Shane Hale

When building a themes for WordPress you may want to leverage WordPress Shortcodes in areas other than you content zones. Often I found myself saying, it would be great to have this plug in appear in the footer, modal box or right rail. Many plug-ins offer PHP codes for implementation but for those that don’t you can utilize this little snippet of code. WordPress Shortcode Function <?php echo do_shortcode(“[shortcode]”); ?> Simply replace the [shortcode] with which ever plugin of functional short code you choose. For example you could have: <?php echo do_shortcode(“[slideshow]”); ?> This WordPress shortcode function should provide you with additional flexibility without having to dig or write new alternative…

Introduction to Facebook Graph Search Earlier this week Facebook introduced Graph Search. It is giant leap forward from their current Facebook Search technology. The goal of Graph Search is to get users the information, product or service that they are looking for. The difference is they will not be relying solely on traditional SEO components, but will be leveraging your friendships and relationships with businesses. Although it is not available to the public, there are things you can do prepare for its launch. 1. Get Social I would like to think that most websites are already doing this. With the Addthis, ShareThis and a handful of other social media sharing…

If you are anything like me, your trying to work Responsive Design into all of your designs. Fairly simple CSS trick allows a website to scale nicely no matter the device that is viewing it. But one of the more challenging obstacles is external widgets served as an iFrame. This is the case with Facebook Comments. The standard implementation of the Facebook Comments code includes calling the Facebook JavaScript SDK and a single line of html for the DIV container. This installation sets a ‘data-width’ parameter that tells Facebook how wide Facebook Comment widget should be. In a responsive design, you want to avoid setting width. Set widths do not…

Most analytic packages highlight page views, unique visitors, and traffic sources. These metics are important for any website, but I believe bounce rate is more important. Bounce rate is a lead signal for website user experience. It will tell you if your users are finding the information that they are searching for, if you have good information architecture, and how the user feels when they land on your website. For these reasons any website that is looking to generate traffic should pay extra attention to the content bounce rate. What is exactly is a Bounce Rate? The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors only viewing one page of your…

I’ve always hated the term New Years Resolutions. I do appreciate that it is a motivating factor that gets a lot of butts off the coach and puts plans into action, but I always felt like they are an excuse for something they should of started months ago. For that reason I call them New Years Intentions. These are definitive items that I am going to accomplishments in the year. No excuses, I’m finding a way to get it done. It may be a good idea to review what I, Shane Hale, set out to accomplish in 2012, and if I fell short of any of these goals. Last Years Goals:…