May 2010 – Reverb Studios Design

Using NextGen to Power an Animated WordPress Header

I’m annoyed this hadn’t occured to me before today despite having used WordPress and the NextGen Gallery plugin for years now! I was just about to knock together a custom flash header for a wordpress site and client who wanted a few banner images rotating to liven up his site when I realised it might be possible to do it easier with NextGen AND give the client the ability to change images himself directly from the wordpress admin.

Here’s how to do it:

With a recent version of standalone WordPress and the NextGen Gallery plugin both installed and activated and using a HTML editor like Dreamweaver, try to locate the lines/div’s in your WordPress template’s Header.php file or Stylesheet that control the template’s banner image sizing and position. Inside this div replace the existing image code with the following NextGen php hard code and upload to the server:

<?php echo do_shortcode('This slideshow requires JavaScript.
'); ?>

Replace “Gallery not found” with “slideshow id=x” where “x” is the ID of the gallery/slideshow you wish to display.

If you just want to display the slideshow on the home page, use this code:

<?php if ( is_front_page() ) {
echo do_shortcode('This slideshow requires JavaScript.
');
}
?>

This gallery should be created beforehand using images that match precisely the dimensions of the template’s existing banner image.

Next, go to the NextGen options in wordpress and specify slideshow dimensions that match the width and height of the template banner image. You can specify other options here such as order, image display time, next/previous controls, etc..

That’s it! Refresh your front end and hopefully you now have a flash banner!

Here’s an example of it working – www.Gaelink.ie

Leon.

Use your own Short URL’s for maximum Branding Effect!

URL shorteners are used a lot these days, mostly on the likes of Twitter and Facebook to make sometimes ridiculously long urls short and sweet. I, like a lot of social media contributors, have my business blog setup to auto post to both Twitter and Facebook and Twitter in particular with it’s 140 character limit really requires some compression when you are linking back to a blog post.

I’ve been using Dlvr.it for a while to take my Blog’s RSS feed and articles and distribute them out to other social media sites and they’ve recently introduced the ability to brand their short links with your own custom domain so that instead of people on Twitter seeing a link to your blog post like “dlvr.it/12345” they will see (in my case) “rvb.ie/12345” (rvb stands for Reverb Studios!).

All you need to do to set this up and running is purchase a new domain name and add a DNS record pointing to the Dlvr.it site, then login to Dlvr.it and add the new custom short url to your RSS sources. Here’s some simple instructions on how to do it:

http://support.dlvr.it/entries/171525-how-do-i-set-up-a-custom-short-domain

Mark Knopfler O2 Review

Happy to pencil off seeing another great of modern music at the O2 tonight and a real treat to see one of my guitar heros and one of the best living guitarists, Mark Knopfler, lead singer and guitarist with Dire Straits.

I mention his old band as not a lot of people I talked to beforehand seemed to know who he is/was! Dire Straits are responsible for all time greats such as “Money for Nothing”, “Sultans of Swing”, “Walk of Life”, “Romeo & Juliet”, “Brother’s in Arms” and a lot more, only some of which he played tonight, preferring instead to focus on his own solo stuff, not a lot of which I knew but it didn’t really matter to me what he played! I knew it would all be great and so it was..

I was here mainly to see Mark play guitar up close in his own unique, fingerstyle, brilliant way and to hear that unmistakable lead guitar, volume controlled, strat tone he’s become famous for. Him and his band didn’t dissapoint.

We were treated to an evening of musical and instrumental mastery with a seated (he blamed a trapped nerve!) Mark doing his trademark guitar swapping for nearly every song. He played Strats, Gibsons, Dobro and Acoustic all equally brilliantly and his excellent band all swapped between instruments ranging from Guitar, Upright Bass, Keyboard and Piano to Flute, Accordion, Pipes and a few I’d never even seen before. A very talented and melodic bunch who eased out multiple dynamic musical styles from Folksy to Ballad to Rock to Blues.

It was my kinda live music, very easy on the ears, not too loud, melodic, tap along and upbeat. The O2 acoustics were crystal clear and obviously suit this kind of music way more than some of the louder rock gigs I’ve seen there recently since the rebuild.

It was a shame the point wasn’t full but at least it gave me some extra leg room for once! It was still a decent crowd but for some reason they couldn’t sit still, with everyone constantly up and down for drinks etc..

Rock on Knopfler.

http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=000000&fc1=CCCCCC&lc1=FFFFFF&t=leonswebsite-21&o=2&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&asins=B002MZL5EG

http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=000000&fc1=CCCCCC&lc1=FFFFFF&t=leonswebsite-21&o=2&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&asins=B001KRTRQK

http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=000000&fc1=CCCCCC&lc1=FFFFFF&t=leonswebsite-21&o=2&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&asins=B001KSS2KQ

My Perfect Twitter Client Please

Twitter is running on my PC all day (and on the iPhone when I’m away) and I dip in and out constantly but my head is wrecked trying to find a Twitter app that has all I need. Lots come close but all let me down in one crucial area. I’ve tried the following:

Website – No alerts. Feature light.
Hootsuite – No notifications for replies, dm’s only. Slightly slow as it runs in a browser. No visual marking of read/unread tweets. No sync with iPhone.
Twhirl – Buggy. Keeps showing tweets as unread on startup. No Reply all. No iPhone app.
Echofon – Almost featureless Firefox plugin.
Tweetdeck – Too large a footprint on the PC and hard to read.
Twitteriffic – No PC client.
Tweetie – No PC client.
Seesmic – No iPhone client. No Multiple accounts. No lasting highlighting of unread tweets.
TwitBird – No PC client.

Here’s a list of specs I’d like to see:

NB Proper syncing between Desktop and iPhone versions of the same client. I really need stuff I’ve already read on the PC to be marked read on the iPhone app and vice versa.
Ease of use and visually minimalist.
Fast.
Highlight unread and Reply tweets.
Scroll to first unread tweet.
Control over notifications, ie – audio & visual push alerts.
Preview Short url’s.
Multiple accounts.
Select account to tweet from on each new tweet.
Show quick profile, stats and follow/unfollow links.
Quick links to Reply, DM users.
Favorite following.
Auto shortlinking.
Tweet audio, video and photos.
Tweet and link stats.
Text compression.
Sync with Outlook address book.
Filtering – see replies, dm’s only.
Auto suggest Twitter handles and Hashtags when composing.
Advanced search for tweets and Profiles.
Geotagging.
Send to Facebook, Linked, etc..on each new tweet.
Schedule tweets.
iPhone Autosave on exit.
Conversation Threads

Please correct anything I may have got wrong above or point me to my ideal Twitter client!

Leon.

My Thoughts on Gerry Ryan

My earliest memory of Gerry and his morning show is from around 2000. I’d just started a job in Portside Business centre on East Wall road and occasionally I’d see Gerry drive by in the opposite direction, me on my way to work and him on his way to RTE from Clontarf. It was cool to see someone famous up close then hear him live on the radio a few minutes later! The guys in the job had the radio permanently set to 2FM so I had no real choice but to listen to Gerry’s talk show even though I would have probably preferred some music. Continue reading My Thoughts on Gerry Ryan