Oftentimes in working with WordPress I find that I don’t want things to be as automatic as they are by default. Or, more precisely, I want things to be automatic in a very custom way to fit a certain theme and design.
An example of this is excerpts, this WordPress function annoyed me for a long time, but Advanced Excerpt by Bas van Doren relieves this pain.
In my case, the pain arose from trying to layout text in a grid-style theme. Some of the blocks were populated with photos, while others were not. I wanted to be able to control the excerpt length so that blocks with photos would feature short post excerpts while those without photos would be filled by a larger excerpt.
We believe that the web should be easy and that by embracing open software, open standards, and the world of web-based applications, that the web really can be easy. Companies like MailChimp, Media Temple, 37Signals, SalesForce, Woo Themes, DIY Themes, and FreshBooks are proving that to be true every day.
That’s why we’ve launched our Products We Love page, to promote companies that fit well with that philosophy. We’re starting out with a handful of companies mentioned above, but we plan to add more as we gain more experience with other products.
We only want to recommend products we’ve used extensively, so don’t expect this list to grow overnight. That said, you can trust the products and services we’re recommending now are really the best of the best.
If you have suggestions for products we ought to be looking at, please leave a note in the comments or send an email to info@readymadeweb.com.
Full Disclosure: ReadyMadeWeb has an affiliate relationship with several of the companies we recommend, but we’d recommend them anyway because we use their stuff every day.
Do-it-yourself online stores used to be limited to having a store on Amazon, eBay, or some other service. It wasn’t really a “store” it was more like having a little kiosk in a behemoth online mall.
Enter Shopify. This great service lets you build an honest-to-goodness online store customized to your needs complete with your own domain name. Shopify allows you to easily add and edit items, manage your inventory, process payments, market your products, and track your customer buying patterns. Shopify also includes cool features like discount codes to track your promotions, full CSS and HTML control, a robust API, and even an option to create simple store blog.
Of course the biggest benefit of Shopify is that you don’t have to build it yourself or pay a designer to do it for you. You also don’t have to go through the puzzling set steps required to make a truly secure online store. Shopify handles all the SSL certificates, the hardware security, and the data backup for you. These are benefits common to most web-based applications, but it’s worth repeating just how awesome it is to have that sort of worry-free design available in an off-the-shelf solution.
Here’s my presentation on open-source software and the wide world of web-based applications. Thanks again to everyone at the Heritage Foundation for inviting me to participate in this event, with special thanks to Alex Adrianson, Bridgett Wagner, and Robert Bluey. Also, thanks to my co-panelists David All and Robert Willington.
My portion of the panel discussion starts around 22 minutes into the recording.
If you’re interested in accepting online payments, FreshBooks has a great series of posts that exhaustively evaluates the different payment gateway options available to small and large businesses alike.
I should also note that FreshBooks is proving to be a great solutions for estimates, invoicing, and expense tracking at ReadyMadeWeb. It’s a great platform for interacting with customers if only for the estimate and billing functions alone. The seamless integration with PayPal, Authorize.net, and bunch of other payment gateways is also a real bonus.
Last summer I transitioned CafeHayek.com from Typepad to WordPress with the help of a great little company called Foliovision. Their service turns the otherwise difficult process of leaving SixApart’s Typepad into a relatively painless one that runs anywhere from $350 to $1000. Better yet, they love using Thesis, the spectacular WordPress theme that powers ReadyMadeWeb.
If that relatively modest price is still stretching your budget or if you’re a DIY type, Foliovision has been kind enough to impart their transition and conversion wisdom in the form of some pretty in-depth instructions.
Either way, the expense or effort of moving from Typepad to WordPress is worth it. WordPress features better image manipulation, control over CSS, and gives you the control to expand your blog in a seemingly infinite variety of ways.
Full Disclosure: Foliovision recently sent me a lovely branded polo shirt all the way from their home office in Bratislava, Slovakia. However, this only served to remind me of their service—I would gladly endorse sans polo.
Artisteer is a WYSIWYG template editor for Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, DotNetNuke, and Blogger. If you’re not a coder, but want to give designing your own site a try, this might be the right tool for you. (HT Parker Mason)
Fix My HTML is a great web-based tool that will help to strip out all the gunk from your HTML that wonderfully horrible programs like Microsoft Word can leave behind. Click on the “Are you a pottymouth?” link to find out the real name of this app.
If you’ve been confused about the ever-changing privacy policy (or lack-of-privacy policy) on Facebook, Matt McKeon has a great graphic that explains the changes from 2005 to 2010.
The graphic clearly shows how Facebook users have slowly had all of their information made increasingly public. The 2010 graphic shows all user data made completely available to users and non-users alike, making what had once been at least semi-private information completely public.
After some feedback from readers that our Del.icio.us bookmarks weren’t showing up in the main feed, I’ve decided to do semi-regular roundups of links to great little tools, tips, and amusing things around the web:
Hey, remember the 90s? Turn any site retro using GeoCitiesizer and consider how lucky we are to have WordPress. (HT Dan Rothschild)
Designing a new layout for the front page of your website? Find out just how much realestate you have to work with by using WhereIsTheFold.com. The handy tool will give you the cut-off point for screens of all sorts of resolutions. (HT The Dev Show)
Create boxes with rounded corners using CornerShop, a tool that generates GIFs, CSS, and HTML.
Microsoft declares “we’re all in” when it comes to the cloud.
ReadWriteWeb has a great write up on the new WordPress plugin from the good folks at SalesForce, which allows full integration between SalesForce and WordPress.
The setup is fairly simple—the WordPress plugin involves no complicated setup and the SalesForce side of the equation involves setting up a “receiver,” which is common practice for SalesForce veterans and one that is very well documented for noobs who may be stumbling through it for the first time.
While I’m glad to see SalesForce acknowledging the importance and lead generation potential of corporate blogging, I’m forced to wonder “What took you guys so long?”
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