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I don’t have much to add to them, but I thought I’d put up some recent finds from around the web that have been really helpful in solving some of the many technical issues I encounter.

• Get WordPress Permalinks Working with Windows, IIS, and ISAPI Rewrite Got WordPress running on a Windows server? Then you should have ISAPI Rewrite and the configuration described in this article to get your blog’s permalinks in a much more search engine (and human) friendly format. We also have ISAPI Rewrite working on our server to get pretty URLs working in Drupal.
• “301” Permanent Redirects Another link in the search engine optimization domain, this guide will show you how to set up these redirects in many different types of server technologies. If you host a site and are making changes to it that make certain URLs obsolete (porting the site to a new CMS, say), then it is really worth your while to set these redirects up for the old pages. Otherwise your search engine ranking could suffer.
• Preparing Your Website for Internet Explorer 8 IE8 came out at the beginning of this year and is gaining some traction. It is way more standards-compliant than previous versions of IE, which is great. However, most sites have IE-specific workarounds (read: hacks) which now pose problems for this new version. This concise guide breaks down everything you need to know about making your sites now work with IE8.

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Andrew Crowe Categories: How To, Technology, Web

Wondering what the deal is with these “apps” on Facebook or LinkedIn?  Or perhaps like me up until recently, Facebook apps are old hat while LinkedIn’s offerings are more unknown.  Well, firstly, app is short for application.  An application in the social networking context is an extra, optional element to include in your profile.  It adds functionality beyond the core information displayed about you and your activity on a particular site.  Apps often bring external information into your profile, and this is where they are arguably most useful.  For instance, if you or your company has a blog, you can display its feed on your Facebook or LinkedIn profile.

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Andrew Crowe Categories: ePiphany Featured Story, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

OK well I only have two hacks actually, but i wanted to use this cool lasso dude image. Hence roundup. And notice how this text is wrapping around it? Well that’s hack #1. A client wanted to know if/how they could achieve this effect in their blog posts, and it actually took a little bit of doing. This WordPress support page deals with the issue. From there I got the CSS code (see below) I needed to add to my theme’s style.css file in order to make it work. Newer themes might already have it.

In any case, once it’s there you can set the text wrapping in your blog’s web console. When editing your post there, click an image, then the little picture icon that shows up in the upper left, and set the alignment as desired. I draft and publish my posts via MacJournal, and unfortunately as far as I can tell I still have to go into the web console to set text wrapping for an image.

Here’s the CSS code needed to make text wrapping on images work:

img.alignright {float:right; margin:0 0 1em 1em}

img.alignleft {float:left; margin:0 1em 1em 0}

img.aligncenter {display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto}

a img.alignright {float:right; margin:0 0 1em 1em}

a img.alignleft {float:left; margin:0 1em 1em 0}

a img.aligncenter {display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto}

Now, hack #2. We run on Windows web servers, which for WordPress is not entirely straightforward. But it seems to work just fine with a little tweaking. Still, I had a problem with auto upgrades and theme editing from the web console. And I put off looking into since it was just an annoyance. This support topic describes the problem’s symptoms and solution. Indeed, granting the Network group write permissions on the blog directory made auto upgrades and theme editing work.

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Andrew Crowe Categories: Social Media, Technology, Web