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Chris Garrett

Chris Garrett

Build your business by sharing what you know

Development

Home ยป Development

Tips and advice for programmers and web developers

seo boost

How Changing My WordPress Theme Improved My SEO By 31.7%

Changing my WordPress theme boosted my SEO. By a lot.

Read moreHow Changing My WordPress Theme Improved My SEO By 31.7%

My Search Results were Hacked (How to Detect and Fix it)

Had your Google search result hijacked? Here is how to tell if your website was hacked, and what to do to fix it!

Read moreMy Search Results were Hacked (How to Detect and Fix it)

UsefulTools Critique

UsefulTools is described as … … a web magazine for people who love web tools and apps. There are new and exciting applications being developed all the time. We sift through the abundance of technologies available to you, and help you find the most useful tools. Right away you might be thinking this puts them …

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Search, Segmentation and Silos

Knowing who and what your site is for is key.
As important, is knowing who and what your site is NOT for.
Consider this site, there are lots of things I can and do talk about, but in most cases I try to bring it always back to the main themes of boosting your authority and business via new media.
Pictures of my cat are more likely to appear on my personal site. Photography stuff goes on my …

Read moreSearch, Segmentation and Silos

WordPress Infiltrating Business

WordCamp UK 2008 was an interesting mixture of blogging (as you would expect) and developer conference. It was like two familiar worlds had collided. WordPress as CMS One of the development issues raised was the growing use of WordPress as a platform rather than as a blog. Many people are now looking to WordPress as …

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How to Build a Useful Site

What are visitors arriving at your site for? It’s a question worth asking because if you don’t know, how can you provide it? Search stats will tell you, as will some of the visitors if you ask. In general your readers have followed a scent, a trail that will lead them to their goal. What …

Read moreHow to Build a Useful Site

Selecting a Random Blog Comment From Your WordPress Database

Bloggers like to give and win prizes. It offers some excitement for readers, content and links for the blogger, and if the prize is offered by a third party it gives them some exposure too. Darren does this a lot and to good effect, I do it very occasionally when I have something good to …

Read moreSelecting a Random Blog Comment From Your WordPress Database

What is New Media?

I’m a little embarrassed to tell you that I have been using the phrase “New Media” without ever thinking about the definition very much. You see, “New Media” is one of those things you know when you find it, but when it comes to explaining to someone else we can stumble. Let me try now …

Read moreWhat is New Media?

When Good Plugins Go Bad – Comment Relish Considered Dangerous

Recall I found out about an automatic commenter-thanking plugin I was very excited about? It turns out that Dreamhost, my hosting company, were not quite as thrilled as I was. Hello, Please disable the plugin that is causing this query (otherwise I’ll have to disable your mysql table or user and I really don’t want …

Read moreWhen Good Plugins Go Bad – Comment Relish Considered Dangerous

Do You WWW?

One of the most common issues with blogs that I critique is the WWW/No-WWW issue. That is where you can see the same content with both the WWW. in the URL and without. Doesn’t seem like much of a problem? There is a theory around SEO circles that having content available on both creates problems …

Read moreDo You WWW?

How Many Columns Should a Blog Have?

Adam started a great thread over at the Authority Blogger Forum which I would like to open up over here; How many columns should a blog have, and why? For myself, I switch between 2 and 3 columns. When I have advertising, such as at DSLRBlog, I have a third column to accommodate it. That …

Read moreHow Many Columns Should a Blog Have?

How I put that ebook download link in my feed

Every week I am asked how I put that download link in my RSS feed. Until to now I have had to explain that the solution requires a WordPress plugin that I hard coded. No longer! Damian, my WordPress hacking friend, has kindly released the plugin complete with an options screen. Now anyone can do …

Read moreHow I put that ebook download link in my feed

Converting a Blog From Drupal to WordPress

My friend Damian and I have just been moving DSLRBlog from Drupal 5 to WordPress 2 using instructions from D’Arcy Norman. While Drupal is a fantastic platform, I had problems maintaining it. It was getting me down particularly fighting the torrent of spam being thrown at it. Keeping on top of updates, bug fixes, security …

Read moreConverting a Blog From Drupal to WordPress

Gary King on WordPress Plugin Development

Gary has written a post about his “Group Writing Project” WordPress plugin that should be interesting to anyone involved in WordPress hacking and plugin development. Most interesting is his description of a poorly documented WordPress function, wp_insert_post() that ought to be very useful. The most important thing about the plugin is the wp_insert_post() function that …

Read moreGary King on WordPress Plugin Development

Automatically Link Text In Your Posts Using Blogroll Links – WordPress Plugin

My good friend Damian has just released his first plugin and it’s a corker. It goes by the name WP_LinkIt and I think many bloggers will find it useful … WP_LinkIt as a free simple WordPress plugin to automatically convert text from your posts and pages into links from your blogroll. This makes it easy …

Read moreAutomatically Link Text In Your Posts Using Blogroll Links – WordPress Plugin

My Goof of the Day and a Big Blog Upgrade Tip

I just majorly goofed on my blog. While upgrading a bunch of blogs to WordPress 2.2 I overwrote my theme before checking my backup. It seems my FTP had not managed to transfer my sidebar so when I had a look at my handy work I had the default staring back at me. Don’t do …

Read moreMy Goof of the Day and a Big Blog Upgrade Tip

Four More Essential WordPress Plugins

The buy me a beer plugin is not the only plugin I have been trying out recently. Here are some other WordPress plugins you might want to try out Dagon Design Sitemap Generator – sitemaps are not just useful for visitors but can help your posts get indexed also. This plugin makes creating a sitemap …

Read moreFour More Essential WordPress Plugins

Buy me a beer plugin – a cool twist on the old donate button

You might have noticed under my posts a little cup of coffee icon. I am trying out a plugin for Ankesh called “Buy Me a Beer Plugin” … This WordPress plugin allows your readers to donate money to you via PayPal. The plugin is widget enabled. So the idea is if a reader likes your …

Read moreBuy me a beer plugin – a cool twist on the old donate button

What are Blogs Good For? – Blog as CMS

In my last post I said blogs were an excellent content management system. A couple of people asked me to elaborate. What is a CMS and why are they a good thing? What is a CMS? A CMS (Content Management System) is simply a computer software package that makes it easy to create web pages. …

Read moreWhat are Blogs Good For? – Blog as CMS

Vista, One Windows Too Many?

Mark is asking When Will You Upgrade to Vista? To answer your question Mark, not any time soon. Microsoft hasn’t exactly completely lost me as a customer but neither have they done anything at all that makes me want to upgrade. I will elaborate but first here is what Mark has to say Is there …

Read moreVista, One Windows Too Many?

Jeremy Zawodny Slams Widgets

Jeremy Zawodny has gotten his dislike of JavaScript Badges and Widgets off his chest With all the talk of how the web has “become writable” with advent of blogs and self-publishing tools, you’d think that we’d have a better way of getting third party content on to our sites. Given that an overwhelming number of …

Read moreJeremy Zawodny Slams Widgets

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