Here are the step-by-step instructions to embed a YouTube video in WordPress.

1. Find the video on YouTube that you want to embed into your page or post in WordPress. For this demonstration, I’m going to use a video of Danny Macaskill doing amazing things on a bicycle.
2. Click the “Embed” button below the video in YouTube and copy the link to the video that appears. The URL will look something like this “http://youtu.be/XXXXXXXX”. The “X’s” will be the ID of the video.
3. In your WordPress post or page, paste the URL on it’s own line and don’t make it clickable (hyperlinked). Like these three lines below:

http://youtu.be/XXXXXXXX

It’s just that easy. You don’t need to grab the full embed code from YouTube or anything else. WordPress takes care of all of that for you. Just to show you, I’ve pasted an embed URL below from YouTube of Danny Macaskill and the crazy stunts he can do on a bike. You should be able to play the video right here on the website.

As you can see that worked!

If you are looking to have a site designed in WordPress or need help maintaining your WordPress website, our Vancouver web design company can help you. Contact Hurricane Web Design and we’ll be happy to help

Here are a few of the features:

• Visual CSS editing with a web kit browser
• All of the features of CSS Edit
• Have both the coding and live browser open at the same time
• No more bouncing between CSS Edit and Coda
• Great interface for coding
• Drag-and-drop FTP upload
• Immediate saving and uploading to the server (This can be dangerous)
• Code snippets

Since it’s still in beta, I’m hoping they fix some of the bugs I’ve run across

• While viewing the server files in column view, when you click on a directory to open it in a new column it doesn’t open the first time
• I want to be able to have the option of closing the file info in the right side of the code window
• Some application instability

I’m sure MacRabbit will fix the major bugs before the full release. From what I’ve seen so far, I will be buying Espresso 2 for our Vancouver web design company when it’s ready for final release.

Here are the 20 most expensive Google AdWords cost-per-click keywords and the top CPC paid for each and the percentage of Google’s total ad revenue from each courtesy of Wordstream:

1. Insurance – $54.91 / 24%
   (examples: “auto insurance price quotes”, “ca automobile insurance”)
2. Loans – $44.28 / 12.8%
   (example keyword: “consolidate graduate student loans”, “fixed home equity home rates”)
3. Mortgage – $47.12 / 9%
4. Attorney – $47.07 / 3.6%
5. Credit – $36.06 / 3.2%
6. Lawyer – $42.51 / 3%
7. Donate – $42.02 / 2.5%
8. Degree – $40.61 / 2.2%
9. Hosting – $31.91 / 2.2%
10. Claim – $45.51 / 1.4%
11.  Conference Call – $42.05 / .9%
12. Trading – $33.19 / .8%
13. Software – $35.29 / .8%
14. Recovery – $42.03 / .7%
15. Transfer – $29.86 / .6%
16. Gas/Electricity – $54.62 / .6%
17. Classes – $35.04 / .5%
18. Rehab – $33.59 / .5%
19. Treatment – $37.18 / .4%
20. Cord Blood – $27.80 / .2%

If you need help with your internet marketing and cost-per-click advertising or if you would like to rank higher in organic search so you don’t have to use as much cost-per-click advertising, contact our Vancouver web design company and we can help you with SEO (Search engine optimization) for your web site.

After getting fed up of Dreamweaver, I switched to TextMate for coding and CSS and Transmit for FTP. I liked how TextMate was clean and would get out of my way to just let me code my web design. It would integrate with Transmit for FTP somewhat, but not nearly enough. Working with CSS was adequate at best. You would add or change CSS, then refresh in a standards compliant browser like Firefox or Safari (this was before Chrome) to see if what you did looked good or even worked.

CSSEdit makes the CSS portion of web design easier

Then roughly three years ago I discovered CSSEdit by MacRabbit. CSSEdit allows you to edit the CSS for a web design and give you a live preview of the changes you had just made within the application in a built-in standards compliant browser without ever having to save and refresh. You could view a website – any website, even one you didn’t own – in the browser, extract the style sheet and make changes or additions without affecting the version everyone else would see. Once you got it looking the way you wanted, you’d upload the CSS to the website. This saved me countless hours designing and editing the CSS for websites. But, this still was not the complete package as I needed an application to markup the HTML or PHP and another for FTP to upload. Three applications to accomplish what I needed for web design.

Coda plus CSSEdit almost perfect for web design

Within the last year I switched to Coda for the markup and FTP portion of my web design and development projects. Coda is a nice piece of software and was the best application I had used for markup. The interface is clean, includes code snippets, allows you to manage multiple files at once and organizing all of your web projects so you can access them in one window. The FTP portion of the application works great and makes uploading, downloading and synching between the server and your computer easy. It is almost perfect. Almost. Editing CSS was still much better in CSSEdit compared to Coda. Now I was down to two applications.

CSSEdit goes Kaboom

I was briefly horrified to hear that MacRabbit was discontinuing CSSEdit until I heard they were integrating with version 2 of their markup and FTP application Espresso Kaboom. Could I finally have one application to do everything I want? Find out my review of Espresso 2 Kaboom beta for web design and development in my next post.

The WordPress powered website allows Palco Supply to easily add items to their website through their web browser which allows them to keep their clients informed of their inventory of Material Handling Equipment. The website organizes their equipment into the categories of equipment they offer and sizes product photos for thumbnail previews along with larger versions in the individual equipment pages.

