TaylorLovett

Custom Contact Forms 4.0.0

October 26, 2010 by Taylor Lovett

Custom Contact Forms 4.0.0, the most intuitive and customizable contact form plugin for WordPress, is about to be released. Here is a short list of some of the new features being added:

  • Import/Export/Create Backups at the click of a button
  • New style options for your forms
  • Ability to add a different CSS class to each field
  • * All form submissions saved to database and displayed in administration panel in a visually appealing way. You can enable/disable the emailing of form submissions now.
  • * AJAX in the admin panel – now you can save, delete, and manage everything in the admin panel without refreshing the page. This will save you time.

Right now you can download the latest 4.0.0 beta version on the WordPress CCF Download page. Right now the only thing that is left to do is debug the new AJAX features. We need debuggers. Right now we are adding anyone who helps us with debugging to the WordPress page as a contributor with a link to the website of their choice. Email admin@taylorlovett.com if you’re interested.

Categories: Custom Contact Forms, PHP Programming, Website Development, WordPress Customization, WordPress Plugins, Tags: , , , , , ,
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SEO Doctor Firefox Addon

July 11, 2010 by Taylor Lovett

I stumbled on an interesting add-on for Mozilla Firefox called SEO Doctor. SEO Doctor adds a small flag icon to the far right side of the url bar which opens up a small box containing information and stats pertaining to search engine optimization. when clicked. SEO Doctor’s main features:

  • Assigns an SEO score to each page and looks for SEO errors like missing alt tags, missing meta tags, and more.
  • Counts the number of inbound and outbound links keeping track of link flow and revealing any potential areas that might leak “link juice”.
  • Detects pages that can’t be found or indexed by Google and other search engines
  • Shows estimated total number of daily visits, total number of daily visits from search engines, number of nofollow links, measures loading time, and more

For me the most useful features of SEO Doctor are the ones detecting missing page features that might affect my search engine ranking. For example if I forget to use an H1 tag on a page, SEO Doctor notifies me. If I don’t use at least one H2 tag on a page, SEO Doctor warns me that I should even though it isn’t required like the H1 tag. SEO Doctor saves me tons of time because it shows me these things while I’m viewing the page instead of me taking time to search through each one of my pages to make sure they all have H1 tags.

SEO doctor is great for experienced web developers and still easy to use for novice ones. It’s definitely worth a download and it is free after all; so give it a try.

Download SEO Doctor by Vladimir Prelovac

Categories: Firefox Addons, Rockville Web Development, Search Engine Optimization, Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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5 Essential Free Tools No Web Developer Should Be Without

July 6, 2010 by Taylor Lovett

I’ve been a programming in PHP and developing websites for 8 years and here are 5 free tools that no web developer should ever be without. Most if not all of these require that you use Mozilla Firefox.

1. Web Developer add-on for Mozilla Firefox

Of course number one assumes you are already using Mozilla Firefox browser. This addon creates a toolbar in your browser that allows you to accomplish a myriad of things much more easily than if you didn’t have the toolbar. Disable javascript, highlight css elements, edit CSS elements and view your changes live, view code source more easily, outline block level elements, find bad code, view image properties, validate your code, auto-fill in forms (this is incredibly useful when testing a form with many fields), manage your cookies, and much, much more. It goes without saying that this toolbar is a necessity for any web developer, PHP/Javascript programmer, or WordPress plugin developer.

2. IE Tab Plus add-on for Mozilla Firefox

This add-on allows you, the user, to switch the Firefox rendering engine to that of Internet Explorer’s. Simply right click on a page and click view in IE; this opens a new viewing tab in your browser that renders your current web page in IE’s engine. When building web pages, web developers often switch between Firefox and Internet Explorer (the two most popular browsers) to see how their website looks in each. Now with IE Tab, developers can stay in their current browser

3. Ubiquity for Mozilla Firefox

Another Firefox add-on big surprise huh?!? Ubiquity allows for dynamic commands to be entered by the user. Ubiquity allows for extended browser funcionality with dynamic commands. After installing Ubiquity, users can subscribe to commands that Ubiquity developers have created. Pressing CTRL+Space brings up a console that accepts commands which otherwise would take a few extra steps to do manually. To list a few commands: lookup artilces in wikipedia, search, translate current page, and much more.

