The first thing to do is create an xml file called opensearch.xml and save in a folder called xml. Place the following code below inside.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<ShortName>Duane Blake</ShortName>
<Description>Duane Blake Mini Site Search</Description>
<Image height="16" width="16" type="image/x-icon">http://duaneblake.co.uk/favicon.ico</Image>
<Url type="text/html" method="get" template="http://duaneblake.co.uk/?s={searchTerms}"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>

Once the xml is complete in the page header place the following

<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="http://www.yoursitedomain.com/xml/opensearch.xml" title="Duane Blake Site Search" />

Now if you refresh the page you should be able to see the search box in Firefox mini search box.

Further Reading

Easily choose your favorite search engine

After doing some looking through the WordPress codex, there is already a function built in the wordpress core to do this it is called get_page. What the get_page does is allows you to pull the contents of the page as an object.

To do this you need the wordpress Page ID, which you can grab from where you edit the page template, in the screenshot below.

Place the following code on your page

<?php

$page_id = 42; //Your Page ID
$page_data = get_page( $page_id );

// Displays the title
echo '<h1>'. $page_data->post_title .'</h1>';

// Displays the content
echo apply_filters('the_content', $page_data->post_content);
?>

If you know have any other ways to create multiple wordpress pages on one page please drop me a message or leave a comment below.

Further Reading

WordPress Codex on get page

Declaration of War

When building a stylesheet one of the important things. I tend to do is add some introduction paragraphs describing what is the purpose of the stylesheet. The screen shot below describe what usually goes into the header of one my stylesheets

The first part as Information about the project such as the file name, Description and any additional guidelines for any team members which may be using the code.

The second part of the screenshot is the table content this has two functions. It allows another coder to find sections of the code easily to prevent jumping in out of the Dom inspector like Firebug and Dragonfly. The second function when writing Css it’s easy to make the code become a mess this allows another developer when writing code to group related selectors together rather than the bottom of the page.

The third part shows what colours have been used in the project, this helps if another coder has not seen the style guide for the project or one doesn’t exist this give an indication of the colours to follow through in the design

Build an Arsenal

After you start developing several sites you start reuse certain elements and classes through out the project. Rather than rewriting these on each project it is best to create a library of reusable classes which you use on each project.

In war their are always casualties

No matter how much future developments are in the browsers on certain projects you have to work with the burden which is Internet Explorer, In worse cases IE6. As some projects don’t have the luxury of ignoring it.

To target IE it is best to use a conditional stylesheet to target IE but an alternative way is below:

Have a Battle Plan and stick to it

A lot of Front End Developers recommend putting each property on a separate line. I personally prefer to put each Css property on the same line as the selector and then indent any child selectors like li, a. Both ways are fine to do so but when working in the teams it important that everyone is consistent.

Other Strategy’s

As optional extra you can add the current version number of the css file. To tell your team what version you are currently working on. I tend not to use this anymore as at home I use github and at work I use SVN.

On large sites especially when working on large eccomerce site. A stylesheet can start to get very large in page file size. What we do we have two stylesheet for each css file. A development css which contains the raw stylesheet. The second stylesheet is the production stylesheet which as been compressed using YUI Compressor.

Further Reading

• 30 Css best practices for beginners
• Css Best Practices
• 10 best css practices to improve your code
• 70 expert ideas for better css coding

1. Disable css and Javascript

   In Firefox this is straight forward if you have the web developer toolbar installed.

   Disable Css

   

   Disable Javascript

   

   Typical things to look out for are:

   • Hidden content (Content like Javascript Show/Hide and LightBoxes are fine as these are on the page)
   • Hidden links
   • Can you still navigate through the site
   • Is the site still usable(Doesn’t matter visually but from a navigation point of view)

2. Check the back links

   For checking back links I use a excellent tool called open site explorer from SEOmoz. It allows you to find all the backlinks to the website and what is the Page Authority and domain authority of the site. Unless you have a seomoz account, You will only get basic access but is still a good starter for ten.

