Using RSS Feeds to add dynamic content to your website..video, images and text!

If you can have a program aggregate RSS feeds, then it makes sense that you can aggregate the aggregators and that’s what Popurl does…

Learn how to add video, image and text feeds to your website..

So, there is a lot of content in this post.. maybe too much.. but I found so many great RSS feed resources that I just felt a strong need to share them..all.

Using RSS Feeds to Add Dynamic Content to your Website:

I’ve recently been playing around with a blog idea using the onenews template which is basically a rip off of popurls.com website. Unfortunantly the template doesn’t come with the plugins for adding video and images that the premium theme offers so I had to try and figure that all out on my own. It took me a minute to figure it all out so I wanted to put together a list of some of the tools I found that worked when it came to adding video and image feeds to your site.

Using videos and image feeds can be a lot of fun and lets face it, it’s an awesome way to add more content to your website. A mashup!

We’ve all seen the Flickr RSS feeds on blogs and those are great but if you want to get a little more nifty you need to check out these sites…

• Yahoo Pipes – This is the answer..A little bit more complicated for the first time user but there are videos on youtube and on their site that can help you learn how to create pipes. Pipes are feeds from other sites or your site which you can filter RSS feeds using tags and other filters. Very cool. I’d say this is the best resource I found if your looking to create a mashup feed of images or videos on your website or blog.
• RSS2HTML.com – Create RSS feeds using video, images, audio or text using an easy to follow editor.

• RSS-to-Javascript – Free dynamic content for your site. RSS/RDF Converter Fill in the feeds details and it will generate the feed to JavaScript for you. Nice! This works for images and video feeds as well.
• RSS Xpress-Lite – RSSxpress Lite is a simple way of placing an RSS channel onto your own websites using a single line of JavaScript. You don’t even need to understand JavaScript, just cut an paste and hopefully it’ll work! This service enables you specify the RSS channel you want to add to your site and will then create the JavaScript required for you to cut and paste to your own pages – Just Try it!
  Just to give you an idea..I used this site to create the collegehumor feed at the bottom of my omgWTFDaily.com website. I’m still playing around with that site it is FAR from finished.
• FeedSweep – Create custom text feeds
• Create a Feed at Feed Widget.com
• Create a Video Feed at mefeedia.com

Need help? Can’t find those pesky video and podcast feeds?

Here are some tips:

Usernames:

http://www.youtube.com/rss/user/username/videos.rss
http://username.blip.tv/?1=1&s=posts&skin=rss

Searches:

http://api.search.yahoo.com/VideoSearchService/rss/videoSearch.xml?appid=ysearchblog&adult_ok=0&results=50&format=mpeg&query=yoursearch
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=yoursearch&num=20&output=rss
http://www.blogdigger.com/media/rss.jsp?q=yoursearch&media=audio&media=video&sortby=date
http://grouper.com/rss.ashx?q=yoursearch&st=0&s=7&ipod=1
http://www.blogdigger.com/media/rss.jsp?q=yoursearch&sortby=date&media=audio&media=video media=image
http://www.podscope.com/rsssearch.php?q=yoursearch
http://blip.tv/?1=1&search=yoursearch;s=posts&skin=rss

Tags:

http://blip.tv/?1=1&s=posts;topic_name=tag&skin=rss
http://www.youtube.com/rss/tag/tag.rss

Social Networking Banners for your Blog…

You can add one of these banners I made to the bottom of your posts using the tutorial I wrote about a few days ago… you can find it here..and clicking on the banners below will bring you to the websites where you can download the full icon sets. You can make your own banners.

These are banners not individual icons.

Wordpress’s Pings can Hurt your Blog & the Plugin that Saves the Day

If Pinging to you is just one of those geek terms that you’ve come across but just brushed it off as more techno-speak. Then it’s important that you read this post..

Pinging is why blogs are more powerful than ordinary websites and why blogs are easily indexed in search engines while websites struggle to get indexed, Pinging is also why blogs attract more traffic than ordinary websites..this is all because Blogs have the ability to PING! and you can’t afford to overlook the ping process, no matter how geeky it sounds.

Ok, so What is Pinging and what does it do for my blog?

