Tanner Hobin » Web Site Development

New Year, New Design, New Beginnings

Tanner Hobin — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:36:50 +0000

I’ve just completed loading my new theme, and wow, was it an educational experience. I finally had the chance to learn jQuery, implement Blueprint CSS, implement sIFR and take care of some usability issues that were bugging me. At the end of the process I came to the realization that my personal blog is good, but could be much better.

Which is why I’ve devoted 2009 to increasing posts and improving quality of content. With that said, the plan is to build a separate blog that will house all of my search marketing, social media, web development and other business type posts while keeping this blog personal. I’ll be unveiling the new blog January 2009. Stay Tuned…

WordPress 2.7 Demo

Tanner Hobin — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:32:16 +0000

Available November 2008!

Features Include:

New Admin UI – Primary menu ajaxified, so no more click/reload to manage and click/reload to post.
Plugin Upload Integration – Load and activate through admin, no more download then ftp then activate.
Customizable Views – Drag and drop elements in post and page views. Exclude elements that you don’t use.
Quick and Bulk Edit – Mass edit features for managing post.
Replying to Comments – Reply to comments within the admin panel. Oh yeah, they’re threaded!

Hug a Developer

Tanner Hobin — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:27:23 +0000

Compliments of: The Blomsma Code

Custom 404 Page for WordPress

Tanner Hobin — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:46:02 +0000

So I was bored around 4am and decided to build out a custom 404 page for my blog…

Here is the script I used for the typing effect.

If you want a custom 404 error page on your WordPress blog, simply edit the 404.php page in your theme.

Typically found here:

wp-content/themes/(your active theme)/404.php

Here are some funny 404 pages that inspired me:

Update: (8-13-2009) Due to the recent redesign, the custom 404 page is no longer as cool. I’ll work on another concept soon.

A Journey Through WordPress Theme Design

Tanner Hobin — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:20:51 +0000

A while back I started the tedious process of building a custom WordPress theme for my blog. I’d start a design and trash it sometimes in the same day. One day I came across a color scheme based on facebook that I really liked. The rest is history. All told it only took a couple hours a day for 3 days to complete the initial design.

I took a screenshots throughout the process with the idea of collaborating them into a slideshow. The slide show starts with my old theme and moves through the process as I took the default theme and re-designed it.

Here is a list of the resources I used for developing the new theme.

How Customizable is WordPress?

Tanner Hobin — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 06:13:22 +0000

I plan on finding out over the next week or so while I re-design my blog. I’ve wanted to create my own theme for quite some time now, and I finally have the time to do so. You can follow the complete re-design by using the theme links on the sidebar. I’ll be keeping track of all tools, WordPress template tags, and plugins I use for the new design in hopes that it might help others who share my interest for a custom theme.

Is It Scary How Much Your Blog Sucks?

Tanner Hobin — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:21:58 +0000

Ben Cook over at Blogging Experiments put together a list of indications that your blog might suck. My favorite is, “If your color scheme looks like a Disney character exploded, your blog might suck.”

Let’s face it, no one wants a sucky blog. Take a look at this list and adjust accordingly. It’s always great to get other bloggers opinions regarding your blog, but actually doing something about it is what makes a blogger successful.

What can AJAX do for your Website?

Tanner Hobin — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 02:47:55 +0000

The answer is pretty much anything you want. Ajax, used correctly, creates an extremely interactive and user friendly interface. It can also allow for greater distribution of optimized content resulting in positive rankings. I recently had the pleasure of integrating some Ajax features into a site.

Notice how the content at the bottom of the product page here is clean and condensed in a basic tab format. This is a great way to conceal content until it is needed. The best part is that the content actually resides in the code, but with a little CSS it is screened.

Finally, check out the larger image link here. This use of Ajax meant we were able to remove a pesky pop-up of the image and replace it with a nice looking, faster loading method.

This was my first experience coding Ajax features, and Iâ€™m hooked. Now I find myself looking for other types of Ajax coding tricks.

Website Under Construction Web Page

Tanner Hobin — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 15:20:14 +0000

When webmasters decide to redesign a website, some tend to use an under construction web page. This can be very harmful to search engine rankings, not to mention if anyone comes to your site looking for information they will leave the under construction web page and never come back. I mean, how many times have you gone back to a site with an under construction web page? I’ll bet never. Want to know why redesign website pages lose ranking in the search engines? When the search engine crawler comes to a road block such as an under construction web page, they have nothing to index and therefore leave.

The best solution is to redesign your website in a development environment such as a sub-domain, or new directory. That way you don’t have to deal with any down time and lose any traffic, and when your new site is ready don’t forget to use 301 redirects to point your old urls to their new counter part.

Looking for a Free HTML Editor?

Tanner Hobin — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 01:38:22 +0000

If you’re building or managing small websites, or just starting to learn website design, then Trellian WebPage is for you. It is by far the most user friendly open source WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor out there. Coming from someone who relies so heavily on Dreamweaver, this is a brave statement. I should clarify before going any further; for the money, Dreamweaver is the absolute best web development tool on the market. However, for the novice website designer that doesn’t want to sink any money into a program like Dreamweaver; Trellian WebPage is the best alternative. I recently had the opportunity to test drive Trellian WebPage for a couple of colleagues and here’s the features that stuck out to me:

Clean user friendly interface
Easy to navigate tool structure
Design view for graphical layout
Code view for HTML coding
Preview for testing and modifying
Integrated file management system
Publishing tool using ftp
It’s FREE!

It’s so simple, if you can create a word document; you can create a website. Download a copy today and start building your websites with ease.