Dave

How to exclude certain pages from the WordPress search.

January 31, 2012 Tutorials

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Over the past few days I’ve been tweaking my website to update the design. Part of the process included adding a site search box, something I haven’t bothered with before. This is nice, but it also presented a problem because some of my pages are for my eyes only. So rather than write a custom [...]

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Twitter killed my blog

January 27, 2012 Blog

twitter-farewell

If you’re a regular visitor to this blog you deserve a medal. Not only isn’t it updated very often, but the content I do update it with is mundane at best. It wasn’t always like this. In the early days of blogging I published tutorials, reviews and general WordPress stuff at least once a week. [...]

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10 real-world applications for WordPress Custom Post Types

December 6, 2011 Wordpress

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The more I look at WordPress sites I’m building now, the more I’m amazed at how they’ve changed from sites I built 2 years ago. Custom Post Types and Custom Taxonomies have changed the way we manage content in WordPress, and they’ve done wonders for our favourite CMS’ ability to work with more complex websites. [...]

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Introducing Theme Store

November 25, 2011 Blog

theme-store

Update (01-01-2012): Clean Elements has been taken out of circulation for the time being so I can re-release it as a premium theme/skin. I’ll let you all know when it’s available again. Thanks for your interest. As WordPress theme frameworks go, Thesis’ SEO and typography are second-to-none, but out of the box it doesn’t look [...]

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Online checkout – in real life

November 2, 2011 Blog

online-checkout

Other than Amazon’s 1-click service, I can’t think of a single ecommerce platform that makes it REALLY easy to buy online. Clearly I’m not the only one.

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Thanks Steve

October 6, 2011 Blog

steve-jobs

Last night Steve Jobs, a real-life Tony Stark, passed away. I’m not naive enough to believe that he was solely responsible for the iMac that pays my bills at the end of the month, or that he hand-built each element of my iPhone. I’d like to think that my iPad was touched by him in [...]

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On dummy menu links

September 21, 2011 Information Architecture

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Since WordPress introduced the drag & drop menu system a few months ago I’ve noticed a major usability issue rearing it’s ugly head. I’d like to point it out so web designers avoid making the same mistakes. The problem occurs when site managers build a dropdown menu, then place a bunch of dummy links in [...]

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Book review – The Referral Engine

July 4, 2011 Blog

This weekend I got stuck into The Referral Engine, John Jantsch’s follow up book to Duct Tape Marketing. I’m always immediately disheartened by books that (correctly) promote offline networking as a referral tool, because I hate networking in the real world. But as John points out: “Get out from behind the computer and go out [...]

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Err, so what’s been going on?

June 7, 2011 Blog

If you’re anything like me, you have clients. Demanding clients with deadlines which are often more important than blog posts. So you skip a post or 2, and before you know it you haven’t blogged for 6 months. Sound familiar? Good, then you’ll accept my apology and we can move on. Here’s what’s been happening [...]

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10 tips to survive the 1st year of freelancing

March 22, 2011 Freelancing

Today marks my 1-year anniversary as a full-time freelancer. In the past 365 days I’ve made some interesting observations about this business. Here are ten I can remember in no particular order: People are strange. Mostly they’re awesome, but occasionally they’re abusive, overly-demanding or just plain dumb. Get used to it. You’re not a successful [...]

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