I recently received a question regarding why I have taken down the tags on my posts. The reason was because watched a video from google (Also embedded below) which made me wounder how much they are benefiting (and being used by) my users. After a brief test (I watched how many people were using the tag pages) I found that very few users actually were using them.
The best way to summarize what I found would be:
For every 246 human users clicking a link on a page, 1 would be clicking a tag link.
I’ve just finished a quick update on my wordpress plugin Socialize This which increases the functionality of the Widget Sets. If you want to try out a few new Widgets in Socialize This take a look at the Widget Sets page.
Also, if you have made some Widgets and would like them listed on the Widget Sets page, contact me.
Here is a function I use from time to time in my code which I thought I should share. It allows you to quickly shorten URL’s via 6 popular URL shortening websites.
function shorten_url($url, $service=NULL){
if($service== 'tinyurl'){return get_link('http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url='.urlencode($url));}
elseif($service == 'urly'){return get_link('http://ur.ly/new.txt?href='.urlencode($url));}
elseif($service == 'isgd'){return get_link('http://is.gd/api.php?longurl='.urlencode($url));}
elseif($service == 'klam'){return get_link('http://kl.am/api/shorten/?format=text&url='.urlencode($url));}
elseif($service == 'unu'){return get_link('http://u.nu/unu-api-simple?url='.urlencode($url));}
else{return get_link('http://api.tr.im/v1/trim_simple?url='.urlencode($url));}
return $url;
}
function get_link($url){
if(function_exists('curl_init')){
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION, CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1);
//curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
$resultArray = curl_getinfo($ch);
if ($resultArray['http_code'] == 200){
return $result;
} else {
return FALSE;
}
curl_close($ch);
}elseif(ini_get('allow_url_fopen') == 1){
return fopen($url, 'r');
}
return FALSE;
}
/* Usage */
echo shorten_url('http://www.fullondesign.co.uk/');
// returns: http://tr.im/JPCz
One functions I wish I had known about when i start learned PHP is the realpath() function. Pretty much what it does is take symbolic link (such as ‘../’ or ‘/’) and returns a canonicalized absolute link (like ‘/home/public_html/folder’). Here is an example of it in action:
<?php
echo realpath('../');
// Would return: /home/mike/www/blogposts
?>
My motto is “Clients are idiots”, though if you let them know this odds are you will not be paid. I tend to find this motto is true 90% of the time in the Design/Development field, mostly because clients see you as someone who is paid to make something the way they want to, not in a way that will look good & be functional. Here is a video which pretty much sums up why clients suck.
Click here to go to the original source of the video.