1. The maximum width requirement for fan pages is now 520px.
2. The boxes tag will be removed

How does this effect you, the Facebook user? If you have a page for your business, you will have to make changes to it. During the week of August 23rd, Facebook will automatically be implementing this change. That means that if you have a graphic page layout that is WIDER than the new width of 520 PX it will be truncated or rendered in such a way that it is basically useless.

Take this for example:

I think it's obvious that the owner of this fan page does NOT want it to look like this...

So, let everyone know – Facebook Fan Pages must now be 520PX wide and no wider – at least until Facebook decides to change again…

A new graphic was created for a Facebook Fan Page. (This isn’t the complete graphic, just a snippet until I get feedback from the client)

As you may or may not know, the graphics are created the same but to add the code to Facebook, you must use FBML (that will be another post). So, the graphic is completed – now I’m just waiting on approval!

Today, I had the usual struggle to dive back into work after a week off on the Washington Coast (like to see some pictures, click here). Once I got started, I got quite a bit accomplished.

Long-time client, Beartooth Kawasaki (www.beartoothkawasaki.com) needed the annual product updates done to their various websites. It takes a bit of time but it’s enjoyable because I have been doing it for many years.

Kawasaki Motorcycle website edits

Skills required on this particular job include an understanding and ability to code in PHP, as well as HTML and CSS, image manipulation and attention to detail.

Have a job like this? Contact me today to find out how I can help.

It’s a pretty simple process.

1. Add a line of code to functions.php

add_theme_support('post-thumbnails');

2. Define the size of the thumbnails – you have a couple options. You can hard crop it, which is what I have done in the example below (add ‘true’ to the end of the dimensions), or you can resize the box. Box resizing shrinks an image without distortion until it fits inside the “box” you’ve specified with your dimensions.

set_post_thumbnail_size( 100, 100, true ); // 100 pixels wide by 100 pixels tall, hard crop mode

Together this will look like:

3. Add the code to your template

That’s it! Now when you login to your wp-admin panel scroll down – on the right side under ‘Categories’:

Click on ’set thumbnail’ and you get this box:

Be sure to select ‘Use as thumbnail’ and then ’save’. Then close the window with the X on top right.

Here’s an example of it used on one of my sites:

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

All graphics are custom made by me, Debbi Cunnington of Cimmeron Studios, LLC, with the exception of the vector devil, which was created elsewhere.

I’d love to have your feedback on the new blog design and I hope that your summer is wonderful!

It’s easy.

1. Locate the category ID number by going into the Link manager in Wordpress and hovering over the category name. That should show you the ID. If that doesn’t work, click on the category name and the ID is the number at the end of the URL.

2. Find the code that displays the bookmarks. It should look like this:

<?php wp_list_bookmarks(''); ?>

3. Edit that code to choose the Category ID that you want to display:

<?php wp_list_bookmarks(‘category=766′); ?>

That’s it!

You want to use something a little bit more attractive than the standard ‘SUBMIT’ button – even changing the text to ‘PUSH ME NOW’ isn’t as visually appealing as a nice graphic you’ve made to match the color and theme of your site. We all know graphics help make a website jump from OKAY to STUNNING! So, how do you do it?

It’s simple. Here’s the code:

<input type=”image” name=”cmdSubmit” alt=”Submit Form” src=”/images/submit.png” value=”Submit”>

Simply put that in place of your standard form submit code and you’re ready to go!

I actually had to stop and GOOGLE Google TiSP to see if this was real.   

Sad, I know. The time and creativity that went into creating this idea and the web page that goes with it is amazing, if you stop to think about it. I can practically see the Goog team sitting around laughing and having a good time with this idea.

There was time and love spent on this copy:

Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines.

While I was appreciating the humor in this idea, it occurred to me that humor is something sorely lacking over at that other computer giant…. Microsoft.

Sure, they’ve answered MAC’s cool ads with their own version – and answered the MAC OS with new Windows 7 – but really, that isn’t what I would call real creativity. That’s taking a formula that is proven and tweaking it slightly to make it work for YOU.

I expect a little more from a company before I truly feel like they are working FOR me. Simply putting up a bunch of videos with random people saying that ‘Windows 7 was MY idea’ isn’t enough. Simpler? Faster? How about if it doesn’t prevent my CURRENT applications from running? THAT would be a bonus.

So I guess what I’m saying is this: Big Computer Companies – let’s develop a sense of humor, a bit of fun and try for some creativity. Not EVERYONE can come up with Internet-in-a-Toilet.

<authors note: I have about 100 things to add to this portfolio. If you would like to see my complete portfolio, please visit my website, CimmeronStudios.com>

So, I hit the Wordpress CODEX to dig into the best way to create a page that would display posts based on whatever variable I wanted to add, in this case, the category ID.

To begin, be sure to create a new TEMPLATE for your page. To achieve what we want here, we want to MODIFY the existing LOOP. Now, the LOOP is basically what powers your Wordpress site. Here’s the very basics (taken from Wordpress.org)

The Loop is used by WordPress to display each of your posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each of the posts to be displayed on the current page and formats them according to how they match specified criteria within The Loop tags.

For a very detailed explanation of the LOOP, check out the Wordpress Codex.

So, back to our page. I’m going to run through this in a step by step fashion.

1. Create a new page template. You can do this by taking the existing page.php and saving it as a template, such as template-portfolio.php.  To do that, you will need to remember to place a bit of code at the top of the page so that WP recognizes that it is a template:

2. Locate the following line of code on this new template page:

3. Next, we will alter this part of the code to display only what we WANT to have displayed. We will do that by using a query:

query_posts

There are a TON of variables that we can use at this point, however, I’m going to use just 2 for this example. Category ID and Number of Posts to display.

The Query has to be added before the loop to make this work, so you will insert your Query like so:

The highlighted area (above) shows you where you’ll be adding your information. Basically, the area between the ( and the ‘ ….

('YourInformation=5&YourInformation=1')

That is where you tell the page WHAT to display. In my example, we have:

posts_per_page=5

5 posts will be displayed on this page

Next we have the important one:

cat=19

This means that ALL POSTS from Category ID number 19 will be displayed.

You can change this by using the Category name, as well: category_name

After you change out your Query values, you can upload the template to your server, go to the PAGE and assign it to that TEMPLATE – That’s all there is to it!

Here are a few other items that you may want to use when customizing. REMEMBER: You can string multiple variables together by using the & as long as you keep everything within the (‘ ‘):

tag=

tag_id=

author=

author_name=

That should be enough to get you what you’re after. Any questions? Feel free to send me an email or comment below!