Make Facebook status update Twitter via RSS

On May 17, 2010 in Internet, Tutorials, Website Design.
4

Picture the scenario; You update Facebook status often but forget about the little bird which is Twitter. You want to update Twitter automatically when your facebook status changes, but Facebook have banned the apps that allow this to occur! Enter TwitterFeed.com, a website designed to pull RSS feeds and post them to other pages such as Facebook or Twitter.

Now, stay with me here, as I spent ages looking at blogs thinking that the Facebook RSS pages have been blocked, but they haven’t. To access your Facebook RSS feed navigate to Facebook and click on your notifications (“See all Notifications”). On the right hand side is a “Subscribe to Notifications” section, and under that is a “Via RSS”. Uncheck all the tick boxes and click on this link. From there, simply change part of the URL from “notifications.php” to “status.php”. This should produce the RSS feed required.

Now, on TwitterFeed.com sign up and add your copied URL for Facebook RSS feed. Authenticate Twitter and set (in the advanced options) your prefixes, postfixes and update schedule.

And that’s it! Facebook will now generate the RSS of your status’, TwitterFeed will pull them in (checking every 30 mins or whatever) and post them to your Twitter for you! If your really clever you could set up an RSS from your website too, and get that to post to Twitter/Facebook whenever you add a new article!

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Great daily deals via new affiliate marketing website

On May 14, 2010 in #60SecondShout, Business, Internet, marketing, Website Design.
3

Affiliate marketing – A great way to make small percentage profit on a ton of items to get pretty decent profit! Amazon, Tesco and loads of other large chains have affiliate schemes allowing this business model to work a treat!

One new website which takes advantage of this scheme is 1DailyDeal, a simple website designed to give customers a single deal for each day of the week! The strap-line (“1 page, 1 day, 1 Deal”) pretty much sums it up, with a strong emphasis on simplicity and social media interaction. There is even a JTouch script to enable an app style page for iPhone users!

Check it out today, because as they say, tomorrow’s another deal!

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Create a circular loading animation

On May 13, 2010 in #60SecondShout.
0

Working with photoshop makes light work of producing a good looking rotating circular loading animated .’gif’. To start, create a circle, split it into 8 segmentsand colour overlay the one segment with a different colour.

Next, create 7 more layers, rotating each one by 45 degrees more than the previous. Hide all the layers apart from the one on the bottom, which should still be the origional layer.

Go to ‘window’ > ‘animations’ and open that up. Create a new frame in the animation pane and display the second layer. Repeat this process until you have 8 frames, each showing one more layer. The last frame should display the top layer, which is the frame before the first layer repeats again.

Save for web and devices as a ‘.gif’ image with animation, and your complete!

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Featured Content Gallery and lightbox effect working together

On May 13, 2010 in Tutorials, Website Design.
0

Iv’e spent the last few days working on the new layout, which now includes the featured content gallery (FCG) and lightbox. Getting the two elements working together was a little tricky, but to be honest more simple than I thought.

The problem is that the JavaScript (JS) for both the FCG and Lightbox conflict with each other, resulting in the FCG displaying a black background with loading bar but not actually loading. To resolve this we must stop the conflict between the two scripts. The method – multiple headers, PHP IF statements and a brilliant plug-in called slimbox. Don’t worry though, it’s not as complicated as it first sounds.

The first step is to get FCG working within any Lightbox plug-ins activated (LightBox 2 in particular causes a conflict). Set up the FCG options page (video here) and add a couple (at least 2) posts with images. This was my first hurdle – Make sure the images are the correct size (specified in the options page) as if they aren’t the FCG won’t load.

When you have the FCG working create multiple headers. To do this, duplicate the ‘header.php’ (rename it to something like ‘header_home.php’). Now in the home page (home.php) of your wordpress theme add the following code:

if (is_page('home')){

}
else {

}
?>

Download and install Slimbox 2, a clone of LightBox 2 which does the same thing as lightbox but uses a slightly different script. Install and activate this and you should be about there. The lightbox effect should now work on all but the home page, and the featured content gallery only on the home page.

If it’s still not working look for a js.conflict(); piece of code by doing a find in the theme / plug-ins folder – Uncomment this if you find it.

And that should be it! You should now have a working FCG and Lightbox effect all in one page!

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T-Shirt printing increases brand awareness

On May 10, 2010 in #60SecondShout, Business.
1

Custom clothing – It’s something that iv’e been interested in for a while as I think it brings brand awareness to the masses, while portraying a relevant feel dependent on the style and design.

I got 6 ‘John Alexander Rowley Designs’ male designer T-shirts printed via SpreadShirt with my logo on (green and white text on a black background) and similar on the back (silhouette and website). They arrived a week later and looked awesome! My only criticism would be that they are a little tight and required stretching a tad, but this was due to they being packed after printing and hadn’t been washed yet.

Walking around town that day I could see people glancing over due to the eye catching branding. One lady even commented on how nice it looked and engaged in conversation about my designs and what I do. The T-Shirts, coupled with identically branded business cards gives a great portrayal and reminds me of ‘Apple Esk’ with casual jeans and branded tee.

If your interested in tee design, and want a quote or to see the work I’ve done, head over to the recent work page and take a look for yourself!

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iPhone camera Screenshot

On May 2, 2010 in Apple, iPhone.
2

Today I needed a screen-shot of the iPhone camera GUI with the toggle on the photo option. I couldn’t find one, so I made one myself.
iPhone Camera GUI
Feel free to use it.

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Website Updates 2010

On May 1, 2010 in #60SecondShout, Website Design.
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The web is changing. The bang of 2.0 a few years ago has shifted the old style robotic and impersonal websites aside to adopt a much more personal and engaging website, imagery and most importantly content!

I was reading through my blogs the other day, as well as some of the pages, and it all seemed a little dry. Change with the times. So, that night, after a can of red-bull, I started re-typing the content to a lot of my pages, particularly the personal profile pages, as this is where readers should go to get to know the person behind the silhouette.

Hopefully now the site not only reads better, but is also more engaging to the customers?! After all, you’ve read to the end of this blog, haven’t you?!

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