Flow is an FTP program that is simple to use and has excellent features.
I am a little bias as I use it all the time, however I have used many other FTP programs and Flow just seems to work.

The interface is what you would expect from Mac software, it is clean, sleek and a little bit whizzy. Add a new bookmark and you will see what I mean by whizzy, the panel slides in and lets you add the necessary details for your website FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3 or MobileMe iDisk servers. Transfer a file and the transfer panel slides in showing the progress and when finished it slides back.

Want to edit some files on your site directly?

I use this feature all the time, not only can you use the inbuilt text editor to edit html, php or any other text based files you can also set it to open files in your favourite editor. I edit my php files using Dreamweaver (don’t worry I use it as a glorified text editor) directly from the server and each time I save the file it shows a quick Growl notification to let me know it was saved. I can then view the site and the change has happened.

Need to see what image is what on the server?

You can with ease by simply clicking on the QuickLook button, it pops up a preview and you can view the image.

My favourite part of Flow is using Droplets. Droplets allow you to use a bookmark as a icon that is stored on your Mac. As an example I put a droplet into my working folder for a website. Then instead of having to launch Flow each time I want to upload a file I can drag the file onto the Droplet and it uploads the file for me.  A progress bar pops up to let me know it has worked even for multiple files.

I have only mentioned a few features that I particularly like but there are so many neat features that you need to try it yourself.

For one lucky reader I am fortunate enough to have a spare copy of Flow that Brian from Extendmac is allowing me to giveaway.

The Competition

To win a copy of Flow simply Tweet this article making sure you have @thefunkhouse in your tweet so I know you have done it.

Here is an example tweet you could use:

RT @thefunkhouse Flow FTP for Mac from @extendmac Free Giveaway:
 http://is.gd/adNLp A funky FTP program for mac that is so useful

If for any reason you do not use Twitter please leave a comment below stating how useful Flow would be for you. Please do not leave short comments that mean nothing, they will not be entered into the competition.

The winner will then be randomly chosen from all of those who participate.

The closing date is 18th March 2010 at 1pm GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)

HAS NOW ENDED

The winner will be notified on Twitter and I will also leave a comment below. The winner will then need to email me using the contact form leaving their Full name and email address so the license can be issued from Brian at Extendmac.

Good luck!

I made this a while ago, it simply adds the First name and Last name fields to the registration page.

It will need some styling if you are using the default WordPress screens.

It is a very simply plugin but it may be useful to someone.

Let me know if it useful

2009 has been an incredible year, thanks to all that used the services of The Funk House.

Let us hope 2010 is better than ever.

If a website has only just gone live then it can take up to 3 months for a website to be picked up by the search engines properly. Once this has happened and you are in the search engine result pages (SERPS) then it will depend on some key factors on your website.

First and foremost before I even mention keywords which is more often than not the first thing I am asked about, you must forget all that and concentrate on the structure of your website.

The structure for your website is the most important part of your website. Depending on how it has been built it can aid accessibility, usability and search engines.

How can structure help search engines?

If you were to read a book that instead of having lots of nice formatted text, nicely separated paragraphs and labeled with titles and so on but had lots of unknown text intermingled into the words on the page would you find it hard to read? Yes!

If we consider a search engine reading your site and your site is not built to be “readable” then you will make it a lot harder for a search engine to list your site.

The first thing I do if it is not one of my own websites that they want to get higher in the SERPS,  is to take a look under the hood and check out the structure of the website.

I usually run the website through a HTML validator and I also run through it manually looking at how each section reads and how clean the code is.

How clean the code is ?

This is referring to the code that is used to create your website, in todays standards it should be written in such a way that only the structure of the site and the content is visible. The styling, the bits that make it look good are contained in a separate file. This is important as it allows the search engines to get to your content and read it without much fuss.

Once you have the structure of the website correct and ready to insert your content you then need to begin to consider the keywords. This doesn’t mean you need to write every other sentence with your favourite keyword as this will be penalised by the search engines. This part will need some research into finding out what words are used in the search engines to find your website. If you have a new website then you will need to look at your competitors. You can look through websites and also ask friends or family to write down some words they think they would type to find your site. It is an art to finding out the correct keywords for you and your website as it will form the basis on which you will create your content.

