Nowadays, I still hate Mac computers, but I love my iPhone. I remember how we used to get DOA iMacs when I worked for my college’s IT department, and how slow the Apple was at John Hall Design where I had my internship (and first design job).

So, we’ve had a rocky relationship. I’ve mentioned before that I love my iPhone, and those iPad things are pretty neat, but I also love my desktop PC at home that I built from scratch, and can upgrade at any point.

I’m in somewhat of a minority though. As Tim Cook (the new CEO of Apple) pointed out in his presentation the other day, Apple is gaining a ton of ground in the marketshare of all of their products. Apple is almost cult-like, and many people enjoy their products and run out to buy the new ones (though we’ll see about this 4s business).

All that said, Steve Jobs was probably one of the most influential technical CEOs of all time. He personified the American Dream, and it’s crazy when you realize how young he was to have accomplished so much.

I wonder what Apple would have created had Steve not been sick.

RIP Mr. Jobs.

Here’s a site I’ll be definetely referencing anytime I need something wacky for my WordPress templates: WPRoots.

Newly launched, and already with some fun looking tutorials, I would bookmark it and/or subscribe to their RSS feed for the latest in WordPress design and development tutorials.

The title of this post is EXACTLY what I’m about to teach you.

Per this post about alt text for Gravatars, I use Page Grader in HubSpot, and it yells at me for things, such as no META descriptions or keywords. I’m working through my blog posts one by one to update them, but I was never able to add these fields for the auto-generated tag or category pages. Until now.

Thanks to a handy Google search, I came across this site, which has the code snippets nessesary to auto-generate META information. I did change one thing in the code, and that was to display 10 keywords per page instead of 20.

The following code should go in header.php in your WordPress theme.

META Descriptions:

<meta name=”description” content=”

<?php if (have_posts() && is_single() OR is_page()):while(have_posts()):the_post();

$out_excerpt = str_replace(array(“\r\n”, “\r”, “\n”), “”, get_the_excerpt());

echo apply_filters(‘the_excerpt_rss’, $out_excerpt);

endwhile;

elseif(is_category() OR is_tag()):

if(is_category()):

echo “Posts related to Category:

“.ucfirst(single_cat_title(“”, FALSE));

elseif(is_tag()):

echo “Posts related to Tag:

“.ucfirst(single_tag_title(“”, FALSE));

endif;

else: ?>

ADD HERE YOUR DEFAULT DESCRIPTION

<?php endif; ?>” />

META Keywords:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”

<?php

$tags = get_tags(array(‘orderby’ => ‘count’, ‘order’ => ‘DESC’));

$xt = 1;

foreach ($tags as $tag) {

if ($xt <= 10) {

echo $tag->name.”, “;

}

$xt++;

}

?>ADD, HERE, YOUR, STATIC, KEYWORDS” />

Once you add the code, your WordPress category and tag pages will now be optimized for SEO!

* Note that I use All-in-One SEO plugin, which does not currently auto-generate this information for me

Thanks for reading this article, if you have questions, comments or concerns, we'd love to hear them, so comment below!

And as always, make sure you're following us on Twitter and Facebook!

Are you having issues joining GoToMeeting session while using a Mac? I bet you aren’t trying to join the meeting while using Firefox. I’ve come across this issue a few times today, and I thought I’d pass along the trick to getting it working.

USE FIREFOX!

There’s a handy warning on GoToMeeting’s support page letting you know there’s an issue with Mac computers running Leopard and anything else but Firefox.

Check it out here: http://support.citrixonline.com/GoToMeeting/help_files/GTM140001?title=Having+difficulty+joining+a+Meeting%3F

I recently switched @redd-design.com from forwarding to a Gmail account to actually being on Google Apps. Since then I’ve been fighting with Gmail to transfer everything over, since I’ve used my regular account for years.

I’ve moved over all my mail (that took a few days) and all my contacts, but I’m still working on calendar events. I’ve since found a way to swap between accounts pretty easily.

