(Anti) Social Development

I don’t make New Years resolutions but sometimes I do like to look back on the previous year.

So, I decided to actually take a look at my stats in Google Analytics to find out what the 5 most visted articles were on my site in 2010. These are the top 5 articles by pageviews.

I was a little surprised by the results, except for the first one, and that all 5 articles are on the same topic.

All 5 of my top articles were about Facebook. There is a message to me in this - I just need to determine what the exact message is and my best course of action to take with this information. ;-)

And, because Facebook changes basic settings so frequently, a couple of these popular articles are outdated. I’ve said it so many times - if you are going to write about Facebook, it’s best to write in pencil.

Top 5 of 2010

1. How to Add a Custom Tab to a Facebook Fan Page - I knew this was the most popular article by far. The content contained in this article is still valid because it’s about adding the Static FBML application to your page. The only thing that isn’t accurate is the Add as Box setting - Facebook no longer users Boxes for applications.
2. How to Create a Custom Facebook Fan Page- Unfortunately, the 2nd most viewed article is no longer pertinent. It discusses using boxes to make a custom tab. Boxes were removed as Facebook applications a couple of months ago.
3. Updated: How to Unhide a Facebook Application or Page - These instructions are mostly correct except Facebook has changed the names of Live Feed and News Feed to Top News and Most Recent. The article is accurate if Top News is used in place of Live Feed. This is an update to the previous instructions, which really shows how often Facebook changes things that really don’t need to be changed.
4. FBML – How to Add a Share Button to Your Facebook Fan Page - Yay! An article that still has accurate instructions. This is also the only article written in 2010 that was one of the most popular in 2010. I think this is another issue I need to take into consideration for 2011.
5. How to Link to Your Facebook Fan Page from Your Profile Page - Another popular, yet obsolete article. When Facebook removed the Box applications, like Custom Profile Box, we lost the ability to create a custom link. It is, however, possible to link to your fan page from the new profile page by making your page your current employer.

So I’ve got some thinking to do and some work ahead of me. My 5 most popular articles in 2010 were all about Facebook, 2 of them no longer contain accurate information due to Facebook changes, and only one of the five was written in 2010. I guess I need to stop gliding along on the glories of past achievements. ;-)
photo credit: chrisny2

Original Article

It seems like every time Facebook makes an update to the layout, as with the new profile pages, certain settings become hidden or difficult to find. If the setting can’t be located or it’s location is unintuitive then it’s poor design.

With the recent change to the profile, it has become difficult to locate the Friend’s List.

The Facebook Friend’s List is a way to organize your friends and target privacy settings. For example, I have a list called ‘NH’ for people I grew up with and another called ‘Soccer’ for all soccer related information.

Here is where the Friend’s List is now located.

1. Go to Home
2. Next to the Most Recent link is a tiny little arrow.
   
3. Click on the arrow.
4. The dropdown shows Most Recent, Status Updates, Photos, Links, Pages and then the lists start. The dropdown shows my first two lists and then a link that says Choose Another.
   
5. When you click on Choose Another, all of your lists will be displayed.

Do you use Friend’s List? Did you know the location of them in the new profile?

photo credit: °Florian

Original Article

On the new Facebook profiles there is a row of photos below your name, which are photos that you have been tagged in. People have been doing some cool things with those photos so I decided to figure out how that was one. Below are some examples of creative photo use and instructions on how to set it up.

Of course, all of your hard work can be ruined by being tagged in a new photo.

The hardest part is getting the images to display in the correct order. I uploaded and tagged my letters a couple of times before I got it right. Also, while FBOOK isn’t the most creative use, it makes me laugh ;-) I also considered using the word NINJA but that has been played out.;-) I could also use my name with an image on either side.

Instructions

1. Create your images or crop current ones. The should be 96x67px in order to fit in the space provided.
2. Upload the images. It may be possible to upload them all at once if you are careful about the order but I found it was easier to do it one by one. So, upload the first image and then tag it with your own name.
3. Within the album, you can tag it by clicking on it and a drop down box will appear. Your name should be the first one in the list.
   
4. Again, do this one by one. Perhaps the upload order doesn’t matter but the tagging order definitely will make a difference.
5. If you want to spell a word, upload and tag the images in reverse order. So, for FBOOK I uploaded and tagged in this order K-O-O-B-F. If you want the images to be in a specific order, do the same thing and upload and tag them in reverse order.
6. And that’s about it - you will have your custom images or word on your Facebook profile page.