In geek speak:“In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent to one or more “ping servers,” which can then generate a list of blogs that have new material. Many blog authoring tools automatically ping one or more servers each time the blogger creates a new post or updates an old one.” – according to the Wikipedia article: ‘Ping (blogging)‘.

Pinging – not to be confused with Pingback or trackback

Similarly, aggregators also use results from ping servers to tell subscribers which items on their subscription lists have fresh material.

In less-geek speak: One word: traffic. WordPress automatically notifies popular ping services that you’ve updated your blog by sending a XML-RPC ping each time you create or update a post. In turn, Ping Services process the ping and updates their proprietary indices with your update. Now people browsing sites like Technorati or Sphere can find your most recent posts! (Wordpress Codex)

Pinging is Super Fantastic but if your using Wordpress beware there are some major flaws in the way that Wordpress (by default) handles pinging that can get your blog banned from pinging services without you even knowing it…and causing you to loose traffic.

Write a post, PING, Great! Edit the post, PING, edit it again.. PING!! PING!! Not so great.

Multiple pinging can get you banned and if you’ve had your WordPress blog for some time then it’s highly possible that you’ve already been banned.

Do not fret my fearless warriors.. there is a WordPress plugin that fixes this problem ..

The Solution: MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer Plugin!

With this plugin you can list all the ping services you want to ping like usual but you can also see which posts have been pinged and when, limit the amount of times your site is pinged, when you edit an existing post, it won’t send an unnecessary ping to ping services and saves your blog from getting banned.

If you think you’ve already covered this issue..just so you know..these older plugins don’t work anymore:

• Smart Update Pinger
• Ping Fix
• WP Cron Future Ping

If your not sure which Ping sites to list in your Wordpress read this post…

• Ping Service List to use with Wordpress

Carry on my good soldier!

Cool Links:

• MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer
• WordPress Tutorial: Using TrackBack and Pingback
• Referer.org Who’s linking to you?
• TwitterFeed – Feed your blog to your Twitter
• 10 Optimization Tips – Tips to optimize your blog by weblogtoolscollection.com
• 10 Tips for Attracting More Comments
• Web Page Analyzer – websiteoptimization.com
• Use FeedBurner to Manage Your WordPress Feeds
• Display Inline Ads With Custom Fields and WordPress
• The best Ping Services to use with Wordpress
• 70+ Pinging Services for your WordPress blog

Helpful Links:

Remember to Digg this post so more people can fix this issue.. :X

I heart Wood – Wood Textures and Wallpapers

I heart Wood Wallpapers and Textures :X

I LOVE this wallpaper - Wood dreams by ~wow-dg

Wood by ~Daisuke-Paster

Old Wood by ~DEVi8design 

Wood Pack 1 by ~J-Owen

It’s the Shiznit! iPhone themes + icons and wallpapers

Here is updated popular “Shelves” theme. Now everything lines up perfectly in Firmware 1.1.3. The shelf orientation and page indicator backdrop have been adjusted so everything looks nice and tight. Enjoy, post on here if you have any questions.

Icon come in .png format so you don’t HAVE to use them for an iPhone you can use them anywhere..basically.

Picnic icon set – click image for download

More icons from this set for social site Visit MacThemes.com

YES! The best Webdesign Tools Online

Cool Design Tools to make you a better and faster designer.

Feel free to add more in the comments.

• CSS Type Set – Create custom CSS type styles with this tool.
• CSS Superdouche – Strip unneeded content and redundant calls from your CSS, reducing its size and complexity.
• Code Beautifier – Format and optimize your CSS code.
• CSSFly – In-browser editing of (X)HTML and CSS.
• CSS Drive CSS Compressor – Decrease your CSS file size and loading speed with this tool.

• Clean CSS – Another CSS optimization tool for reducing your CSS file size.
• EM Calculator – Converts your pixel-based sizes to em units for more scalable and accessible CSS design.
• CSS Redundancy Checker – Eliminate unused CSS selectors automatically as well as check for redundancy in your CSS files.
• GrayBit – Accessibility testing tool that displays a full-color Web page in grayscale.
• ProtoShare – Create a clickable website prototype and get feedback, ideas and suggestions from your team members.
• Most Sliced – A directory of image slicing services that includes reviews and ratings from users.
• Inserit – A code-free CMS for Web designers.