Our Vancouver web design studio created an industrial look for their website to match the business they are in. The color scheme chosen for the web design was based upon the Palco Supply brand colours.

Web Design Features:

• Custom Website Design
• Website developed in the WordPress Content Management System
• Custom post types for equipment
• Contact form call to action on every page
• Home page slideshow

We can create a great looking WordPress powered website for you. Contact Hurricane Web Design in Vancouver and we’d be happy to help you with your website.

Check out the full details of our WordPress web design packages, then give us a call at 604-477-1996 or email us for more info.

Amy Winehouse died today (July 23, 2011) for reasons yet to be disclosed but we can all guess as to why. She joins a tragically large list of other musicians who have died at the age of 27 and are said to have joined the “27 Club“.

Here’s a list of the more famous musicians who have died at 27:

• Jim Morrison – lead singer and songwriter for The Doors
• Jimi Hendrix – legendary guitarist and songwriter
• Brian Jones – founding member of the Rolling Stones
• Janis Joplin – Female singer with a number of hits in the late 60s
• Kurt Cobain – founding member, lead singer and songwriter for grunge band Nirvana
• Amy Winehouse – Grammy award winning singer and songwriter

A number of these musicians have died of mysterious causes leading to conspiracy theories. Regardless of what anyone believes caused theses deaths, the amount of deaths at 27 years old by musicians is a statistical phenomenon.

Our Vancouver team created a WordPress powered website to allow Amix to update their site through the powerful content management system. We came up with a rugged and industrial design to match the theme of their business.

Web Design Features:

• Custom Website Design
• Website developed in the WordPress Content Management System
• Photo and Video Galleries

Have our experts create a website with a fantastic design within the WordPress content management system. Call Hurricane Web Design in Vancouver today!

Ready? Here goes:

Is it -

• password
• 123456
• qwerty
• abc123
• letmein
• monkey
• password1
• (your first name)

Did I shock some of you?

In reality, I hope that for most of you I didn’t guess correctly. But statistics say that over 90% of people reading this article will use a weak password somewhere at sometime, many of which are in my list.

And hackers are betting on it.

Let me be frank with you. You want to be safe online, don’t you? You might think that because you are just the average person going about your business, that because you aren’t employed by a big corporation or government agency, you aren’t a target. Not so. No matter who you are, hackers want a piece of you.

What’s a bad password?

The worst possible password you can have is a short dictionary word, meaning a word that can be found in the dictionary. For example, let’s use “orange” as our password, without the quotes – just plain orange. A hacker will use a dictionary attack to find your password, trying every word in the dictionary until he gets your password. You may think that this will take him or her quite a while. How many words are before orange in the dictionary? What you must keep in mind is that the hacker won’t be doing the dictionary search, his computer will. And it’ll run through the dictionary in a matter of seconds.

Gibson Research Corporation (GRC) has put together a fantastic web page that shows the length of time it would take a hacker to find a password. Using the best scenario possible, they suggest that a hacker could get our password “orange” in 0.00000321 seconds.

What’s a good password?

I’ll give you a password that is virtually unbreakable:

02=ot5F%WhJV|Kyc9qZn7S{maxE#Gs8zgrDP,A*_34Cb16`lU

Seriously. Try hacking into that one. GRC says it would take 26.03 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion centuries to guess it. The problem with it? You’ll probably never use it because you can’t type it without going cross-eyed, never mind remember it.

For the average user, a great password will contain:

• One upper case letter
• One lower case letter
• One number
• One punctuation mark or symbol
• And the longer it is, the better

Let’s start by making our password longer. How do we do that?

1. We select another random word to go with it. Let’s use “doctor”. Now our password is orangedoctor, and already we have made a big leap forward – it would take 16.54 minutes to figure that one out.
2. Make one letter upper case. We’ll go beyond that and make it two upper-case letters: OrangeDoctor. We’re now at 1.52 months to hack.
3. Add in a number, and keep it in the middle for even more protection: Orange4Doctor. Time required to solve? 64.65 years.
4. A simple punctuation mark, like a comma: Orange4,Doctor

It would take a hacker 15.67 thousand centuries to crack that password.

You’re done! You have a password that you can remember, you can type relatively quickly, and one that is infinitely safer than “orange”. You’ve made the hacker’s job much more difficult by creating a password that is exponentially more complex than monkey, your first name, or the first name of your child, or the name of the street you grew up on.

Try it – create your own, change your Facebook or email password to it, and see if you sleep a little bit better tonight.

James Blackburn is the owner of The Techno Dorks! An Edmonton computer repair company

Bridge Mechanical’s new website is powered by WordPress using HTML 5 to allow them to update their site. They also wanted the new web design to feature photo galleries of current and recently completed projects.

New Web Design Features:

• Custom Web Design
• Website designed and developed for the WordPress Content Management System
• Contact form
• Easily updatable photo galleries
• Home page slideshow

Stylish and functional web design

Bridge Mechanical’s website has an online contact form that gives their current and potential clients located anywhere in the Vancouver area the opportunity to quickly send an email to their Abbotsford based office.

Contact Hurricane Web Design in Vancouver to have a new website created or have your current site redesigned. Our Maple Ridge based office allows us to serve clients needing a web design anywhere in the Fraser Valley and Lower Mainland including Abbotsford, Mission and Chilliwack.