1. Enabling multiple accounts

   To enable multiple sign-ins, you have to allow this in all your Google mail accounts. This can be done by going to Account Settings> Multiple Sign-in. Click Edit, enable it, and move on to the next account.

2. Sign out of all accounts

   You’ll need to sign out of all accounts in order to properly configure everything.

3. Sign-in to the account you want as default

   The first accounts you sign into will be the default one, so if you open Google Docs in a new browser, it’ll open the default one.

4. Sign-in to the rest of your accounts

5. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading this article, if you have questions, comments or concerns, we'd love to hear them, so comment below!

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1. usually start with a basic idea, which i write in the title bar
2. then write a sentence or two, or a list of things to cover
3. then go into writing a few sentences about each idea
4. break each major section up and add H3 headers
5. add the call-to-action blog footer (links to twitter and facebook)
6. write up an excerpt and use that for meta description as well (I use the all-in-one SEO plugin for WordPress)
7. add a few keywords to meta keywords
8. give the post a category or two, as well as post tags
9. add in the header image, and make that the featured image
10. if nessesary, add a few images into the body of the post
11. make sure “Use Excerpt for publishing to Networks” is checked (this is for the plugin called Network Publisher)
12. save the draft and read it over
13. Publish and enjoy!

Once a post is published, it auto updates Twitter and my Facebook page, thanks to Network Publisher. I also post it to Linkedin and my personal Twitter account.

Thanks for reading this article, if you have questions, comments or concerns, we'd love to hear them, so comment below!

And as always, make sure you're following us on Twitter and Facebook!

Introduction

I first met Bill, the owner, when I walked into the shop (as I was looking for a new shop to go to) and he immediately offered me some grub. I thought that was pretty unconventional, and we didn’t even talk about bikes until ten minutes into the conversation. After chatting with the other folks there, and seeing the passion they all had for the sport, I was hooked.

When I went home to check out their website, however, it was just a bit sad. Their site was a jumble of pages, without a true workflow, without the real ability to interact and with a lot of old content. So, I made it a personal mission to make the site better, and to complete a website redesign. After practically living at the shop for a few months, I ended up redesigning his site and coding it while hanging out during an indoor ride.

Before

Here’s the homepage before the redesign:

The design was a bit rough, to put it politely. There wasn’t a sense at all about how to navigate between pages, and pages were labeled the same things but were completely different. There was also a lack of info, and the site had not been updated in awhile.

After

Here’s what the site currently looks like:

I’m pretty happy with the new design. It gives the guys more opportunities to display the bikes, as well as the culture at the shop. There’s now an events section where the upcoming events are displayed (and old ones automatically archived).

The Results

The end result for the site is that it’s now built in WordPress, which makes it extremely easy for the guys at the shop to use. It also allows me to keep their site up-to-date, and provide us more options in the future. One thing we’re really looking to add is videos and more interactivity. Google Analytics tells us there’s now more traffic to the site than before, and Bill’s noticed the traffic into his store increasing.

Thanks for reading this article, if you have questions, comments or concerns, we'd love to hear them, so comment below!

And as always, make sure you're following us on Twitter and Facebook!

After digging through email I started browsing my usual haunts, then it hit me. I lost a friend on Sunday.

I had met Ryan once in real life at the 2010 Livestrong Philly Challenge. He was a fellow Team Fatty member, an avid Twitter user, and a genuine nice guy. We’ve talked quite a bit online about random stuff, from our mutual dislike of running to his apparent love of Apple products.

Ryan had been hiking with friends in Hawaii, when he was separated from the rest and apparently fell on the mountain. Rescuers found him later on, but it was too late. The circumstances surrounding this is what hits me the most. He was out doing what he loved to do; he was working to get in shape and show diabetes who was boss; he was living a normal life, which included dealing with cancer in his family.

I’d be lying if I said I was a close friend, but I’m not lying when I say it hit me hard when I realized I wouldn’t get to know him as well as others did.

If you haven’t noticed, this isn’t a post about graphic design or running a business, this is simply a post about putting things into perspective.

I’ll be riding for your mom, Ryan. Aloha.