DevTopics

WordPress is the most popular open-source blogging software in the world.  It’s powerful, mature, reliable, and best of all, free.  All of my blogs use WordPress hosted on Linux.

When you visit a WordPress blog, the WordPress software processes the blog text before displaying it on a web page.  WordPress filters out unwanted code and formats the text so the web browser can properly interpret it. 

One of the most noticeable filters is Texturize, which modifies blog text to “present a more readable and visually attractive output.”  Texturize replaces quotes with smart quotes that better show the start and end of the quote.  It also replaces sequential hyphens with dashes, and sequential periods with ellipses, etc.  For example:

This is a wonderful feature, except on websites like C# 411 that display a lot of source code.  C# compilers expect regular quotes, not smart quotes.  So any code copied from a WordPress blog and pasted in a development environment will generate compiler errors.  This can be frustrating to your programmer readers.

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If you are looking to embed a YouTube video on your website, there’s one important step you must take so it plays properly on the iPhone and iPad.

Quick Background:  Because Steve Jobs hates Flash, and most web videos were originally encoded in Flash, many web videos won’t play on Apple’s iOS devices, which means the iPhone and iPad.  Fortunately the YouTube player on these devices can detect a Flash video and play it automagically.  But only if you use the correct embed code.

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Windows Live Writer is free software from Microsoft that enables you to easily create, edit and publish blog articles.  It’s like a simple “Word for Blogs.”  Click here for a list of features in Windows Live Writer.

Following are instructions on how to download, install, and setup Live Writer for your blog.

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You’ve got a great business idea, now all you need is your Web domain.  But it seems like all the good domain names are now taken.  Here are some tips to help you find a domain name that fits your business.

Read more at Smart Blogger >>

Want insight into the design and development of C#?  Then check out these blogs by key members of the Microsoft C# development team:

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Just a few years back, if you wanted to host a WordPress blog on your own website, you avoided GoDaddy at all costs.  WordPress and other mainstream Web applications simply didn’t work on GoDaddy shared hosting without a lot of extra work.  As a result, GoDaddy quickly gained a reputation as a cheap Web host that’s good only for regular HTML web sites.  Over time GoDaddy support for Web applications improved, but installing WordPress still required extra work.  GoDaddy also introduced automatic installers for WordPress, but the result was usually a non-standard installation and code that was a few versions too old.

Fast forward to today.  With GoDaddy’s new Hosting Connection, you can install the latest version of WordPress and many other Web applications such as Joomla with just a few mouse clicks.  It really couldn’t be much easier.  Following are step-by-step instructions to install WordPress on GoDaddy shared hosting:

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Social news sites first became popular when Digg.com launched on the Web in 2004. A social news site enables its users to submit news stories and vote on them. The most popular articles percolate to the top of the list and are rewarded with a huge surge in Web traffic. A candid discussion of each article often appears. The most popular social news sites are Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon, which recently hit 2 million registered users. DotNetKicks is an excellent social news site for .NET programming.

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Tags: Blogging, cybernymity, Digg, Reddit, social news, StumbleUpon

Today is May 15th, “Bloggers Unite For Human Rights” day.  Human rights represent one of the most agreed upon ideas—that all people are born with basic rights and freedoms that include life, liberty and justice.  This year marks the 60th anniversary of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” adopted by the United Nations.

After a year of blogging, it’s easy for me to forget what an awesome privilege it is to have an international platform for my thoughts and ideas.  As an American, I take for granted that I can say just about anything–as long as it’s true–and not fear for my life.  Given that you are reading this article, you likely live in a country with similar freedoms of thought and expression, so you also have reason to be thankful. 

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What do you do if original content from your website or blog is stolen and republished in full on another site?  You fight back!

A splog or “spam blog” is a blog that steals content from other web sites, then aggregates and republishes the content on its own blog.  Splogs are created primarily to make money from ads shown on the splog and/or promote affiliated web sites.  Splog owners are too dishonest, lazy or stupid to create their own original content and instead thieve yours.

Splogs are harmful because they effectively steal a portion of your blog’s search engine ranking, traffic and ad revenue.

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What makes a C# blog good?  Pretty much the same thing that makes any blog good, but with a focus on C#, of course.  Good C# blogs have:

• Useful news, information, tips and code samples
• Regular updates
• Original content, not a splog or news feed
• Good organization, including categories and tags
• Healthy discussion and user comments
• Personal insight and humor, but not too much personal drivel

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Tags: C#-Blogs