Tutorial/How-To »

Edit: This tip has been made into a Wordpress plugin! Get it here

I found an easy Wordpress trick that I think some of you may find useful. As I was writing an article for Simply-Basic.com the other day, I kept having to search through my 12-15 tabs that were open to find which one held my WP-Admin interface (I really should have just closed half of them). See, Wordpress’ back end doesn’t have a favicon associated with it, so it blends in fairly easily.

To fix this, I decided to give my Wordpress administrative pages a favicon. The process is amazingly simple. First, create a favicon or download my Wordpress-esque favicon (right click the image and select “Save Image…

Reviews »

If you run your own website you know how important interactivity with your visitors can be. Comments and forums that are a public way of interacting with visitors. There are also Shout Boxes, widgets that work almost like mini-chat rooms. But sometimes you need something more private or something that allows you to give personal attention to visitor’s questions in a speedier way then email.

I recently came across Plugoo, a free tool that lets you privately chat with your website visitors. How does it work? It’s a snippet of code that you paste into your website. This code implements a Flash-based control that looks like the image you see to your left. I configured a…

Useful Tools »

While trying to configure the new theme for Simply-Basic.com I ran into a common problem among web designers: not all browsers are created equal. The one most easily coded for, of course, is Mozilla Firefox. I found that Opera was also easily done. But Internet Explorer is notorious for interpreting standard code in an interesting manner, to say the least. Luckily, I came across a quick and easy fix that works for almost any browser you’ll need. It’s called “CSS Browser Selector”. It uses javascript, but if your visitors don’t have it enabled by now, they should be used to missing out on quite a few things.

Hacking your CSS is probably more effective and versatile…

Announcements »

I am proud to finally have “finished” the new theme for Simply-Basic.com. I call it “Shades of Grey”. If you are reading this via RSS, hop over and check it out. It is quite a different theme from the old one, which was a flat-out use of the BloggingPro free theme. This theme, however, is a compilation of at least three themes. The main two I used for Shades of Grey were BloggingPro by DesignDisease, and Marine by DezinerFolio.

Obviously, the theme isn’t perfect, but I decided I needed to quit tweaking it and upload it so that I could get all the bugs out. So if you notice a bug or have a suggestion for improving the…

Announcements »

I’m am in the process of uploading Simply-Basic.com’s new theme. I expect the first stages will take an hour or so. If you’ve come to the blog and things look messed up, this is why! As soon as I have the update complete, I’ll make a few comments about it. Sorry if this causes anybody to have unpleasent experiences!

Announcements »

Hello folks, just here to wish those of you who celebrate a very happy Thanksgiving from Simply-Basic.com. This has been a great week for me. I’m almost done finishing the new look of Simply-Basic.com. I’m hoping to upload the theme to the server this weekend and have it live. That’s why there haven’t been any new articles this week. But, after the big update is done I can focus on the content again. Thanks for being understanding and happy holidays!