Mike Meisner

Conditional PHP statements can be your best friend when developing for WordPress. They allow you to display information based on certain conditions. We can use WordPress’ internal meta data, such as tags and categories, to determine what to display in certain cases. In this case, we want to simply display a unique heading for various categories.

In your category.php page you’ll want to paste this code snippet:

Here’s a quick snippet of code that allows you to include any number of different headings using one category page. Of course, adjust the category id to your own.

<h1>Classifieds</h1>
<?php } elseif is_category('4')) { ?>
<h1>Environment & Real Estate</h1>
<?php } elseif is_category('18')) { ?>
<h1>Hot Buzz</h1>
<?php } elseif is_category('16')) { ?>
<h1>Product Plaza</h1>
<?php } elseif is_category('7')) { ?>
<h1>Menu Development</h1>
<?php } else { ?>

This is a basic, but powerful idea. You can use “elseif has_tag(’tagname here’))” to do the same thing with tags instead of categories for instance.

WordPress is the best platform to develop a site on for many reasons. It’s simple interface allows you to easily manage your site, and a worldwide community of developers have created some amazing plugins that build off the inherently awesome SEO foundation of WordPress. I consider the list below some of the most “essential” plugins that I install on every site to greatly enhance SEO and boost traffic.

Platinum SEO Pack – What more can I say about this, other than it should be required and used by anyone who’s faintly interested in optimizing their site. It lets you optimize every page AND post’s title, description, and keywords.

Google XML Sitemap generator – Does what it says. Generates a site map on the fly and submits it to the major search engines, including Google. Helps attract those search engine spiders.

SEO Smartlinks – Internal link juice is great, and this plugin finds related keywords and phrases from other stories or posts on your site, and automatically links to them.

A good ping list – Go to “Settings – Writing” and check what services are notified when you update your blog. If you’ve never been there before, chances are there’s only one. I’ve compiled a list of well over a hundred sites to notify when you update your site. Download it here!

Auto Social Poster or Wicked WP Poster – Don’t you have having to go to Twitter and announce your last blog post, or trying to bookmark your site in delicious to bump some traffic? These do all that and more for you; automated social bookmarking made easy.

SEO Super Comments – Now you can have each comment become an individual indexed page on your site. Brilliant!

Some other essential plugins:
Maxblogpress ping optimizer – Save your site from becoming a ping spammer with this plugin.
YARRP – Yet another related posts plugin. Helps boost internal page links by pointing users to related articles and posts.

A better “Read more” link – You can see my previous post for more on this, but the point is to generate a keyword-rich internal link by using the post title as the “Read more” link.

<?php the_content('Continue Reading' get_the_title()); ?>

Hello, and thank you for visiting my personal website and online portfolio. My name is Mike Meisner, and I specialize in front-end design and standards-compliant XHTML and CSS. I also have expertise in JavaScript, PHP, internet marketing, SEO, WordPress, templating, and various content management systems.

Visual Elegance
In design I strive to balance between text and visual elements, and I love to create websites that are attractive and elegant, yet also simple, informative and accessible to all.

Search Engine Optimization
I believe WordPress is the best platform for SEO. It’s been said to “Be in bed with Google” and I believe it. Combined with article marketing, social networking and bookmarking, and building intricate “linkwheels” to maximize keyword targeting, you’ll get to the first page of Google in no time – and that’s the most important aspect of having a website for most people.

Simple Management
I believe websites should be easy to manage and update. I use WordPress as my development platform, and find that it accommodates anyone’s needs. It’s incredibly easy to learn and you can easily manage your entire website with a few mouse clicks.

Customer Focus
I have worked with hundreds of customers in all sorts of markets. From initial meetings, to continued training and help after a project is done, I am always available and offer the best support to my clients.

All the Trimmings
During my career as a web designer I have juggled a number of roles and developed a well-rounded set of skills. If you are looking for someone who can “do it all”, look no further. I am an expert in internet and affiliate marketing; I create original graphics for print and the web; Contact me today!

You won’t get confused with technical jargon. I am patient and address all your concerns promptly and politely.

• I create websites you can update yourself – no technical experience necessary
• I have worked with websites for nearly ten years
• I have high rates of client retention and satisfaction
• I have a diverse portfolio

Let’s get started today!

I have been building websites for over six years and have a wide background, that includes experience in technical writing, customer support, marketing and communications and general project management. When combined, my skills allow me to bring a wide scope of experience and understanding to each project.

I can help you maximize your presence on the web. From social networks to ecommerce and blogs – I can handle them all. When combined and used effectively you will see a dramatic turn for the better. Your online presence directly correlates to your bottom line. Whether that be generating income, or displaying a gallery of artwork, I can make it happen.

I’m not a big fan of the other javascript libraries, so when someone comes along and creates a jQuery version of a popular rival’s plugin, I’m happy. That’s the case with the “s3Slider” plugin for jQuery. It’s super slick and reminiscent of Jondesign’s “smoothgallery”. I look forward to using this in future themes.

Check it out:
Visit the homepage
View the demonstration

The Google team recently took some time to address a common question. How can I improve my search engine rankings? To wit they created several small, concise guides about search engine optimization for you to download. These guides are easy to understand, and include lots of images for us visual-minded folks. I suggest downloading and reading them over when you have a chance. Many of the techniques are already known, but the explanations and visuals about how and why they improve your search results help greatly.

Google SEO guide

The Problem

I’ve enounterd the need for this on several projects and thought it might help. In this case, I didn’t want the featured slider to appear on every page, as it was located in the header. You too, may want to display page-specific headers based on certain conditions. Well, it’s not that hard with the “if” and “else” statements. Get ready to learn some very basic PHP!

Read the rest of this entry »

I recently came across a few interesting sites that offer tips and tricks on how to tweak Firefox; if you’re like me and want your nine tabs of data-heavy websites to run at hyper speed, check out these links. Most notable were the speed tweaks, which I can say increased this things effectiveness. Having used it for a few days, I can tell it helps speed things up, plus it’s interesting to know about these kinds of things.

How to turbocharge Firefox

Visit

21 Firefox hacks and tweaks

Visit

Speed up Firefox

Visit

Bonus speed hacks

I figured I’d post up the best speed improvement hacks for Firefox right here, since that’s what you want, right?

To switch Firefox from a six banger to a v8, type “about:config” in your address bar and hit return. Then modify these lines as shown:

network.http.max-connections 30 to 96
network.http.max-connections-per-server 15 to 32
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server 6 to 8
network.http.pipelining false to true
network.http.proxy.pipelining false to true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests 30 to 8
network.http.pipelining.ssl false to true
network.http.proxy.pipelining false to true