You will need to consider your domain name, the title that is the top text in the browser, the page title which is like the news title in a paper, the paragraphs of text in the first few lines of content, the links within the page and emphasis on text such as bold text. These are only a few items that need to be looked at, there is a lot to consider so please take your time.

Even when adapting your site to the relevant keyword terms that you have discovered it still doesn’t mean your website will jump to the top of the search results as there is going to be competition especially if your business is in a category with many websites on the same subject. Take a look at your competitor’s websites and see how they are doing are they using the same keywords to make their website findable in the search engines? Do your research and do not rush it, you will reap the rewards later when you know your website search engine strategy inside and out. This will be an ongoing strategy that will change on a daily or weekly basis so be patient and make sure you use something like google analytics to track what is happening on your website.

After some thought I decided to add the same WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor that WordPress uses to the plugin to allow everyone to be able to add text and even more useful is the ability to add images. Now a user can add images to the plugin just as you would do when editing a page or a post.

How did I add the WYSIWYG editor to the plugin?

Generally to add a visual editor with the media uploader to a plugin where there is a text area for editing then it is a simple process with just a few lines of code:

/** In plugin file **/

add_action('admin_print_scripts', 'add_thejs' );
add_action('admin_print_styles', 'add_thecss' );

function add_thecss()
{
    wp_enqueue_style('thickbox');
}

function add_thejs()
	{
		if ( user_can_richedit() ){
			wp_enqueue_script('editor');
			wp_enqueue_script('media-upload');
			add_action('admin_head', 'wp_tiny_mce');
		}
	}

/** Then wherever the textarea is replace it with the following **/

    <?php the_editor('Some content here','content'); ?>

It is good to note that if you don’t use the id of content then the visual display will not be selected automatically it will select the HTML view first.

It is quite amazing that all you need are these few lines of code to enable the use of the editor. The code i used was slightly different for the Anyvar plugin as the following needs to be added as an array:

add_action("admin_print_styles-$page", array(&$this,'anyvar_css')); // Add required css file(s)
add_action("admin_print_scripts-$page", array(&$this,'anyvar_head')); // Add required JS file(s)

Hopefully the code above to add the editor is straight forward enough to add to your plugin.
Just to give you a quick overview of what it does here is a quick run down.

The add actions are how the functions are called then in each function the CSS or the Javascript is added in turn.

One thing I added was the:

if ( user_can_richedit() ){

This then allows you to only show the editor if the user has the rights to use one.

I hope this is useful to someone and I hope that Matt from devspace includes it in the next release.

Here is the my updated file for you to download: Anyvar Updated – You may need to right click and save file as.
You will need to change the .txt extension to be .php

*Please note that although I have tested this on a few sites you should make sure you test it and backup before using it on a live website.

According to Wikipedia:

A gaggle is a term of venery for a flock of geese that isn’t in flight; in flight, the group can be called a skein.

In military slang, a gaggle is an unorganized group doing nothing. In aviation, it is a large, loosely organized tactical formation of aircraft.

I think these statements fit the web browsers of today as they do seem to be all over the place with their ideas rather than all thinking on the same page.

What do you think?

A CAPTCHA is a challenge response test to try and stop auto generated responses from a computer. The idea is that the challenge can only be interpreted by a human. However, this isn’t always the case as some are easily bypassed. They also put many people off especially if the challenge is to read an image that is far too hard to read even for a human.

SEOMoz has posted some original research on effect of CAPTCHAs on conversion rates

With CAPTCHA’s on, SPAM and failed conversions accounted for 7.3% of all the conversions for the 3 month period. With CAPTCHA’s off, SPAM conversions accounted for 4.1% of all the conversions for the 3 month period. That could possibly mean that when CAPTCHA’s are on the company could lose out on 3.2% of all their conversions!

In other words, a significant proportion of frustrated customers simply abandon their attempts to get past the CAPTCHA. Ironically some spam still got through!

I am not a big fan of CAPTCHA and this information just adds to it. I don’t like filling out a CAPTCHA and I am sure most of you when you encounter a CAPTCHA give out a sigh. How many times have you filled one out only to be told there was an error and you have to do it again. Some of the CAPTCHAs I come across are very hard to read the text and it takes a few goes to get it right, this totally puts me off and some times I just don’t bother.

