Themeforest Author Spam on Twitter
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I’ve been doing some research on ThemeForest as I’m preparing some themes to enter the market, when I noticed that some authors spam twitter like crazy with their theme plugs. Take for example Alex (@Orange_Idea_RU) he has an automatic script that grabs random quotes puts them into his twitter stream and then puts in 4-5 links with #wordpress hash tag per hour…. I’m getting a bit sick of this going through my twitter stream… what do you guys think of these “marketing” tactics?

You can check out his stream at https://twitter.com/#!/orange_idea_ru and his profile at themeforest. He doesn’t have the greatest amount of sales but I guess it has to be worth it to him. I’m just wondering how twitter hasn’t banned his account yet.

Update

Here is yet another user themoholics who is doing the exact same thing… this theme is doing much better… it’s a well designed theme you can see it at http://themeforest.net/item/breath-wordpress-theme/1363516 … the question remains do you have to become a spam junkie to push your themeforest themes?

How to Add a Notification Bubble to WordPress Left Menu
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While developing plugins for our clients I sometimes find myself needing a way to draw attention to that particular section of the administration area. WordPress unfortunetly doesn’t support a way to easily add notifications so I created a quick snippet of code that will do just that. I hope you find it useful in your development.

function draw_bubble(){
	$target_menu = "toplevel_page_sam-list";
	$bubble_msg = '5';
	$bg_color = '#464646';

	?>
	<script type="text/javascript">
		jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
			jQuery('li#<?php echo $target_menu ?> a.wp-has-submenu').append('<span class="update-plugins" style="background-color: <?php echo $bg_color ?>"><span><?php echo $bubble_msg ?></span></span>');
		});
	</script>
	<?php

}

add_action('admin_print_scripts','draw_bubble',10000);

All you have to do is add this to your plugin or functions.php file and you’re ready to go. There are three parameters that need to be set:

  1. target_menu: this is the menu you want to target, just inspect your admin screen with Firebug and you need to grab the ID of the LI menu LI element
  2. bubble_msg: this is the actual message you want to display, you can use a number or string. This would work more on case by case basis so you could write a query that returns a number of recently commented on posts or number of posts waiting to be approved for publishing.
  3. bg_color: this is the color that you want the bubble background to be.

Let me know if you run into any issues but I hope you can find a use for this code.

Free Website / Online Strategy Consultations
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Welcome everyone. In celebration of the holiday season and in the spirit of giving, we are excited to be offering 45 minute consultations free of charge! You can ask us anything about your website, online strategies, content management systems, etc. As you may know, Webcultured specializes in WordPress development; so if that is of interest to you, get in contact with us and reserve your spot now!

The 45 minute sessions will be held at CSI, December 22nd and 23rd and are completely FREE, with no obligation.

Simply fill out the form below and let us know how we can help!

Appointments will be booked on a first come, first severed basis. Center for Social Innovation is located at :

215 Spadina Ave Suite 400
Toronto, Ontario
M5T 2C7

State of the Word 2010
matt

Great video to watch if you’re working with WordPress or interested in what’s to come in the next year!

Google puts a dagger in IE6
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There is some really great news spreading throughout the internet this week. As of March 2010 Google will no longer be supporting Internet Explorer 6 (IE6).

Just to give you a brief history, IE6 has been around for a long long time and it’s full full of bugs. IE6 has been around for almost 10 years and it’s been a nightmare for software developers. I would not be surprised if IE6 single-handedly has cause a billion dollars in wasted productivity.

As as a software engineer I can tell you that I myself have spent countless hours over the past 10 years developing code that specifically worked around Microsoft’s idea of how a browser should run. There are standards for a reason and it boggles everyone’s mind why Microsoft would go out of the way to create a browser that would cause so much anger from the community.

The great news is that IE6 penetration has now gone to 10.2% according to http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp and continues to drop. The big news as mentioned above is that Google will be dropping support for IE6 as of March 2010 on all their applications.

This could be partly caused by the cyber attacks on Google just a few weeks ago from China through Internet Explorer security holes. Either way this is great news for developers around the world and hopefully it will finally push IE6 over the cliff and into the history books.

As of 2010, WebCultured will no longer be supporting IE6 unless specifically asked by a client, this is a move to help phase out IE6 out of the general public. For great alternatives goto getfirefox.com, google.com/chrome or if you have a Mac you’re already surfing on Safari!