grant k norwood // code. design. social. web.

Googlebot can’t access your site (Scary, right?)

by grant k norwood on April 26, 2013 · Add Comment

26Apr

Yesterday, many Google Webmaster Tools users received unpleasant notifications that their websites were suddenly inaccessible to Google. After 2 hours of aggressive troubleshooting last night, and another couple hours spent this morning, it seems that this may be an issue on Google’s side. Search Engine Roundtable just posted an article confirming more reports of problems with Google accessing robots.txt. In my own case, the naked msdf.org/robots.txt URL is accessible from every other browser, device, and third-party tool in my arsenal, yet Google has about a 80% error rate in accessing my robots.txt file. While the www version is working perfectly with no crawl errors or problems fetching as Googlebot, the non-www version is having much less success. (Please note, you may also receive duplicate “Googlebot can’t access your site” errors for both www and non-www versions.) Attempting to use the Fetch as Google tool within Webmaster Tools was helpful in understanding the problem, but ultimately the problem seems to be with Google, and your site’s index status is likely just fine. (Whew!) But use caution in writing off warnings from Google, you could very well be receiving these email [...]

Using CSS to create list-items with differently colored bullets and text

by grant k norwood on September 7, 2012 · Add Comment

07Sep

The new design for a website I’m working on calls for the ability to style bullets and the following list-item text with different colors, which isn’t an easy task for your plain-Jane CSS unless you use images for your bullets. This is not desirable because each section of the site has a different theme color, so I’d have to create and manage bullet images for every color used. Not to mention the extra HTTP requests which slow pages down. But there’s a better way, and it even degrades gracefully with older browsers! This image shows what the end result should look like. This special bullet styling should only be applied to the user-generated content (UGC), like pages and posts. Nav items, and other cases where <ul>‘s are used for semantic purposes, should not use this styling. To make this happen, I added a .ugc CSS class to the container element for the post and page text, and then added the appropriate stylesheet rules to any list-item elements within. [crayon-519894e407ed3/] [crayon-519894e408e7a/] You’ll see that I first remove list-style from all <ul>‘s within a .ugc container by setting it to “none”. Adding the “position: relative;” style to the <li>‘s allows for [...]

Cookies blocked in wordpress error message.

When you can’t log into WordPress because your “Cookies are blocked”

by grant k norwood on April 17, 2012 · Add Comment

17Apr

I’m really looking forward to SXSW 2012!

by grant k norwood on September 2, 2011 · Add Comment

02Sep

Today is the last day to vote for proposals for next year’s SXSW Interactive Festival (though if history precedes itself, it could be extended), and I’ve spent a good amount of time promoting what I think should be a killer topic for attendees. ”Deploying WordPress: From Zero to Ninja” will cover business-oriented subjects like developing in multiple environments, the have-to-have plugins, and best practices from the community’s experts for running your enterprise-class application on the WordPress platform. But I’d like to spend the remaining voting time promoting some other topics I’m really looking forward to, and I’ll update this list over time as I find new panels that catch my eye: Design from the Gut: Dangerous or Differentiator? Organized by Phil Coffman, Springbox Curiosity Makes You Stronger: Testing UX Design Organized by Ashley Moreno, Springbox Blog [...]

Windows and IE users have problems downloading corrupted files when using gzip or deflate

Do you upload zip files to your WordPress site? Your Windows and IE users may be downloading corrupted files.

by grant k norwood on September 1, 2011 · Add Comment

01Sep

This issue has been floating around for a while, but I only ran up against it a couple of weeks ago. The short of it is that if you have Internet Explorer users complaining that they are unable to download usable zip files from your WordPress or otherwise LAMP website, this may be the fix you’re looking for. I might also add that in my own testing of this, downloading zip files from one of my WordPress sites with gzip and deflate compression enabled were also corrupted in Firefox on a Windows 7 computer, so it’s not just constrained to IE7 and IE8 users. However, the issue is indeed resolved on computers with IE9 installed. Microsoft has posted the description of the bug in urlmon.dll in their “Internet Explorer May Lose the First 2,048 Bytes of Data That Are Sent Back from a Web Server That Uses HTTP Compression” article, but abhorrently they’ve also listed the fix as encouraging developers and/or users (think about your mom, now) to go in and modify the registry. Now I love to help my parents with their email password reset or their wireless printing, but I don’t want to walk [...]