• LightCMS – A CMS for Web designers that lets you create websites your clients can manage themselves.
• clickbooq – A website creation and portfolio management tool.
• jumpchart – Website planning app that lets you export clean CSS/XHTML.

• inblogit – A blogging tool for Web designers that can be integrated into any website design.
• Reflect – A website platform and hosting service for Web designers that lets them and their clients create and manage websites.
• Carbonmade – An online portfolio site for designers with free and paid plans.
• ThemesPress – Automatically convert your template files into WordPress themes.

• Feng GUI – Generates heatmaps for your website by simulating human vision during the first five seconds of viewing your website.
• Text Generator – Generates lorem ipsum-like text.
• webvanta – Free business website builder and hosting aimed at providing design professionals a quicker way to build websites.
• Tuplix – Easy to use website authoring tool that works for new or existing websites.
• FolioSnap – Website portfolio builder for creative professionals.
• Frontfriend – CMS for designers that lets them build forms and templates and then lets their clients fill in their own information.
• ScrnShots – Host, share and tag your screenshots.
• flickrSLiDR – Create and embed a flickr slideshow on your website or blog.
• websnapr 2.0 – Online tool for capturing thumbnail of websites.
• StyleIgnite – Design snippets (CSS, HTML, and more) for contact forms, layouts, and more that you can use on your sites.
• BgPatterns – Background pattern creation tool with live preview.

• The Effect Generator – Create animated slideshows, buttons, and more with this tool.
• The Color Wizard – Submit a color and this tool will bring back matching colors.
• ColorJack – A color scheme gallery that also explores color theory.
• My cool button – Web 2.0 button creator.

• [ws] Color Scheme Generator 2 – An easy to use color scheme creator.
• Cornershop – Get the CSS and images to put rounded corners on your website.
• CSSround – Another tool to create rounded corners on your website.
• Color Hunter – A color palette creation tool that lets you pull color palettes from images.
• Web Graphics Maker – A free tool to create backgrounds, lines and bullets for your website.

• As Button Generator – Free Web button creator.
• Picreflect – A free tool to create reflections for your photos.
• Bradicon! – Create icons from any image.
• TabCreatr – Create CSS tabbed navigation for your site.
• List-u-Like CSS Generator – A tool to create list-based navigation bars.
• text2PNG.com – Convert text headers and navigation to PNG files.

• Favicon Generator Tool – Free favicon creator from Dagon Design
• Genfavicon – A free favicon generator.
• QuickRibbon.com – Create custom ribbons with or without links for your site.
• Glassy Buttons – Create custom glassy style buttons.
• Website Ribbon Generator – Create free ribbons for your site with or without hyperlinks.
• 4096 Color Wheel – A color scheme generator that shows you Web-safe, Web-smart and unsafe colors.
• Web 2.0 Free Logo Generator – Create your own custom Web 2.0 logo.
• colordb – Another color palette generator, though this one is much more in depth than most.
• colorcombos.com – A huge library of color combinations.
• ColorToy 2.0 – A Flash-based color palette generator.
• Accessibility Color Wheel – Check the readability of your background and text color combinations. This tool will tell you if there is enough contrast between the two.
• The Best Designs – A huge showcase of Web designs and designers.
• Pattern Tap – Design gallery of different website elements (headers, 404 pages, and the like).
• eduStyle – A Web design gallery specifically featuring academic websites.

• finalcrit.com – Free portfolio site for designers.
• Should Redesign? – Get feedback on whether or not a redesign is needed for your site.
• Designflavr – Design galleries for all sorts of artwork, including Flash and CSS websites.
• View – Showcase of website that can be sorted by color or other criteria.

• InspirationKing – A searchable gallery of websites for inspiration.
• DesignerSource – A website design gallery that is browsable by topic or color.
• BestWebGallery – Tagged website design showcase.
• StyleVault – Another Web design gallery that lets you rate designs.

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My Personal Favorite Design Blogs & Sites

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Blogs about Design and Blogging

• Mashable.com
• WPrecipes.com
• Blogohblog.com
• problogdesign.com
• blogcatalog.com
• alistapart.com
• Spoono.com
• crazyleafdesign.com
• dailyblogtips.com
• Bartelme Design
• Brian Gardner
• Bitt Box
• Pearsonified
• 456 Berea Street

Top 25 Blogs About Blogging..