Keep in Mind

If anyone tags you in an image, that image will show up in these photos and mess up your hard work. You can change your privacy settings so that images you are tagged in only show up to you but this causes a couple of problems.

1. You will still see the tagged image in your row of photos.
2. If you set tagged photos to only visible to you, then you can’t set up the custom layout that I’ve described in this article. You would be the only one that sees it.

Facebook has made a mistake in not allowing us to turn off tagging by others completely. I would prefer to be able to tag photos of myself and not let anyone else tag photos of me.

Also, if you have any “friends” that are practical jokers, they can tag a bunch of photos of you and do something like this.

Here are instructions for removing and hiding tagged photos of you.

More Examples

The photos on the new Facebook profile can be used creatively but can also be abused by your “friends”.

Do you have any examples of creative uses of the these photos?

photo credit: Rob Larsen

Original Article

Frequently, I finish up a task and discover that I only have 10-15 minutes until I have to go pick up my daughter or until my next phone call. And I often find that I end up mindlessly sitting at my desk clicking around at nothing and I feel like I wasted the time.

So, I started thinking about what I could do with that 10 minutes and came up with the following list.

The List

1. Clean the litter box. This only applies if you have indoor cats. If you don’t, you are welcome to come clean out mine.
2. Check Facebook and leave super witty and clever comments. If you are lucky, people will “like” them. ;-)
3. Reply to comments on your blog
4. Unsubscribe from newsletters that you no longer read rather than just deleting them.
5. Leave a comment on someone’s blog post.
6. Check twitter and retweet some of your followers.
7. Answer a couple of quick emails. (if you have such a thing).
8. Start a load of laundry, fold some clothes, empty the dishwasher.
9. Find the perfect image for your next blog post.
10. And as my friend Pat suggested, sit and do nothing.

How about you? What do you do with 10 leftover minutes?

photo credit: alancleaver_2000

Original Article

Sometime over the weekend (I first noticed it on Friday night and admittedly, I spent way too much on Facebook for a Friday night), Facebook changed the way your comments on others links, status updates, photos, etc. show up on your profile wall.

Previously my wall would say something like “Kim commented on Deep Friar’s status” and the friends name would link to his profile page.

Now an excerpt of your comment is displayed. The friend’s name is still linked to her profile page.

Of course I noticed this right after I commented on a thread that was asking which player in the Premier League you disliked the most and why. I realized that I should have commented on the player’s skills or lack of them rather than saying his head looked like a potato ;-)

These comments, however, should only be displayed to you, the friend’s page that you commented on, and any friends in common. But, you still might not want them to show up. Update: It seems that I was wrong about this. You will see all of them on your friend’s wall even if the comments are on profiles that you are NOT friends with. This is not good.

So, if you don’t want the the excerpt displayed on your wall, you can do the following:

1. Not leave any comments you don’t want everyone reading an excerpt of on your wall.
2. Don’t say anything important in the first 7-8 words.
3. Delete them manually from you wall - that will be fun!

I looked through the privacy settings and it doesn’t seem that there is anything that can be changed to keep these from displaying. I can change my posts to only be visible to me but that would be for everything I posted, not just my comments, and that kind of defeats the purpose of using social media.

What do you think? Do you like this change?

As for me, I will simply try to refrain from calling Wayne Rooney an overrated potato head. ;-)

photo credit: jonathan_hamner

Original Article

I like Christmas. I like Winter, snow and the decorations. Plus, it’s my youngest brother’s birthday :-)

I’ve collected a lot of Christmas WordPress Themes at my Holiday WordPress Themes site.

Screenshots of the themes are listed below and you can view and download them at my other site.

[gallery link=”file” exclude=”10095”]

photo credit: jon_a_ross

Original Article

Two days ago I wrote about the upcoming features in WordPress 3.1. And then, bam, a required security update, version 3.0.2, has been released. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen one of these (anyone remember the 2.8 series) and I do recommend updating WordPress to address this security issue.

The big issue being fixed is the following:

Fix moderate security issue where a malicious Author-level user could gain further access to the site.

To me, that sounds like if there is only one author on the site - you - then this is a non-issue. But, many installations do have multiple authors and the update does fix other bugs and adds additional security.

If you want to read about all the bug fixes and other items included with the security release, you can do so at the WordPress Codex.

As always, backup your site before upgrading. If you would like assistance, please contact me.

photo credit: jurvetson

Original Article

WordPress 3.1 is scheduled for release on December 15th. Of course, that date is subject to change but it will be coming out soon-ish.

