April, 2005

Ingredients: 1 cup (226 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature 1 cup (200 grams) granulated white sugar 4 large eggs 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract Zest of 1 large lemon 2 cups (280 grams) all purpose flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup (60 ml) fresh lemon juice Icing: 1/2 cup (60 grams) confectioners' (powdered or icing) sugar, sifted 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and place rack in the center of the oven. In the bowl of your electric mixer, with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy and pale in color (about 3 minutes). Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract and lemon zest. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt and then add to the batter along with the lemon juice. Mix only until incorporated. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing the top with an offset spatula. Bake about 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Place on a wire rack to cool, then gently remove the sides of the pan. For the icing, combine the sifted confectioners' sugar with the 2 tablespoons lemon juice. (You want the icing to be thicker than a glaze but still thin enough that it will just run over the sides of the cake. If not the right consistency add more lemon juice or powdered sugar, accordingly.) Frost the top of the cake, allowing the icing to drip down the sides. Enjoy!!!

I recently attended an excellent project management course. It was mainly dealing with Great Plains software install, but these could be applied to nearly anything: Standardize your practice - methodologies are GOOD and will SAVE you. I promise. Manage Client Expectations from the Start - the first time you meet with the Client, you must transition from being the "vendor" to being the "consultant" and this means telling truths instead of overselling. Review, Review, Review - open communication and a constant dialogue with both your team and client is critical. And I'm not just talking about weekly status reports. Instant communication is the way forward. Engage the Client - this is an obvious one, but worth stating. If the client has ownership, they're willing to pull their weight and contribute more. Always focus on Go-Live - the smoother the team gets to go live, the smoother the transition is from project to support phase. The client must realize there is an end to it all. (and you do too!)

We all want to be on the top ten pages displayed on a Google search. These are a few tricks that will help you get there: 1. Pick Your Target Keywords - Your target keywords should always be at least two or more words long. Usually, too many sites will be relevant for a single word, such as "stamps." This "competition" means your odds of success are lower. Don't waste your time fighting the odds. Pick phrases of two or more words, and you'll have a better shot at success. 2. Position Your Keywords - Make sure your target keywords appear in the crucial locations on your web pages. The page's HTML title tag is most important. Failure to put target keywords in the title tag is the main reason why perfectly relevant web pages may be poorly ranked. 3. Have Relevant Content - In particular, that means you need HTML text on your page. Sometimes sites present large sections of copy via graphics. It looks pretty, but search engines can't read those graphics. That means they miss out on text that might make your site more relevant. 4. Build Links - By building links, you can help improve how well your pages do in link analysis systems. The key is understanding that link analysis is not about "popularity." In other words, it's not an issue of getting lots of links from anywhere. Instead, you want links from good web pages that are related to the topics you want to be found for. 5. Just Say No To Search Engine Spamming - For one thing, spamming doesn't always work with search engines. It can also backfire. Search engines may detect your spamming attempt and penalize or ban your page from their listings. 6. Submit Your Key Pages - Most search engines will index the other pages from your web site by following links from a page you submit to them. But sometimes they miss, so it's good to submit the top two or three pages that best summarize your web site. 7. Verify And Maintain Your Listing - Check on your pages and ensure they get listed. Once your pages are listed in a search engine, monitor your listing every week or two. Strange things happen. Pages disappear from catalogs. Links go screwy. Watch for trouble, and resubmit if you spot it.

There really isn�t a proper way. Both the Gecko-based browsers and Internet Explorer interpret the CSS specifications differently.

To ensure consistency the best thing to do is clear the left padding and margin values, which brings the bullets flush to the edge of the box (i.e., there is no indent). To indent the bullets by, say 20 pixels, you can set either the left padding or margin: ul { margin-left: 0; padding-left: 20px; } or ul { margin-left: 20px; padding-left: 0; } (The same rules can be applied to ol, dl, as well as ul.)

By creating my own theme, I'm not only learning how WordPress is developed, but also getting a great lesson on CSS. The flexibility of CSS are amazing. And there's plenty of inspiration out there from other developers. If I discover and bits of wisdom about creating themes, I'll pass them along. But right now I'm hacking away and can't really contribute much. Other than to advise to stay PERSISTANT!