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A few more thoughts on Mars Edit 3

I bought Mars Edit 3 a few weeks ago and wrote a quick review. So time for an update! Here are some things that I really think make it an indispensible tool.

My favorite is that it’s easy to use to cross post from one blog to another. Simply open an existing post to edit, then from the drop down menu select a new blog site and click on publish. You will loose the existing categories and need to re-define them (understandable) but the tags will stay in-tact.

I also realize this maybe a good offline back up tool for your content especially if you increase the number of posts for it to sync. Update: Just noticed the dialog box to increase the post limit has a performance warning. I’ve asked the developer for clarification.

So four things that I wish it would have are…

I wish Mars Edit had the ability to schedule posts to publish on a future date.
Update: I was informed by the developer that you can actually do this. First, open up the selected post to edit and once open, go to drop down menu for “Post”, select “Edit Date” to specify the future date to publish on. It’s too bad this feature is kind of hidden away and not part of the post editor window.

marsedit-edit-date.jpg

Secondly,  it’d be nice to be able to set line spacing aka leading in the editor. The default font is a bit too small for me but it can be increased but I don’t see a way to increase the leading.

Thirdly, I wish the keyboard shortcut to define a link was not so complicated, a simple Apple + l (for link) would be nice. And why not also allow a right click to assign a link?

And one last feature wish would be for a way to change the author attribution when editing a post.

Other than these relatively minor issues, I readily recommend Mars Edit for writing if you’re on the Mac.

Get it: Mars Edit 3

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Envato now offering Paid WordPress plugins

We ran across paid WordPress plugins now at Envato’s Code Canyon.

Some of the more interesting ones are an S3 backup tool, Cufon font custom replacement, an Ajax based WP admin login lightbox, an FAQ manager, and an internal page linker (that maybe come useless with WP 3.1 coming soon).

We’ve noticed that a handful of similar plugins can be acquired for free at WordPress.org’s plugin library.

For example, their mobile phone theme switcher ($25!) definitely has a handful of free and solid alternatives at WordPress.org. Update: The theme switcher includes 8 themes. Compare with WordPress Mobile Pack (free) and draw your own conclusions.

An advantage of buying a plugin would be if you needed almost guaranteed developer support and more detailed documentation.

Skimming through the various plugin support messages, it seems like most of the Code Canyon developers are being responsive to their customers. So if you’re on a mission critical project, this maybe a viable alternative, after all, we get what we pay for.

Get it: Envato Code Canyon WordPress plugins

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Quick Tip: Cross Browser Test for free with Adobe Browser Labs

When you’re building a site, make sure you check out  your site in multiple web browsers other than the one you use regularly.

The ones you want to pay attention to (other than Internet Explorer and Firefox) are Chrome, Safari, and Opera.

If you’re on a Mac, unless you have a virtualized Windows installation, then IE is easily not available. So a great way to QA your site is with Adobe’s Browser Labs web app that will let you see how different web browsers render your site. They also have multiple versions of IE available. Sometimes the different versions of Internet Explorer renders pages very different from each other.  Adobe Browser Labs is free and easy to use.

Remember that your site’s not going to always look perfect in all the browsers so if you’re 95% “good to go” with most of the browsers especially if it’s IE and Firefox, then launch your site and make post launch fixes.

Get it: Adobe’s Browser Labs

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What’s new in WordPress 3.1?

The WordPress.org team is busy getting WordPress 3.1 for self hosted sites ready to go in the next few weeks. So what’s inside?

Some of the more interesting features that could make the final release:

New front end admin toolbar
This new feature adds a similar toolbar used on WordPress.com and currently available through a 3rd party plugin to the top of your self hosted site. The admin toolbar gives you easy access to posts, pages, and other settings while viewing your published web site.

Enhanced theme search
Remember a few months ago, WordPress.com was upgraded with a slicker new theme finder? Some of these will be headed over to your self hosted WordPress site.

Simpler password reset
Instead of two emails to get your lost password fixed, it’s going to be reduced down to one.

Internal page/post linking
When inserting links on posts/pages you can now select the destination post or page through a pop up window.

There are also various admin UI updates including sortable columns, new pagination style, and enhanced user administration page. We’ve noticed the sortable columns can already be seen in WordPress.com admin sites.

Note that some of these changes may not make the final release so cross your fingers.

Here’s the full list of 3.1 updates at WordPress.org. We’ll keep you updated on the release of version 3.1.

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Setup a project discussion site in minutes

There are a lot of choices out there when you want to use a web application instead of emails to discuss a project. Our favorite full feature app is Basecamp but it maybe too complicated for some users and it’s limited to one project for free accounts.

A more simpler solution might be to use a new web app called Brizzly which was designed to be simple and easy to set up.

It shows the whole discussion on a single web page. If you hate tracking down the latest message thread in your email box, something like Brizzly could work well for you. I took a quick look at it over at my other site StartupInsider.net. Read the mini review…

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What’s in my Plugins folder?

A friend of mine asked me about “must-have” WordPress plugins and I thought what a great way to start a post.

For the quick and dirty answer, here’s a screenshot (click it for a full size). It’s quite amazing that these 20 or so plugins work together  without clobbering each other but that’s a testament to the WordPress development  team and product.

