This is just plain text. This is bold. this is a link

Here are some recommended FTP programs

Cyber Duck – Free

Cyberduck

Transmit – $34

Panic

Fetch – $29

Fetch softworks

Here are some code editors I’ve used before. They are all for Mac although Dreamweaver has a Windows version as well. All except for TextWrangler are IDEs (Integrated Development Environments). That means they have a component of file management and/or site management.

Coda – $99

Panic Software

Dreamweaver – $399

Adobe

TextMate – $55

Macromates

TextWrangler – Free

Barebones

Here’s a really visceral example of what can be done with HTML5. A kind of homage/port of Super Mario

Infinite Mario – HTML5.

“Blogging or “self-publishing” in any form was supposed to democratize and revolutionize the media industry. Content creators no longer needed mainstream platforms to get their voices heard. Bloggers weren’t beholden to editors, and self-publishers could monetize their content with AdWords or any host of ad network partners.”

From How To Build An Audience On The Internet: The Kevin Rose School Vs. The Fred Wilson School | TechCrunch.

Interesting discussion of the relevance of having a long form blog in the world dominated by short-form social media. This conversation has accelerated recently with the launch of Google Plus.

Be sure to also check out The “Fred Wilson School of Blogging”

Creating fonts from faces. Interesting concept. H&FJ News | Hoefler & Frere-Jones.

Via Kottke

At our June meet up we looked at examples of HTML5 and talked about some of the cool new things that are possible. Many graphic designers and photographers are wondering how to move away from Flash but maintain an interactive and fresh look to the site, HTML5 continues to look like the answer. However, it requires a whole new set of tools and in some cases is still limited compared to Flash.

Enter Swiffy. <a href=”http://swiffy.googlelabs.com/”>Google Labs’</a> new tool for automatically converting your SWF (Flash files) to HTML5. Seems very promising.

(via <a href=”http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/29/google-unveils-swiffy-turns-high-maintenance-flash-animations-int/”>Engadget</a>)

If you’d like to read more about HTML5 and get up-to-date on the newest web technologies check out:

Introducing HTML5 [Amazon link]
HTML5: Up and Running [Amazon link]
CSS3: Visual QuickStart Guide [Amazon Link]
Stunning CSS3 [Amazon link]

Validating your website content is your best way to ensure the pages will display properly on every system. It’s important for SEO (search engine optimization) as well. The web — and HTML specifically behaves on a set of standards. If everyone plays by the same standards then we have the best chances that our websites work well regardless of the computers we use. The standards are set by the W3 consordium [wikipedia link] and updated regularly to incorporate new additions to the HTML language. For example HTML5 is the newest set of standards that allows for more complex animations and more explicit document structure.

The process of validating pages on your site basically just means that you are checking to make sure you are following all the rules properly. To help you out with this process there are online validators that check your code and tell you when there’s problems with it. What better place to have your code checked then by the W3 themselves?

Check out their own validator [link to w3.org validator] to check any page for free. You simply put in the URL for the page you want to validate and it takes care of the rest!

If you’d like to read more about HTML5 and get up-to-date on the newest web technologies check out:

Introducing HTML5 [Amazon link]
HTML5: Up and Running [Amazon link]
CSS3: Visual QuickStart Guide [Amazon Link]
Stunning CSS3 [Amazon link]

By request, a brief explanation of the WordPress Loop to request your own question to be answered please email us.

When you get into customizing WordPress themes you’ll invariably run into this little process called the WordPress Loop. HTML and CSS can take you so far but the WordPress Loop is PHP code. Remember that WordPress is a database based application. Whenever you look at a page or a post within a WordPress site you aren’t just seeing static HTML code but information that is stored in MySQL. WordPress is a PHP app that interacts with a MySQL database to get information.

The loop then is one of these types of interactions. More specifically it is a lookup. It’s searching your MySQL database and returning back posts or pages to the user. You can use the dashboard to control exactly what is displayed for the index page (e.g. how many posts display on the main page).

Think of doing a search on Google. You type in a term like “biking in New York” and the results are displayed as a list below the search bar. This is the same thing that is happening in WordPress except that the same search is performed each time. So a query to the database might be something more like “ten most recent posts to my blog” or “ten most recent posts in this category”  etc.

For reference here are some good articles to get more in-depth with the WordPress loop:

Theme Lab: The Ultimate Guide to the WordPress Loop

WordPress Codex: The Loop