4. Ubiquity: PHP Function Lookup

PHP function look up adds a PHP function lookup command to Ubiquity. PHP developers often need to look up functions for a variety of reasons. Not anyone can remember the order of parameters and return type for thousands of functions. Opening a new tab, going to PHP.net, and typing in a function takes time. Ubiquity’s PHP function look up command lets you do this by simply pressing CTRL+Space then typing “php your_function”. This will save any PHP programmer tons of time.

5. Ubiquity: WordPress Codex Lookup

WordPress Codex Lookup adds a command look up feature to Ubiquity allowing you to quickly search the WordPress codex for information. If you use WordPress, create WordPress plugins, or modify WordPress themes, this will save you some time. Press CTRL+Space, then type “wp codex_search” and Ubiquity will open a new tab in your browser with your WP codex search.

Categories: CSS Tips and Tricks, PHP Programming, Rockville Web Development, Website Development, WordPress Customization, Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
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Content Boxes and Rounded Corners with CSS

July 2, 2010 by Taylor Lovett

Rounding corners has become more and more popular as the internet has grown older. Even Google allows users to select options in Adsense to round corners. There are many ways to round corners some using 2 images and CSS, 3 images and CSS, 4 images and no CSS, purely Javascript, only CSS (CSS3 only unfortunately), and more. To me CSS and rounding corners is an art because there are an infinite amount of ways to accomplish this effect but some are more elegant than others. This Bethesda web developer Maryland WordPress expert found a great website explaining in detail (CSS, XHTML markup, and images included) 25 great ways to achieve rounded corners in your layout with minimal HTML markup. Here’s the link:

25 Rounded Corners Techniques with CSS

Categories: Rockville Web Development, Tags: , , , , , ,
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Comment Template Customization in WordPress

June 24, 2010 by Taylor Lovett

Today I was working on my blog and started styling comments.php in my WordPress theme – this wasn’t too difficult but still took me a couple hours to sift through PHP/Wordpress jargon to find the HTML/CSS code I was looking for. Before long I wanted to style the actual comments posted by users. To my dismay I learned the code for user comments is not in the comments.php theme file but rather in the comments-template.php file in the WordPress wp-includes/ folder. Bummer.

Customizing the WordPress wp-includes/comments-template.php file is extremely complicated, even to a veteran PHP programmer, and after messing with it for 2 hours I started searching Google for a guide. I found out through various guides that the wp_list_comments() function called in comments.php can take a callback function as a parameter that will use a custom comment function as opposed to the WordPress default. By using the callback parameter to point to your own function, you can really take control of the WordPress comments style and structure.

I found a great guide that will take you step by step through creating your own comment function for the wp_list_comments() function to callback.

WordPress Comment Templates Customization

Also, for background information on wp_list_comments() and a full list of it’s parameters:

Function Reference for wp_list_comments()

Categories: PHP Programming, Rockville Web Development, WordPress Customization, Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
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The New 2010 Taylorlovett.com Homepage Is Up

June 12, 2010 by Taylor Lovett

Welcome to the 2010 version of Taylorlovett.com. This mission of this website is to bring web development solutions to small businesses. Based in Rockville Maryland, I specialize in websites and blogs (usually WordPress based), search engine optimization, and Google Adwords consultation. Please see my affordable web development solutions for more information on how I can improve the functionality and overall “feel” of your website as well as increase your websites internet exposure. If you would like to see some fine examples of my work, please see my web development portfolio. Welcome to the new site!

Categories: Google Adwords, Rockville Web Development, Site News, WordPress Customization, Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
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New Site Features and Web Development Projects

December 30, 2008 by Taylor Lovett

So I have added a few little features to the site. I added a photo viewer to the portfolio section to view screen shots more efficiently. I also updated the about section. I plan to add a more comprehensive resume section when I have the time. These days I am working full-time for a construction company in Rockville, Maryland as Head of IT. I have mainly been making their websites more dynamic, as in content controllable through PHP/MySQL administration panels. More updates should follow this one shortly.

Categories: PHP Programming, Rockville Web Development, Site News, Tags: , , , ,
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Portfolio Is Up and Running

June 1, 2008 by Taylor Lovett

The web development Maryland portfolio is now available. The portfolio contains projects ranging from web design and imagery to content management system integration and PHP programming. The portfolio contains three sections: Development, Imagery, and Management, Purely Scripts and Programming, and Freelance Images. Click on a project to learn more and to view screen shots.

Categories: Rockville Web Development, Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
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