I’m never one to complain about websites trying to maximize their potential profits. That said, I do think that thinking critically about potentially outmoded strategies is a good thing. Anyone writing online needs to be aware of the mercurial nature of the market and resist becoming complacent.

Websites use all sorts of pageview-maximizing strategies like dividing posts into multiple parts, adding photo galleries, and enabling comments so that people with nothing to say can proudly display their lack of insight and originality. Folks like Merlin Mann have argued that this stuff hurts user experience. I tend to agree with Mr. Mann.

Now, MSNBC has moved away from its pageview-maximization strategy and instead adopted a strategy that treats users as people, rather than pageview generators.  If MSNBC can prove that its pageviews are much higher quality, it may be able to demand a lot more money per pageview, enough to make up for lowering their totals significantly.

This may mark a paradigm shift in an industry that has long been confused about how to really make money online.  It’ll be an interesting story to follow.

photo credit: trekkyandy

Oftentimes in working with WordPress I find that I don’t want things to be as automatic as they are by default. Or, more precisely, I want things to be automatic in a very custom way to fit a certain theme and design.

An example of this is excerpts, this WordPress function annoyed me for a long time, but Advanced Excerpt by Bas van Doren relieves this pain.

In my case, the pain arose from trying to layout text in a grid-style theme. Some of the blocks were populated with photos, while others were not. I wanted to be able to control the excerpt length so that blocks with photos would feature short post excerpts while those without photos would be filled by a larger excerpt.

By creating an if/else statement in PHP, you can use Advanced Excerpt’s the_advanced_excerpt function to create these two different excerpt lengths.  The code look like this:

<?php echo strip_tags(the_advanced_excerpt('length=20&use_words=1&no_custom=1&ellipsis=%26hellip;&exclude_tags=img,p,strong,font'), '<a><strong>'); ?>

Or, for the longer excerpt:

<?php echo strip_tags(the_advanced_excerpt('length=100&use_words=1&no_custom=1&ellipsis=%26hellip;&exclude_tags=img,p,strong,font'), '<a><strong>'); ?>

By placing these statements within a much larger if/else statement I was able to create two unique types of article teaser.

If you have questions about this plugin or would like help implementing the plugin in your theme, drop a comment below or email us at info@readymadeweb.com.

We believe that the web should be easy and that by embracing open software, open standards, and the world of web-based applications, that the web really can be easy.  Companies like MailChimp, Media Temple, 37Signals, SalesForce, Woo Themes, DIY Themes, and FreshBooks are proving that to be true every day.

That’s why we’ve launched our Products We Love page, to promote companies that fit well with that philosophy.  We’re starting out with a handful of companies mentioned above, but we plan to add more as we gain more experience with other products.

We only want to recommend products we’ve used extensively, so don’t expect this list to grow overnight.  That said, you can trust the products and services we’re recommending now are really the best of the best.

If you have suggestions for products we ought to be looking at, please leave a note in the comments or send an email to info@readymadeweb.com.

Full Disclosure: ReadyMadeWeb has an affiliate relationship with several of the companies we recommend, but we’d recommend them anyway because we use their stuff every day.

photo credit: Design Packaging

Do-it-yourself online stores used to be limited to having a store on Amazon, eBay, or some other service.  It wasn’t really a “store” it was more like having a little kiosk in a behemoth online mall.

Enter Shopify.  This great service lets you build an honest-to-goodness online store customized to your needs complete with your own domain name.  Shopify allows you to easily add and edit items, manage your inventory, process payments, market your products, and track your customer buying patterns.  Shopify also includes cool features like discount codes to track your promotions, full CSS and HTML control, a robust API, and even an option to create simple store blog.

Of course the biggest benefit of Shopify is that you don’t have to build it yourself or pay a designer to do it for you.  You also don’t have to go through the puzzling set steps required to make a truly secure online store.  Shopify handles all the SSL certificates, the hardware security, and the data backup for you.  These are benefits common to most web-based applications, but it’s worth repeating just how awesome it is to have that sort of worry-free design available in an off-the-shelf solution.

Starting at $25 per month with a 2.0% transaction fee, Shopify is a bargain, especially when you consider the monumental price that most developers charge for making e-commerce sites.  For businesses trying to bootstrap their way to success, Shopify is a no-brainer.  But even big companies with deep pockets could save using Shopify as their Premier, unlimited plan runs a low $699 a month, which may be lower than bandwidth charges associated with running some online stores, let alone the development costs.