1. Problogger
2. Copyblogger
3. John Chow
4. Quick Online TipsDaily Blog Tips
5. Lorelle on Wordpress
6. Dosh DoshPerformancing
7. Weblog Tools Collection
8. Blog Herald
9. Blogging Pro
10. Successful-Blog
11. JohnTP
12. Engtech
13. Bloggers Blog
14. Andy Beard
15. ChrisG
16. Converstations
17. The Wrong Advices
18. Business Blog Wire
19. Alister Cameron
20. Blog About Your Blog
21. Blogtrepreneur
22. I Help You Blog
23. Build A Better Blog

Wordpress as a CMS with WP Remix

WP Remix a WordPress is by far the coolest and most customizable theme I’ve seen by far for Wordpress. It’s so amazing it basically turns your Wordpress into a CMS and is so completely customizable even for newbies. Here’s some information on how it all works. This is a premium theme of course but it looks to be very much worth it. *starts counting pennies*

Not just a theme. A complete package.

WP Remix a WordPress powered master theme, is completely customizable, quality coded & comes bundled with many layout options that helps everyone create custom websites in minutes saves weeks of time, maintaining top notch standards – compliant quality.

• Ideal for EVERYONE!
• Multi Purpose, hassle-free theme that covers almost every possible layout. Saves you weeks of time.
• WordPress as CMS at its best.
• Insert a page layout by a single click. Edit them in visual editor and publish!. What’s more you can set different sidebar and headers for different pages if you wish.
• Multiple Options – Easily Customizable.
• A Blog + 10 Homepage options + 20 Single page with different layout + 10 product/gallery page + 5 Miscellaneous page, Plugins compatibility, Ajax slider, Smart Drop menu, Tabs, Table…
• Light-weight, Professional code and design

W3C Valid, Table less & Cross browser compatible, widget-ready, highly customizable…

You only need one WP Remix theme to build all your web projects. Take a look at complete features!

How Does It Work?

While creating a page, simply insert the page layout of your choice in visual editor and edit it. Select different sidebar and/or header from a dropdown for this particular page if you wish and simply publish the page.

• Upload & Activate the theme.
• Set Admin Options as mentioned in Theme Guide
• Create n Edit pages in Visual editor like a CMS.
• Done!

To begin with, we have a free PHPBB3 template on offer that that resembles WP Remix theme.
Get some resources»

8 Beautiful Wordpress Themes for Your Photo-Blog + 3 Nifty Plugins

The fact is there’s just not a whole lot of photoblog WP themes out there..believe me, I’ve been on the prowl searching online so I can share them with you and so far here is the list of themes that passed my stringent geek test & All are 100% geek approved.

I also added 3 Wordpress plugins at the bottom of the post that were developed specifically for photo-bloggers.

Enjoy the themes and remember to leave a comment or better yet digg this post! :X

Sharpfolio is a free WordPress theme designed to enable Web Designers, Graphic Designers, Photographers, Motion Designers, Artists or any creative professional to showcase their work in a simple, clean, beautiful portfolio. Sharpfolio aims to focus primarily on your work, because after all, this is what’s most important.

“Porftolio Wordpress Theme” is a wordpress theme designed for web portfolios and (for now) just for web portfolios. It is coming with an Administrative Panel from where you can edit the head quote text, you can edit all theme colors, font families, font sizes and you can fill a curriculum vitae and display it into a special page. Pretty Cool, eh?

DarkOFluid is a 2 column fluid width round corner wordpress theme. It includes a widgetize and jquery slide sidebar. - Darofluid demo

VizBiz Portfolio Theme – This is a premium theme by iTheme so it’s not free but it’s really beautiful and nifty so if your a photographer I believe it’d be worth the cash. Cost: $79.95

Portfolio Press. from Blog Oh! Blog – This is a dark-colored theme suitable for anyone who wants to create a quick portfolio or wants to showcase his work through WordPress. The theme is fully CSS/XHTML validated, WordPress 2.6+ ready and comes with easy to modify code. The comments are nicely designed with Gravatar functionality.

Photo-Blog wordpress theme

- this free wp theme is specially made for photo blogs, single column design, Unique design, xhtml valid, Widget ready plus it’s Orange!

