Want your own Craigslist.org?
Dec 24th
I’ve just built DublinMarket.net.It’s a spin off of Craigslist.org for local Dublin, GA. I purchased the theme and entire plugins from ClassiPress and I must admit they have quite a remarkable product for sale. Out-of-the box it works very well with only a few issues;
- there’s no warning if users try uploading images above the maximum size
(if images are too big, there’s no warning. your ad simply posts with no images) - if you’re a member you can ‘manage’ your ads, but there’s not an option to add/remove photos once you’ve posted your ad (found a fix for this with some .php editing)
Overall the package works exactly like craigslist with the exception of non-members being able to edit their posts after the fact. You can set the number of days the ads run, charge for posting if you want, and even allow members to create a small profile with a picture and personal info.
As of now DublinMarket.net is using the default style (CSS) but soon I plan to jump into the design world again and create something unique. If you know your way around HTML & CSS you could truly build a masterpiece with Wordpress’ framework behind this script!
Image optimization
Nov 11th
Have you ever gone to a website (your own site maybe?) that has several small thumbnails but they take forever to load? It’s because people insert an image into the paragraph/article and then click the corner to drag it down to size. Wrong method buddy! What you’re doing is taking a huge image (let’s say 750×380px) and dragging it down to a thumbnail size (45×27px). Sure the page will show the thumbnail sized image but it’s loading the entire 750×380px image and eating up your bandwidth!
When you insert an image into an article preview where a thumbnail is needed, you should create a separate thumbnail image apart from the full-size image that will appear in the full article layout. Using photoshp is the easiest way to do this because it does two things, retains the image’s ratio when you resize & maintain excellent image quality. I’m sure you’ve seen those really grainy or pixelated images from people stretching them out or sizing them down way too much.
(Not familiar with image optimization or photoshop? Let us help)
Switching gears
Nov 10th
From the beginning of my website building journey I’ve been interested in design & layout the most. Although I’ve never felt adequate at designing in photoshop exactly what I had in mind I’ve always ended up with satisfactory results. I’ve build sites from scratch for clients, edited the design they already had, and even used templates in more recent cases.
My point is that designing a website from start to finish is a big task and frankly I’m ready to focus on more beneficial elements of a website; such as SEO & worthy content. Some of the worst looking sites I’ve seen had some of the most useful and entertaining content I’ve found on specific topics.
My biggest pet peeve after building a website for a client is to see it sit and rot. It just plain pisses me off really. The design is fresh but the content is weeks or even months old! So I’m switching gears from site design to site maintenance. I will still do some design work as that’s part of updating in a lot of cases but my primary focus will be writing good content, making use of SEO elements, and a few other overlooked yet important aspects.
If your site is sitting still and you’d like to get loyal visitors back, let me help update your site on a daily/weekly basis with your direction. It doesn’t take much change to keep people coming back to see what’s new.