   The Parameters I tend to use are below(This presentation is a couple months old but you can still follow the structure)

   Branded3 internet-world-2010

3. Review for a social Presence

   Have they got an active social presence it is important for a site to have a Facebook and Twitter accounts. If they do, are they updated often? Do they interact with their followers? Do they provide meaningful information to their followers.

4. On site basic

   The on site basic are the bread and butter of any seo audit, The core things I usually look out for are:

   1. Does the site have h1 tags which represent the content on the site
   2. Do all the pages have unique title tags and meta description are they relevant to the content of the page
   3. Does the site have any canonical urls and do the point to the correct place
   4. Do all the images have appropriate alt tags on

5. As the Sitemap and Robot.txt file been setup

   The main thing to look for his as the site got a xml sitemap does it include all the pages how often is the sitemap updated. The robot.txt is important to investigate to see if any of the pages have been blocked if they have why.

   A final point on xml site map when creating your own site map. To make sure they are verified by not just Google Webmaster tools but Yahoo Sitelinks and Bing Webmaster tools. They may not the lion share of search traffic, but they can gain you easy traffic.

6. Url structure

   Does the pages url represent accurately what is on the page. For example an ipod touch could have the link www.mysite.co.uk/mp3-players/ipod-touch this tells the search engines what the page is about.

7. Are they any broken links

   A great open source tool called xenu which crawls the site to see if their are any broken links.

8. The Look and Feel of the site

   How the site look and feels no matter how well a site performs it has to look and behave well for the user. Does the page flow correctly, what is the colour scheme also what is the typography like.

Image Credits

• http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-6840944/stock-photo-checklist

Further Reading and Viewing

• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-seo-site-reviews-stebbystep

I decided to go back to the drawing board with a new outlook to my sparing, so far it’s paid off this year I have three medals from three tournament including – Tagb Men English Champion, Tagb Men Welsh Champion and 3rd place in the TAGB Midlands Championships.

Below are some of the things I notice from my latest tournaments and from my training. I am by no means an expert and these are just my thoughts if you have any suggestion drop them into the comments at the bottom of the page.

Stamina

A typical Tae kwon Do match can be anything between 90 Seconds to 3 Minutes. This may not seem like a long time compared to mma or other combative martial arts. But when you at the arena you have a lot nerves.

Whilst sparring this nervous energy can make you burn additional energy to what you would do when doing normal sparring in class. When this starts to happen you start throwing low and sloppy techniques. My advice ahead of the tournament find ways in which you can build up your stamina.

Spar

When I began sparring in class I avoided the big guys encase I get hurt and avoided the kids because they aren’t a challenge. What I have learnt the heavyweights they usually have longer reach learn to attack and get back out. At your sparing classes experiment try new things do different kicks and try new combinations it’s all about extending your arsenal.

Self Belief

In my tournament early years I used to think he isn’t my weight, he is a grade higher, he has an army of supporters. Believe in your abilities think about the hard work and the training you have put in. Don’t worry about who you get in the next round and worry about the people they have just beat. Having the attitude that you can win and that there is no one in your division that can be beat you.

Have fun

Unless you at black belt level, Martial Arts isn’t your career so what if you lose you will still have your career, family and Friends. Just go in and enjoy yourself give 100% and you never know you may come out with a medal.

Good Luck

Further Reading and Watching

• http://www.physicalarts.com/knowledge/kumite-and-sparring/220-taekwon-do-basic-sparring-strategy
• http://www.taekwondo-information.org/taekwondo-sparring-tips.html
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-eNOWmntok

Feature and Content

• Gmail
• Hotmail
• Outlook 2010
• ThunderBird 4
• Yahoo Mail

Preview Template

Preview the template – Email Template

Git Hub

Clone from Github – GitHub

Download

Download file – Download Template

As I am doing my 6th Kup Grading I have wrote a quick guide for what is needed for the green belt grading.

Line Work

The line work is based on Won Hyo Pattern for example the first three move Won Hyo, Hooking Block.

Pattern – Won Hyo and Examiner/ Choice Pattern

Won Hyo is a 28 movement pattern it is named after the monk wonhyo who introduced buddhism to the Silla Dynasty in the year 686 AD

Three step sparing 8 – 10

Semi Free Sparring

Attacking students start in L stance, guarding block. Defending students start in parallel stance.