Nishita – A simple, elegant styled PhotoBlog theme for Wordpress.

f8 – is a premium theme by Thad Allender it’s not free but whoa is it awesome – it’s a unique theme for Wordpress that can transform your Web site or blog into a fully functioning photography or multimedia portfolio Web site. SEO optimized, iPhone compatible, 100% customizable options page, grid-based css, built-in Galleria support, slideshow-enabled, built-in multimedia support, auto or manual thumbnail control, Gravatars, plus much, much more. All colors, fonts, front page categories, contact info, slideshow height and other options can be managed on the f8 theme options page. There is no need to edit theme code, unless you want to customize f8. THUMBNAIL DOESN’T DO IT JUSTICE.

Plugins for Photobloggers:

Yet Another Photoblog – WP Plugin

Convert your WordPress 2.5+ installation into a full featured photoblog in virtually no time. Use the full range of WordPress functions and plugins: Benefit from the big community WordPress has to offer.

YAPB is a photoblog plugin

One post, one image, one description. Your image should be worth that. If you need to display multiple images in one post – Just download and use one of the several available gallery plugins for WordPress.

PhotoBlog

This Plugin convert your WordPress’s blog into a photoblog. Include theme.

PhotoQ Photoblog Plugin

Turns WordPress into a photoblog. Allows queue based photo management, batch uploads and automatic posting of photos at regular intervals.

2 “Hand Drawn” Social Networking Icon Sets…Super Digg Nifty!

Here are two really cool hand drawn social networking icon sets that I think would really help your blog stand out in the crowd. Add some chic to your geek and Visit the artists websites to download these sets.

If you want to learn how to add social networking icons to your blog in a really different way..by using a social networking banner at the bottom of your post..then please read this tutorial I posted recently.

Handycons – is a free, hand drawn social media icon set that contains 12 icons. Package contains icons for del.icio.us, Digg, Mixx, DesignBump, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Developer Zone, DesignFloat, Technorati, Twitter and RSS feed & Email icon, of course. All icons are available in four sizes: 16×16, 24×24, 32×32 and 48×48 pixels.

Simple Balance 2.1 – Take control of your Blog theme..

Simple Balance 2.1 – Everything is Under Control

This is a really nice theme and I’ve actually had a chance to play around with it a bit and I really liked all the options and customization opportunities it has. It comes with 2 color schemes Blue Bubble and Curly Green but you can easily make your own themes so the sky is really the limit.

Simple Balance also comes with a Theme Option page which is always nice for users who are not familiar with editing theme files. Using the Theme options page you can choose your color scheme, the layout structure, display sidebar image, display email subscription form, use custom feed url, choose to display blog description under the title, change pages to display in the top menu, display full posts or excerpts on home page, post count, display featured post, choose which post to display as feature, 125×125 banner ad placement and Top banner choice..check it out because there’s even more options. – View Screenshot of Options Page

WP CODA – 3 Free & Unique Wordpress Themes

WP Coda Free Wordpress Themes

WP CODA – created by Greg Johnson who has successfully modified several already-existing code snippets and implemented it to a nice Wordpress layout to mimic the functionality of the very popular Coda website by Panic. This theme works in every major browser.
Code snippets used are: Coda Slider Effect, Coda Popup Bubbles, FancyBox and CSS Image PreLoader.

You have to register at Bustatheme.com to download this theme, it’s free to register but kind of a pain in the ass..I don’t know why people set their blogs up like that all it does is stop people from interacting with your site. Grr! You can also download it here. I know shame on me.

Coda Blue WordPress Theme

WP Coda Blue is another Coda theme by Greg Johnson at Bustatheme.com

“WP CODA has been a tremendous hit. While I no longer have the intention of continuing development with WP CODA – at the request of Panic! – I wanted to release CODA BLUE and the accompanying PSD as promised. This will be the last CODA release that mimics the Coda site functionality. While I may use some of the techniques used in this theme again, I will not be duplicating the functionality of the Coda site so closely”. – Greg Johnson

Coda Orange Wordpress Theme

WP CODA Orange this version of CODA was designed by Kerry Webster.

“I found the theme on the ever present Weblog Tools Collection theme release posts. I have added my own twists and simplified the graphic layout so others could take the files I created and make their own CODA theme flavor”. – Kerry Webster