Optimise Your Site for iPhone – VERY Simply!

Here’s a quick method of fixing some common problems with your site that might cause it to display weirdly in the now ubiquitous iPhone/iPod devices. My own lovingly crafted main site and blog design were nearly fine on the iPhone but there was strange resizing of both the background image and some of the navigation links & text. The background image is central to my design so I had to do something!

For WordPress powered sites and blogs there are many great plugins to automatically render a stripped down version of the site but I really wanted my design to be visible. I found out that the iPhone Safari browser automatically resizes elements on a web page including text and background images so to combat this simply add the following to your body tag:

-webkit-background-size: 2000px 1024px; (The exact size of my background image in this case)
-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; (Stops the iPhone from resizing any text on a page)

“webkit” is specific to the Safari browser so adding this code will not mess up anything in other PC based browsers.

You could take this a stage further and try to detect iPhone visitors with the following code and give them an iPhone specific stylesheet and viewport:

This goes in your <head> section:

<!– iPhone Detection –>
<?php
if (ereg(‘iPhone’,$_SERVER[‘HTTP_USER_AGENT’])) {
$iphone = 1;
}
elseif (ereg(‘iPod’,$_SERVER[‘HTTP_USER_AGENT’])) {
$iphone = 1;
}
else {
$iphone = 0;
}
?>

<!– If it’s an iPhone, show the Viewport Meta tag and iPhone CSS –>
<?php if ($iphone == ‘1’): ?>
<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=320px” />
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”iphone-style.css” media=”only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)” />

<!– If it’s NOT an iPhone, show the normal CSS and no Viewport Meta tag –>
<?php else: ?>

<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”normal-style.css” media=”screen” />

Leon.

Social Media Marketing Return on Investment?

I’ve been using Social Media Marketing techniques for a few years now to help brand my small Design company. I can say my brand has definetly increased but I’m now wondering if this increased brand visibility is translating into sales, which is of course the desired and perhaps often forgotten goal. Is my return on time investment worth it?

I’ve only relatively recently got into the habit of asking enquirers where they found me but I can honestly only account for a very small handful of direct sales from my precence and activity on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, The IIA, etc..

I realize that there are other conversion factors ranging from; my market (whether there still is one or not!?), increased competition,  my website usability and ability to convert enquiries but should all of my efforts to brand myself as a professional, accessible and affordable design service provider not account for a little more return?

Off the top of my head I’d say I probably spend a few hours each day reading posts and engaging on Facebook and Twitter especially. I even check these sites first before email these days! I do get lots of great, free info but inevitably I get drawn into entertaining but ultimitately non business related conversations with people I barely know or people who are never ikely to be clients. Result? Time I could and should be spending actually working or maybe learning something new is possibly wasted.

I think these are things I and lots of other social media marketing exponents are going to have to think hard about and try to accurately measure in the near future as the initial social media furore passes.

Leon

Web Site V’s Facebook Page

The question of whether or not businesses still need a full website or not has come up a lot at the Business Networking and Social Media events I’ve been to recently including yesterday’s Open Coffee Sligo. I’ve not given it much thought until now but here’s my honest opinion as both a Facebook Page and Website owner myself and regardless of the fact that I’m a web designer!

For a start, it has to be mentioned that no website can ever be as well trafficked as the likes of Facebook so it makes sense to be where everybody is. I used to always say this about eBay to people who wanted to sell online, ie – go where the people are buying then try drag them back to your own site.

I’ve heard it said that your own site could never match the technology on Facebook etc but I disagree. Even a freely avaible and simple system like wordpress can emulate live blogging, commenting, video/photo sharing and social functions through the likes of Buddypress and various other plugins and templates. There’s also plugins to show Facebook Like buttons and Badges on your site and to export your site news or blog directly to Facebook and Twitter automatically so good connections can be made between Facebook and your own web precence.

I find a lot of my recent clients are aware of the fact that their own sites can be made communicate with Social Media sites and they specifically request this functionality when enquiring. I’ve not had any drop their sites or go with a Facebook page only yet.

Another important consideration is that while Facebook may be king of the hill at the minute, that may not always be the case. Who is to say in 3 years time that it won’t be shut down (possibly over privacy issues!?) or introduce fees or just succomb to a new site on the block. What happens to all your data and customer interaction in this case?

Also, with your own site you will always have full control over the likes of design, content and privacy, choosing exactly how you want it to work for you. As of now, there are no easy ways to capture specific customer data or sell products from Facebook but this is easy to do on your own site through forms and carts, etc..

The old online branding advice of avoiding the usage of freely available email addresses like @eircom.net or @yahoo.ie in favour of a professional business address like @your-company.com also applies in that people may think less of you for only bothering to have a freely available Facebook page rather than a professional custom web presence.

In short I think the way forward is to connect people’s sites with their business precence on the social media portals and not just decide on one or the other. At this point, as a web designer, I’m not too worried.

Leon.

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.

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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.

Promote Your Business With FourSquare

I’ve been playing with location based Social Networking site Foursquare for a few months now and trying to figure out what use it might be for me from a business point of view other than simply another site my business details are listed on. I havn’t managed to come to a conclusion on that yet but I reckon businesses with an actual shop front or public location (unlike my private home office) should sit up NOW and take notice. Continue reading Promote Your Business With FourSquare

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