While working through a code rework on an old site last week, I remembered a few CSS tricks I hadn’t had to use for a while. I thought I’d post a little refresher to share these tips that might help you out of a coding bind.

The child selector:

Let’s say you have an unordered list with an id of ‘nav’ and you only want a certain style on the top level list items. If you try to target them by using #nav li, all of the the list items, even in nested lists in that ul will be targeted. This is the perfect place for a child selector. If you use #nav > li, only the direct children (list items one level down) will be affected. Read the rest of this entry »

Just a short post to let you know that Google has updated their SEO Starter Guide. This guide covers the basics of search engine optimization. The items covered, like page titles, effective content, url structure and image optimization, should be on every web developer’s checklist of basic SEO for each website they launch. The information on backlinks is helpful as well. It’s important that sites linking to yours have related content and are high quality sites, not link farms.

The information on optimizing for your location is also important to remember. Adding a business to Google Places or Yahoo’s local directory will definitely help bring in local business.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the very fun experience of building a social network using BuddyPress. I was pleased to find that it all comes together easily and, with the help of some great plugins and custom code, it’s a very good option for any client who wants to create a niche social network. It’s also a great solution for internal networks – I can see how it would work well for a college, or any organization that wants to have a central meeting place for its members. If you haven’t heard of BuddyPress yet, head on over to BuddyPress.org to check it out.

I thought I’d share some of the plugins I used as well as some tips for creating the best user experience. (All of this assumes a good working knowledge of WordPress.) Read the rest of this entry »