Freshening up my WordPress blog recently I noticed that my Twitter feed widget wasn’t showing the Tweets. After only a little searching I found Elisha Terada’s blog that provided the perfect solution, descriptively entitled “How to fix your broken Twitter stream widget on WordPress”.
Simple and easy instructions. Thanks Elisha!
We’ve had a couple of Drupal sites recenlty where editors have not been able to access the edit tab for a page/node.
There seems to be a few reason why this might be the case.
For me it turned out to be that the user’s role did not have permission to use an input format set within the page.
The Magento 1.4 update provides an effective way of modifying themes that keeps changes separate from the default files through the use of the layout.xml. This allows for layout changes to be kept in one location. For a full explanation of this see ‘The better way to modify Magento layout“.
Classy Llama’s article provided the answer on how to move the newsletter signup from its position in the left column (within the blank theme) to the footer. Continue reading “How to move the newsletter subscription block to the footer in Magento 1.4”
The standard Google Analytics code contains auto-detection for HTTP/HTTPS. Unfortunately Adobe contribute enforces a level of XHTML compliance that exceeds the level built into the Analytics code causing corruption of the HTML, leaving “)); at the bottom of a page after it has been edited.
The solution to this is to remove the auto-detection and document.write. Read the Analytics Help Forum Archive for more details.
Talking about outdated browsers I’ve been working on a Magento project over the past few months and facing serious styling issues with my clients browser set up.
BT Yahoo!’s browser is custom Internet Explorer based on an outdated version of IE. However the browser reports itself as the most updated version of IE on the system. This means that the browser could be reporting itself as IE8 and in doing so misses any code served specifically to the older software.
What made the problem worse was the inability for us to recreate the situation here as the older version of BT Yahoo!’s browser is no longer available. The only solution to this was to have the client post us the setup disc for installation on a VM.
With this in place we could identify the display issues and with a little help from Firebug and an IE5 – IE7 mindset, we were able to fix the issues.
I’ve not been able to locate usage statistics on BT Yahoo!’s browser, which is a shame as I’m quite interested to know. If the core of this software is based on an outdated IE then this is a serious security issue here – there is a reason the older browsers are replaced over time. The BT Yahoo! browser itself will not work with the latest banking software.
If the response from this browser is that it is IE 7+ then Google’s drop of support message won’t get through. That really is a shame as the power of Google could really help get the message across to all users to keep their software up-to-date.
Happiness is a web developer reading that Google is dropping support for IE6.
That is me this afternoon as I received the news from Google that they will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.
Google will start with their Docs suite and move on to Google Main and Google Calendar. By showing Apps users the message that they should upgrade their browser the number of users on outdated software should certainly fall.
In my opinion, this can only be a good thing; for internet users, for website owners, for web designer/developers, for all.
There didn’t seem to be much online to show how to add VAT to Magento sites trading in the United Kindgom so after a little trial and error I’ve identified the actions required.
This month Matt Cutts talked about how Google doesn’t use the keyword meta tag in web search.
After watching this video someone came to me and was quite surprised “Did you know that google doesn’t use the meta tag in its search algorithm?”
Well… Yes, I did know. This is not latest news. Google haven’t used key terms for a while.
But that doesn’t mean that they are not useful and that identifying them is not a key stage in your website design and SEO. I work with my clients to get a good understanding of their potential visitors through a few techniques that include identifying how they think and what they will query when they sit in front of a search engine.
These terms are then used within copy and the code. These will also make up a basis for AdWord terms.
So just because Google isn’t using the keyword meta tag, don’t dismiss the process of identifying your key terms.
Not sure about how to put Google Analytics into a Drupal installation? Go take a look at Brian Stevenson’s videos on installing the Google-Analytics module. They’re Awesome!
Installing & Configuring the Google Analytics Module for Drupal 6.x
Configuring User Segmentation in the Google Analytics Module for Drupal 6.x
Advanced Tracking in the Google Analytics Module for Drupal 6.x
Advanced JavaScript Tweaks in the Google Analytics Module for Drupal 6.x
The Drupal module for Google Analytics can be found at http://drupal.org/project/google_analytics