Theroy

Korean

Further Reading

• www.blackbeltschools.com
• www.mytkd.co.uk

1. Clear call to action

   It’s important that every page on a site has a goal whether it’s to shows your range of products or promote your brand. On the product page the main goal should be to get the customer complete to the sale. This is why the call to action is so important. There should not be any confusion the customer should know straight away where to start the sale process.

   Comet

   

   I think the Comet site ticks all the right boxes for a product page. The heading title stands outs clear and clean. The same goes for the price and the breadcrumb navigation. On the comet product page they have two main call to actions buy online or collect in store. The colours of both of these are a different palette to the rest of the page as they are blue. They’re position on the right so they stand out without any other page distractions.

   Hmv

   

   I am a huge fan of the HMV site on a whole their website has a lot of engaging elements on the product page such as video, tell a friend lightbox and the associated products. But the call to action button on this page, I think somewhat gets lost amongst the page. The site uses a lot of pink style palette so the add to basket button is not as clear as it could be.

2. Social Proofing

   In basic terms you as a customer decide to buy a certain CD based on a recommendation from a friend. This is what this is in ecommerce but on a blown up scale. Examples of this are customer reviews, ease of fits and questions and answers.

   In basic terms you as a customer decide to buy a certain CD based on a recommendation from a friend. This is what this is in ecommerce but on a blown up scale. Examples of this are customer reviews, ease of fits and questions and answers.

   • Seo - You are getting unique potentially keyword rich user generated content on the page.
   • Reduce contact centre resources - If your contact centre team has a lot product enquires you can help levitate if customer write good reviews.
   • Decrease returns - For example if your site sells flat pack furniture which is difficult to follow the instructions. A customer could write a review about the product saying a great piece of furniture but difficult to set up. If the person is diy shy person Duane Blake they would then avoid that purchase and look for another product.

   Argos

   

   Argos reviews use a category system. So a customer can see how their potential purchase rates against different criteria. Their ratings are out of five stars in the TV section of the site they rate the TV up to 5 stars in design, connectivity, sound quality, picture quality and overall quality. The customer at a glance can see if the product is suitable.

   Amazon

   

   I couldn’t talk about Social Proofing without mentioning the godfather of ecommerce. I don’t agree with everything what Amazon does eg Adverts to other sites. But what it does with its customer reviews it does well. They provide full customer reviews in the main page content and in the side bar they then provide truncated customer reviews.

   If you do decide to use this sort of system on your site its worth mentioning its important keeping the negative reviews. As customers do look out for negative reviews on a product as too many positive reviews can make the product seem non genuine to good to be true.

3. Rich Meta content

   What I mean by this is product videos, good product description and a different ranges of images all these help the customer envision having the product.

   For me a big no no which a lot of online retailers do is copy the product information from the manufacturer website. This is a really bad move in terms of SEO for the good old duplicate content rule

   Firebox

   

   Firebox is a great site which provides customers with rich meaningful content all their content is written in the tone of their target customer. They also show examples of how to use the product and demos what the product can do. All these will help the customer in the decision buying process. Brownie points for firebox they also allow their customers to upload video, photos and submit reviews to the site.

   Asos

   

   Asos continues to innovate with rich Meta content which the customer will genuinely find useful. For example their info and care tab provides the customer instructions in how to wash their product. But the feature I particularly like their video feature it shows a person modelling the product on the catwalk.

Bonus Tip

Associated Products and Related Products

Upsell, upsell, upsell similar product and related products are great to boost sales on your site. For example you buy a new Camera why not on your product page have a associated product have some camera case chances are your customers may just add one to their order.

But related products and associated products are great it’s important to have them visible on the screen where the customer can see not hidden away on a separate tab.

John Lewis

The John Lewis site does an excellent example of up selling when buying a vacuum cleaner they give the customer the opportunity to purchase some vacuum bags for that vacuum model. As it is more than certain a customer will need a new vacuum bag for this purchase. They’re also put the product in a great position just above the add to basket button.