So they reduce user experience on your website, which is not good and could reflect on your brand.

The first one was Picapp which is in beta at the moment, although these days does that really mean anything?

My initial thoughts on Picapp were mixed as it doesn’t really give much information unless you dig around a bit.

What is PicApp?

Basically it is a searchable database of images from the likes of Getty Images and Corbis, which can then be embedded onto your site. It is easy to use, you simply search, choose the image size you want and grab the code.

All sounds good and using the demo on the site it seems to be doing what it says.

The downside is that is places an advertisement over the image and some sponsored links. This isn’t that clear even when using the demo. The only thing I saw when using the demo was a gallery button that sits on the image and either allows you to view other images of the same topic or links to the Picapp website. So have a good test of this before setting this live on your blog.

Picapp does have a WordPress plugin that integrates into your admin to allow you to add in pictures within WordPress. Check out the WordPress demo video. If you choose to use this service the plugin will be very useful but for me I won’t be using it in the near future, I think I prefer to use Google as per my last post.

The second link i was sent was a link to Zemanta which in my opinion seems to be more user friendly and gives you more options for images.

What is Zemanta?

Zemanta is a revolutionary new platform for accelerating on-line content production. Zemanta views your content and then delivers relevant images, smart links, keywords and text, instantly.

It has a nifty FireFox plugin that generates content recommendations as you write. It automatically works with GMail, Yahoo!Mail, WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type, TypePad and others while you are writing. You can also download plugins for most popular blogging platforms like WordPress.

I tried out the demo on the website and it was very easy to use and very quick. The images that are delivered come from various sources such as Flickr, Wikipedia, Getty and other great sources. You get a wide range of images and all the content is blogger-friendly as it is clearly marked with licensing information.

As the content is from a few different providers it gives you a little more choice and this is one thing that i feel is better than Picapp.

Again though, it does link the image to the original website but I feel this is slightly less intrusive as there is just a simple caption of text below the image stating where the image came from and I feel this is acceptable. What do you think?

With so many bloggers writing everyday there is a need for images to help deliver the writer’s message. With more of these sites and tools getting relevant content will become easier but for now i think we will have to continue digging around the internet looking for the content using sites such as Google.

If you know of any other sites or tools that allow you to use images for free let us know in the forums or leave a comment below. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts if these sites are useful or if we should just carry on using Google or Flickr as before.

Let me explain

The tutorial gave a final PSD for the user to see what was possible but in the design it used some funky design using hand drawn sketches which didn’t look too bad.
What was not considered was that the heading and dates etc used would not stretch as they were not made to. This is great if the user viewing the finished site use the exact same font size that they have set the site up to use but it is common for users to set their font size to be larger now and if they did this the site design would not work it could even become unusable in certain circumstances.

I feel this is very important when designing and making web sites.

In today’s Internet, web sites have to be more adaptive and take into account accessibility and usability more than ever especially when everything is much more socially interactive.

When these tutorials are written i know they are just trying to explain how to do their chosen topic, but i think they should at least hint at the fact, that when designing for the web things like this have to be considered else if you are building a site for “everyone” to use it could make more work for you. It would also give the user reading the tutorial something else that they know they should have some knowledge on.

I would also say this is the same for Schools, Colleges and Universities. If it wasn’t for the fact I was interested in finding out everything i could early on, I would never have come across accessibility or at least it might of been a pain to go back over what i had learnt again with these new things to think about.

It is not just about accessibility either, it is how we build web sites, how we build emails and usability. Speaking with friends and colleges that have been to University recently they were either taught how to make a site using tables and not show how divs work or vice versa. Then when making emails they don’t know how to use tables especially now Microsoft has made their Outlook go backwards in technology so it doesn’t use CSS as it used to.

To conclude, when building or designing a web site we need to make sure we consider everything. In my opinion it will make you better and having that knowledge will give you more to work on and more tools to use as you take it all into account.

Any way that is my rant over it is amazing what one tutorial can do

I found it quite odd that it had it set up as a required field. I have seen many Developers add donate buttons to their site but i never considered it myself. As not to break the trend i have added donate button on the WordPress plugin page on this site, feel free to donate