I’ll do a write up about each one later but for now enjoy…

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Make your own shortened URLs with le petite url

You’ve been probably seen those shortened URLs (example: http://goo.gl/8hsrE) on Twitter or Facebook. What’s the big deal about them? With the shorter URL, they allow more of the message to fit inside Twitter’s 140 character limit. People use a URL shortener website services like bit.ly or tinyurl or Google’s goo.gl.

But now if you have a relatively short domain name, you can do the same while keeping your URL. Install the le petite url plugin and it will display an admin widget in your posts and pages with an auto generated shortened URL. The plugin is well written has a fair amount of features and seems to be reliable so far.

Real world example: the plugin generated this shortened URL for this page:

http://wpverse.com/bfeyi

verus the full URL:

http://wpverse.com/2011/01/make-your-own-shortened-urls-with-le-petite-url/

If I was really clever, I would register WPver.se (at a Sweden registrar) and use that as for both my domain and shortener. That would reduce the length of my shortened URL by 3 characters by getting rid of the “com.”

Quick Tip: This plugin includes a widget to display the shortened URL on the sidebar so your visitors don’t have to run the page through a 3rd party URL shortener and it will allow you to keep your domain name branding.

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Quick Tip: Add excerpts to search results page

If you’ve tried searching for a keyword on a WP site, you may have noticed that the search results don’t always include an excerpt of matching page(s). While you’re at it, have you tried the search function on your site? The missing excerpt is not WordPress’s fault, in reality the theme designer neglected or chose not to include that feature in the theme.

Here’s how to quickly add an excerpt to your search results page by hacking your theme. Important: make sure you have a copy of your original theme and/or backup the existing search.php page ready to restore in case you get in trouble. We’re not responsible if you muck up your site.

In WordPress admin, select Appearance -> Editor -> Search.php (screenshot below) Add the following tag after the end of the headline tag, usually </h2>:

<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

And hit “Save” and go try a search on your site!

the_excerpt_wordpress_code.jpg

Another tip, now that you’ve improved it with excerpts,  why not improve it further by trying Relevanssi plugin? Relevannsi will help bump up the quality of matching results. You’ll still need to  do a bit of work tagging your posts or pages but it’s worth it.

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Where to find great free WordPress themes

A few weeks ago there was a WordPress community security scare because of possible malware in WordPress themes. So the general rule maybe to get them for trusted sources. But who’s a trusted source and which ones are legitately owned by the designers?

WPMU.org has a great article covering both issues along with a list of commerical WP theme development companies like WooThemes, Graph Paper Press, and others giving back to the WordPress community with free themes using their well developed core framework.

It’s a great article especially as I’ve never heard of a few of the groups including Theme Labs with over 100 free(!) themes. All in all, I can count around 100 free themes provided by for profit companies.

Read it: WPMU.org

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DIY SEO: Scribe Plugin & Service

What’s the best way to get traffic? It’s the old adage, lots of hard work. Simply build the best and most relevant content on your WordPress site. The second best bet is to use a search engine optimization (plugin) for WordPress that will help you fill out the required fields to get a search engine to properly crawl your site.

The third step is to get some advice and research on the best practices and what relevant keywords to use. Usually hiring an “expert” is going to easily cost you hundreds of dollars. So for many of us, we’d resort first to the Do It Yourself model.

So we were excited when we heard the team that brought us StudioPress and the Genesis theme framework recently introduced Scribe, which is a self-service Search Engine Optimization (SEO) web app with a complementary WordPress plugin.

We were also fans of Brain Gardners’ earlier commercial WordPress offerings (the predecessors to StudioPress), so we had high hopes for Scribe. Was this anticipation well deserved?

First the numbers, Scribe starts at $17/month and includes up to 15 evaluations and 35 keyword searches. According to Scribe, it takes about 3-5 evaluations per web page to fully optimize it. Evaluations are every time you scan a web page.

Let’s get started. After signing up with a credit card on ScribeSEO.com, they’ll assign you an API key. The installation process is fairly straight forward, you’ll install their suppplied plugin and paste that API key into a field.

Next you’ll have to have install one of the many WordPress SEO plugins. The one that we like so far is All in One SEO pack. Scribe will detect available SEO plugins and adjust its status indicators for each post depending on which SEO plugin you’re using.

When you open an existing post, you’ll see 3 check box status in the right side widget area: Title Tag Ready, Meta Descriptions, and Content Ready. Think of these as check list to help you figure out where the page stands in terms of search engine readiness.

There’s also a widget called Scribe Link Building which won’t show any data until you scan / analyze the page.

This review will be on going so we can’t really answer whether or not it works but so far we like what we see. The only drawback so far is that there’s really little hand holding once you’re signed up. I hate to say it but you’re kind of your own to figure this out as we didn’t see any “Getting Started” tutorial.

The Welcome email gets you up to installing the API key and a link to the support pages but there definitely needs to be a little bit more TLC for new users.

Stay tuned as we optimize real world sites. One test case will be this site and another will be a biotech services web site. Let’s see if Scribe becomes an indispensable SEO tool or not.

Get it: Scribe