Welcome to the Dot Monster Blog! Here we’ll mostly talk about WordPress and Web Design, however from time to time we’ll throw in some Graphic Design, Photography and random interesting articles.
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Tips For Running a Social Media Campaign
So you're all set up with a little Facebook Page, Twitter account and perhaps even a LinkedIn profile. You might have thought that already you would have had a storm of activity and loads of money in your account with all the customers you brought in. If you have, let us know your secrets. If you haven't, read on... Planning your Social Media Campaign - Before you do anything, draw up some plans about what you want to achieve (goals), how you are going to get people coming to your profiles and what you're going to do to keep them coming back for more. Having a clear set of goals will help you shape up your campaign and more importantly, let you measure and repeat success. Make sure you're on the right Social Networking site - Following on from Planning, you need to make sure that you're on the right social networking websites. Whilst...
read moreWordPress Contact Form 7 Plugin Anti Spam – Quiz
Contact Form 7 is one of the biggest free contact form plugins available to your WordPress website but like anything else it is open to spam emails unless you take some action! Using the Quiz tag inside Contact Form 7 is a quick and easy way to add a spam shield to your contact form. You can see it in action on the Dot Monster Contact Page. To create the Quiz, visit your Dashboard and go to the Contact menu item where you manage your Contact Forms. Create your form as you normally would, but just before the Submit button generate a new tag for a "Quiz". The format for a quiz answers are question|answer. Here's a little look at how you might use this...
read moreImage Resolution for Website Design and Graphic Design
Having images at the right resolution is very important when it comes to sending the files to the printer, be it your own printer or a local firm. Images at the wrong resolution can lead to fuzzy prints or your printing firm just refusing the work. If you're creating anything which might get printed one day you should be aware of the resolution you're working at or you may find yourself or your printing firm having to re-create images down the line which can be not only time consuming but costly. It's a little different when it comes to making images just for a screen, as we'll briefly look into. What is Image Resolution? Resolution is in basic terms, the size of an image. It's the density of dots that make up the image when printing. The bigger resolution, the more detailed it is, the lower the resolution, the less detailed and fuzzy it becomes. DPI (dots per inch) and PPI (pixels per inch) are often used and are much of the same thing...
read moreWordPress Serialized PHP Search and Replace Script
Yesterday I came across a very handy PHP script for migrating WordPress between domains. When doing a search and replace you must use a safe search and replace method that preserves the integrity of the serialized string lengths. If you were just do to a normal search and replace on the database you would run into problems such as losing widget settings. This is because the length of the string changes, but the indexes for the serialized strings doesn't. No problem now though, using this script! Simply visit the interconnect/it website and download the Search Replace DB script then upload it to your server and run it by visiting the URL, http://yourwebsite.com/nameofscript.php. There is instructions on the screen as you run through it. IMPORTANT: This code is supplied with no warranty or support implied. You use it entirely at your own risk...
read moreFighting WordPress Comment Spam
If you allow comments on any blog you'll need to take spam into consideration. WordPress itself actually has a few built in features to help cut down on spam comments however there is also a few great plugins and hacks to make your life even easier such as Akismet which WordPress comes pre-installed with currently. In this article we'll run through identifying spam, WordPress methods of reducing spam, plugins to help reduce spam and a custom function you can add to your theme. Keep in mind however that there is no method of keeping all spammers out automatically, spammers change their methods and even manually add comments to try and bypass your protection. How to Identify WordPress Spam Comments: You would think that identifying spam comments would be easy, and quite often it is. Take a look at this one with the links removed...
read moreWhy using Click Here for links is bad practice
Sometimes you might come across links which simply say "Click here". It's bad practice for many reasons, including the impact on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and accessibility. Back in the old days using "Click here" provided some form of instructions to users. Publishers of web content decided that visitors needed pointers of carrying out basic tasks such as clicking on links. Surely you want to write your content without worrying about users being able to navigate around, after all they got to your page in the first place so it would be a safe assumption to assume they know how links work. Especially when "Click here" implies they are using a mouse to actually click... Why using Click Here is bad: If you print out the page, "Click here" suddenly becomes useless and doesn't look very professional. Search engines use the text in a link to help identify what the link is about...
read moreBackup and Sync Folders with Dropbox and Symbolic Links
Sync Folders With Dropbox as a Simple Backup Solution - A great way to backup your files is to sync folders with Dropbox using symbolic links. Backing up files is important. At any time your hard drive could fail, rendering all your files inaccessible. Without a backup, all your photographs, documents, spreadsheets could be gone! Here we'll go through using Dropbox as a backup solution and how to use Symbolic Links to automatically Sync files with it. What is Dropbox and where do I get it? Here's part of the tour from the Dropbox website: "Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere. This means that any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, phones and even the Dropbox website. Dropbox also makes it super easy to share with others, whether you're a student or professional, parent or grandparent...
read moreRegistering a Domain Name
One of the first steps you will take when creating your own website will be registering a domain name. Every single website out there has one! Just think of it as your websites address. If you want to go to someone's house you need to know their address. If you want to visit someone's website, you need to know their address. Sort of. A common confusion with people who are new to websites is the difference between hosting and domains. Yes, both of these are required to display your website but the hosting is just the place where your files are stored. Hosting, or hosting server contains your websites pages, images, videos, etc. A domain name is registered to you for a contracted amount of time, often one or two years, and is provided by a registrar. You must have both a domain name and hosting for your website to be visible to people. If you don't have a host, when people go to your address...
read moreExclude Categories from RSS Feeds
Today I came across the question, how would I exclude categories from WordPress RSS feeds? The answer is simple, by using a plugin. Like most things in WordPress, the solution lies with a plugin and in this case the Ultimate Category Excluder which is available from the WordPress plugins directory does everything for you. All you need to do is download, install and configure under Settings > Category Exclusion. In here it will give you little tick boxes to allow you to exclude your categories from the Main Page, Feeds and (or) Archives. Press update and off you go! If you would rather not use a plugin for this you could do it by editing your themes functions.php file. By adding in the code in this post you'll exclude categories 1, 2 and 3. Remember be careful when editing files, be sure to make a backup in case something goes wrong!
read moreGoogle Plus One Button
Google today took a step towards more personal search results by introducing the new +1 button. The Google Plus One button, or +1 button, is their answer to the Facebook Like Button! You can create your very own button over at the custom button creation page - see mine in action down the bottom in my footer! Google defines the button as "The +1 button is shorthand for ‘this is pretty cool’ or ‘you should check this out.’ Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1′s can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search." When you click these little +1 buttons you'll get a nice little popup asking you to login if you're not already and give you a couple of settings to confirm your recommendation. You'll only get this popup once, afterwords when you click a +1 button it'll automatically add the website to your recommendations on your Google Profile...
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