Blogging

September 18, 2011

Tech for Luddites Is Back!

I really did have the best of intentions to keep this blog going when I uprooted my whole life (new city, new job) last year. But good intentions, the road to you-know-where... well, you know.

So why am I bringing it back to life now? A few reasons:

Interest. Even more than a year out of date, I still get quite a lot of traffic (my Twitter hash tag post is still the most popular) and questions from readers—so the demand is there.
Ego-boo. In addition to reader questions, I get quite a few "this post was SO helpful" comments. And, yes, that makes me feel good. :)
Ch-ch-ch-changes. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and his equivalents at Twitter, Google, Microsoft, and elsewhere are constantly "enhancing" their products, generally resulting in mass confusion for anyone trying to use them. Writing blog posts about the new features and functionality forces me to figure them out for myself!

I don't know how often I'll be able to post new entries, what with that danged day job and all, but I'm going to start by aiming for once a week and see how it goes from there. In addition to posting new entries, I'm also going to go back and update some of my more popular posts to ensure they have the most current information. Finally, I'll be using the Tech for Luddites Facebook page more often to share quick tips and post links to other useful information I discover around the Interwebs.

Help me pick my next series topic!

Speaking of my Facebook page, if you haven't already Liked it, now would be a great time to do so. I've added a tab to the page with a poll asking fans to help me pick the topic for my next series. Come on over and help me decide!

One Last Note: I had originally planned to wait to bring back T4L until I had everything set to go at full force. But then I realized (d'uh!) that if I waited for that day, it would never happen. So please be patient as I go about remembering how this whole blogging thing works and, if you find anything amiss, please shoot me a note at feedback@techforluddites.com.

{ 2 comments }

Thesis Version 1.7 Now Available

Last week, DIYthemes released Thesis version 1.7, an upgrade that includes new options for search engine optimization (SEO), behind-the-scenes performance enhancements, some interface changes, and my favourite part--an Options Manager that lets you save the settings you make in the options panels to easily reuse them on other sites.

> Read the full article

Thesis: Format Previous Entries Pages Like Your Home Page

When you set up a WordPress blog, you can use the WP Settings > Reading panel to limit how many posts appear on a "blog" page, i.e. any page that displays a list of posts. When you have more than that many posts, you get Previous Entries and Next Entries links at the bottom of the page that let you navigate through them all. This is referred to as pagination.

> Read the full article

Thesis QuickTip: Adding Thumbnails to Your Teasers

I love the teaser feature of Thesis, where you have two columns of shorter blurbs linking to older blog posts. You can get a lot more links on your home page without making visitors have to scroll forever. However, by default, the teasers only display text, which is a little bland. And it's a real waste for sites that have a lot of attractive imagery in their posts, like photography, travel, and food blogs. Fortunately, it's very easy to add images to your teasers and Thesis offers several options for sizing and positioning them without requiring any coding at all.

> Read the full article

Thesis: Applying Functions Only to Specific Pages

In an earlier post, I showed you how to write a simple function that places a text box above the headline of your pages. But you don't always want certain content or functionality to apply to every single page on your site. In this post, I'm going to introduce you to conditional statements, which let you specify which pages your function will apply to.

> Read the full article

Thesis: Where Do You Put the Code?

In an earlier post I described how to write a simple custom function that would add a small piece of content into a specific location on your web page. One point of confusion that occasionally comes up is where you actually put this code.

> Read the full article

What is the Thesis Theme and Why Would You Want It?

Today I'm taking a step back from posting tips on how to use Thesis and instead will explain a bit about what the theme is and why you might be interested in using it.

> Read the full article

Thesis: To OpenHook or Not to OpenHook?

I want to preface this post by saying I'm in awe of both the quantity and quality of plugins that people have developed for bloggers to use for free--the WordPress directory alone has almost 8,000. I use a handful of them myself (and have tried out many, many more). Some add extra functionality to the people visiting the blog, while others simply help the bloggers do what they need to do faster or more easily. Thesis OpenHook fits into the latter category.

> Read the full article

Thesis: What are Hooks and How Do You Use Them?

When you first start working with Thesis, you're going to see a lot of references to hooks. But unless you're already used to customizing code in WordPress, it can be a confusing concept to wrap your head around (at least it was for me!).

> Read the full article

Purchase Thesis Through T4L and Get a Free Starter Pack!

With the relaunch of this blog on WordPress, you may have noticed a sudden infusion of yellow to the color scheme.

> Read the full article

New Year, New Look

In my series on starting a blog last year, I explained that, even though I was using TypePad as the platform for my blogs, I would recommend WordPress to anybody starting a new blog for a few different reasons. Well, after thinking about it, I figured I'd like to take advantage of the same benefits so made the decision to migrate Tech for Luddites to WordPress.

> Read the full article

← Previous Entries