So, whether you’re a big business or just getting started, check out Shopify and see if it won’t save you money over the traditional route of building your own e-commerce site.

Sidenote: It occurs to me that combined with a service like Fulfillment by Amazon, Shopify could serve as the basis for a nearly hands-free online retail business.  Now if only I had something to sell…

Here’s my presentation on open-source software and the wide world of web-based applications.  Thanks again to everyone at the Heritage Foundation for inviting me to participate in this event, with special thanks to Alex Adrianson, Bridgett Wagner, and Robert Bluey. Also, thanks to my co-panelists David All and Robert Willington.

My portion of the panel discussion starts around 22 minutes into the recording.

photo credit: kevindooley

If you’re interested in accepting online payments, FreshBooks has a great series of posts that exhaustively evaluates the different payment gateway options available to small and large businesses alike.

I should also note that FreshBooks is proving to be a great solutions for estimates, invoicing, and expense tracking at ReadyMadeWeb.  It’s a great platform for interacting with customers if only for the estimate and billing functions alone.  The seamless integration with PayPal, Authorize.net, and bunch of other payment gateways is also a real bonus.

Last summer I transitioned CafeHayek.com from Typepad to WordPress with the help of a great little company called Foliovision.  Their service turns the otherwise difficult process of leaving SixApart’s Typepad into a relatively painless one that runs anywhere from $350 to $1000.  Better yet, they love using Thesis, the spectacular WordPress theme that powers ReadyMadeWeb.

If that relatively modest price is still stretching your budget or if you’re a DIY type, Foliovision has been kind enough to impart their transition and conversion wisdom in the form of some pretty in-depth instructions.

Either way, the expense or effort of moving from Typepad to WordPress is worth it.  WordPress features better image manipulation, control over CSS, and gives you the control to expand your blog in a seemingly infinite variety of ways.

Full Disclosure: Foliovision recently sent me a lovely branded polo shirt all the way from their home office in Bratislava, Slovakia.  However, this only served to remind me of their service—I would gladly endorse sans polo.

photo credit: whiteafrican

Thanks to everyone who sent me suggestions for great tools, tips, and silly miscellany on the net.  Enjoy this week’s links:

• 8 Websites You Need to Stop Building and How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell.
• Artisteer is a WYSIWYG template editor for Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, DotNetNuke, and Blogger.  If you’re not a coder, but want to give designing your own site a try, this might be the right tool for you. (HT Parker Mason)
• Fix My HTML is a great web-based tool that will help to strip out all the gunk from your HTML that wonderfully horrible programs like Microsoft Word can leave behind.  Click on the “Are you a pottymouth?” link to find out the real name of this app.
• The Art And Science Of The Email Signature from Smashing Magazine.

Keep sending along your suggestions to info@readymadeweb.com or drop a comment on this post.

If you’ve been confused about the ever-changing privacy policy (or lack-of-privacy policy) on Facebook, Matt McKeon has a great graphic that explains the changes from 2005 to 2010.

The graphic clearly shows how Facebook users have slowly had all of their information made increasingly public.  The 2010 graphic shows all user data made completely available to users and non-users alike, making what had once been at least semi-private information completely public.

HT: Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution

photo credit: jm3

After some feedback from readers that our Del.icio.us bookmarks weren’t showing up in the main feed, I’ve decided to do semi-regular roundups of links to great little tools, tips, and amusing things around the web:

• Hey, remember the 90s? Turn any site retro using GeoCitiesizer and consider how lucky we are to have WordPress. (HT Dan Rothschild)
• Designing a new layout for the front page of your website? Find out just how much realestate you have to work with by using WhereIsTheFold.com.  The handy tool will give you the cut-off point for screens of all sorts of resolutions. (HT The Dev Show)
• Create boxes with rounded corners using CornerShop, a tool that generates GIFs, CSS, and HTML.
• Microsoft declares “we’re all in” when it comes to the cloud.
• Even though we love DIY Theme’s Thesis, this collection of WordPress theme frameworks from Geekatude.com are awesome alternatives.

Send you suggestions for links to info@readymadeweb.com.