Here are some of the features we have to look forward to in the next version of WordPress.

Posts and Pages

1. Easier Internal Linking - It will now be easier to link to older posts. Instead of having to open a new tab or search around for that post in advance, the link pop-up box will list post and pages and have a search box built in to search for the specific post or page that you want to link to. This only seems to be available in the visual editor.



2. Post Templates / Post Styles - Like custom page templates, developers will be able to make custom post templates for posts of a certain type, such as gallery, portfolio, like, etc.

WordPress Admin

1. Admin Bar - If you have used WordPress.com, you will be familiar with the Admin Bar that is used to connect the front end of your blog to the back-end. This is most useful for multi-site users but will allow one click access to the Dashboard, New Post, etc. Aesthetically, I don’t like it and I am hopeful that I will be able to turn it off on my own site. I can, however, see it’s usefulness.
   
2. Column Sorting - I was just wishing for this feature a couple of days ago! On the Post, Page, or Media screens you will know be able to sort columns by different fields, such as title, author, and date. The sortable column header will be a link with an up or down arrow next to it.
   
3. Better Pagination - If you have a lot of content, you have probably been annoyed by the pagination for posts, pages and media. It was easier enough to go to the first page or the last but getting to the pages in the middle required numerous clicks. Now you will be able to go to next, previous, first, and last. You will also be able to type a specific page number into the pagination box.
   
4. Revised Blue Color Scheme - WordPress comes with a gray and a blue color scheme. The gray color scheme was revised in a previous release but the blue one wasn’t until now. Very rarely do I work on a site that is using the blue color scheme.
   
5. Improved Searching and Browsing for Installed Themes - Appearance > Themes has a Search Themes field that includes a Feature Filter. I don’t know about you but I don’t keep very many themes installed on any site. When I am trying to select one, I may have a number installed but once I decide, I uninstall the ones that I’m not going to use. I suppose this would be useful for sites that showcase WordPress themes.
   

Other Stuff

1. Improved IE9 support - Ok. That’s good. Honestly, I don’t use Internet Explorer unless I’m testing how a site looks in it.
2. Clean Up Admin CSS Files - This is a behind the scenes sort of thing. There are a lot of css files in wp-admin/css. These are going to be cleaned up / consolidated.

Of course there will be other bug fixes and improvements. These are, however, the major features.

As always, check your plugins for compatibility and backup your site before upgrading. If you would like assistance with your upgrade, please contact me.

photo credit: mochida1970

Original Article

I am a huge fan of the Studiopress themes for WordPress and while I don’t use them on my this site, I use them on a number of client sites and on my Mary Shelley site and new Watch Doctor Who project.

Now through next Tuesday November 30th everything all Studiopress is 25% off. Every theme and even the Pro Plus All-Theme package. If you were thinking about buying Genesis and a child theme or even every theme, now is the time to do it.

To get 25% off use the discount code BLACK.

All Studiopress discount codes will be invalid after next Tuesday so this really is the time to buy. I purchased the Pro Plus All-Theme package quite some time ago and couldn’t be happier. The themes are excellent, you get access to new releases and the support is some of the best out there. I don’t think I’ve ever had a question that I couldn’t find an answer to on the support forums.

Here is a small sample of the Studiopress themes.

AgentPress	Church
Lexicon	Lifestyle

Don’t forget - the discount code to use at checkout is BLACK.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Studiopress links are affiliate links. If I didn’t like them, I wouldn’t recommend them. ;-)

Original Article

I am frequently asked how to make a custom Facebook tab the default landing tab and realized that I haven’t written this up before. And, the location to do this has recently changed, so if I had written an article before, it would need to be revised. You do know that when writing about Facebook, it really should be done in pencil. ;-)

Set the Default Landing Tab

1. From the fan page for to Edit Page
   
2. Go to Manage Permissions
   
3. Under the Default Landing Tab dropdown box, set the tab that you would like to be the default tab.
   

Keep in mind that the default landing tab is only for new visitors to your page. Once someone likes the page and becomes a fan, they will be taken straight to the wall. This can not be changed.

Also as the Admin of the page you will be taken straight to the wall as well. If you want to test that a new visitor is going to the default tab, log out of Facebook and visit your page.

That’s all there is to it. The way it works hasn’t changed but Facebook has moved the settings around.

photo credit: TrombaMarina

Original Article