Apache HTTP Won’t Start Because Port 80 is Being Used?

by grant k norwood on July 29, 2011 · Add Comment

29Jul

When your app hits a snag, how do you treat your users?

by grant k norwood on July 9, 2011 · Add Comment

09Jul

I really don’t mind being patient with Google+ site errors, but I really would prefer an accurate error message to being given a list of all the things it *could* be. But let’s talk about our own websites, and how they could work better when errors pop up. You should ensure that your users are given a direct path to fixing whatever just happened. And for bonus points, consider providing users a simple, clickable path to recommended resolutions so that they spend as little time as possible dealing with these kinds of unfortunate interruptions when they do happen. In my case with Google+ just a few moments ago, if I were given an error message that properly reflected the problem that I was encountering, I may have been able to resolve things myself and keep on keepin’ on. Instead, this is what happened: I was reading a good WordPress blog post and decided I’d +1 it. (Still sounds weird … but so did “like” at first.) I clicked on the +1 button, and was shown a little red box with an exclamation point. No indicator of what happened, and mousing over it still did not give me an [...]

Hey Designers, Tweak All You Like. Developers Have Sass and Compass.

by grant k norwood on May 11, 2011 · Add Comment

11May

Developers can all relate to a fast-approaching deadline, and though your plate is already full, your email dings at you and you’re faced with yet another request from the designer you’re working with to change the look and feel of your project. Swap that background image, add some margin, adjust the kerning, maybe un-serif all of the fonts – but those CSS properties are used across an unfathomable number of UI elements throughout your entire website with 5 different page templates! I say bring it, and I’m going to show you exactly why. Keep reading to get the full picture, or skip directly to the code if you’re feeling antsy. Sass is the next evolution of stylesheets, which allows the use of variables, functions, reusable chunks called mixins, and other cool features that CSS has been missing. Compass is a related framework that adds functionality and makes working with Sass a little easier. Designers and developers alike will certainly appreciate how integrating Read more →

All My Children and CSS3

by grant k norwood on March 11, 2011 · Add Comment

11Mar

I know, I’m just lobbing titles over the fence these days, but it’ll make more sense in a moment. The SXSW Interactive Festival 2011 is beginning, and I’ll be there with badge on! Some of the other Springbox crew members will also be there, including several talented individuals who are speaking. Check out our SXSW 2011 page to catch up on the fun stuff, and grab yourself a request to our super rad party on the balcony of the W Hotel. Springbox has some of the brightest minds in interactive, and we’ve got an open bar, so … yeah! While I was HTML-ifying our SXSW page a little while back, I came across the requirement for a nice semi-transparent background for a floating div. It was to have sharp, fully opaque text, play well with our chosen TypeKit fonts, and partially reveal the cool photo behind it exactly how the designer mocked it up. This is such a common request, and a cool effect. But until recently, web developers have always had to work pretty hard to achieve such a simple treatment in the browser. Opacity [...]

Googlebot can’t access your site (Scary, right?)

Using CSS to create list-items with differently colored bullets and text

When you can’t log into WordPress because your “Cookies are blocked”

Do you upload zip files to your WordPress site? Your Windows and IE users may be downloading corrupted files.

Apache HTTP Won’t Start Because Port 80 is Being Used?

When your app hits a snag, how do you treat your users?

Hey Designers, Tweak All You Like. Developers Have Sass and Compass.

All My Children and CSS3

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives

Popular Posts

Feeds