Social is a lightweight plugin for WordPress that handles a lot of the heavy lifting of making your blog seamlessly integrate with Facebook and Twitter. Through the use of a proxy application, you can associate your Twitter and Facebook accounts with your blog and its users. Once you publish a new post, you can then choose to automatically broadcast a message to any accounts authenticated with the overall blog or your current logged-in user.

Through Social, you can aggregate the various mentions, retweets, @replies, comments and responses and republish them as WordPress comments. Social polls Twitter and Facebook periodically for new comments about your posts, and adds them as comments when it finds a URL reference.

CreativeCG has the plugin running and it’s been quite successful so far.  Recent version release of 1.0.1 has introduced some fixes to allow the aggregation cron job to run on more server setups. For more technical details on the plugin head over to the website of Alex King of Crowd Favorite, the development mastermind behind Social, and check out his blog post on the plugin.

Download Social for WordPress

“It’s gotta cost something”

Have you wanted to take your blog idea to the web only to be stopped by potential costs involved and uncertainty of how to do it?   Getting your own blog going doesn’t need to cost you anything to get started. There are many blogging solutions available that are free of charge.  All it takes in the want to do it.

“But I don’t know the first thing about web design.”

You do not need to be a web developer to blog.  In fact it takes almost no technical knowledge at all to get rolling.  Many blogging sites have been designed with the non technical person in mind.  The solutions I will be talking about have the simplicity for the newbie blogger to get started, as well as, the depth to allow the more technical savvy blogger to dig in.

“Where do I start?”

Here are five free blogging sites that offer great features and versatility for just about anything you wish to do.

WordPress.com:  Wordpress is a website/blog engine that is behind millions of websites throughout the internet.  It’s ease of installation and use makes it very user friendly.  This site itself is running with the WordPress software.  Wordpress.com takes it even further by providing the hosting and backend essentials for free.  Create a free account at wordpress.com and you can create as many blogs/websites as you can think up names.

Blog.com: Blog.com uses the WordPress engine as well.  So why use it? If you don’t have your own domain name that you want to use then when you create a site at WordPress.com and Blog.com the domain will appear as whatever.wordpress.com or whatever.blog.com.  Wordpress is huge.  You may find a domain more friendly to what you want at blog.com.  I have not been a member of blog.com for any length of time to know its reliability.

Blogger.com:  If you have a Google account you can easily use Blogger.  Blogger is a widely used blogging platform.  Once again all backend elements are taken care of.  Blogger does not have the flexibility of WordPress.  It does however have the Google backbone behind it.  This is a reliable solution.

LiveJournal.com:  Another blog platform similar to the others.  Not as customizable as other solutions.  Reliable backbone with a large community of users.

Tumblr.com:  Tumblr.com has been called a blog but it is more of a stream of consciousness.  Very easy to post  and theme but not much else to it.

If you haven’t figured it out yet I lean towards WordPress as an easy solution for multiple reasons.   You can find documentation all over the web for anything you wish to do.  Dependent upon where your blog goes, if you grow beyond the free solution you can easily port the existing blog to a hosted solution of your own.

“I signed up now what?”

This is the hardest part. Write. Put together what it is that you want the world to know.  If it’s just a daily run down of what you are doing, to a mission to end hatred, whatever it is get it down.  Write and keep writing.  When you have a reader base you can actually begin to make money through ad placement, if that is something you would like.

“I want more…”

Each of these solutions has the ability to upgrade your accounts to gain more features and functionality.  In some cases these additions will take you out of the realm of non technical and require some amounts of development or technical knowledge behind the working of the site.  The alternative is SquareSpace.

SquareSpace.com: SquareSpace has premium services at small monthly costs.  Since it has monthly costs you get more support then you would at the free sites.  The interface is easy to use and they import from other existing solutions so your blog data is not lost.  They offer two week trials for free to allow you to try and see if it is something you would be interested in.

Adding a single option via .append

A single option can be added by appending HTML to the select box. See example:

$('#optExample').append('<option value="newVal">Option Text</option>');

This added option will be the selected option; to change this remove the selected=”selected”.

Adding a single option via Javascript only

Add a single option using the newOption function. See example:

var options =  $('#optExample').attr('options');
options[options.length] = newOption('Option Text', 'newVal', true, true);

The true, true properties select the option upon creation. Remove them if you do not want the option selected when added.

Adding multiple options

Use the following to replace an existing set of options with a new set. The array could be created anyway you wish, however since we want the page to keep from refreshing either populate the list upon page load or via AJAX. We’ll use the following:

var dataArr = [{'value':'val1','text':'text1'},
               {'value':'val2','text':'text2'},
               {'value':'val3','text':'text3'},
               {'value':'val4','text':'text4'},
               {'value':'val5','text':'text5'},
               {'value':'val6','text':'text6'},
               {'value':'val7','text':'text7'}];

// Removes all options for the select box
$('#optExample option').remove();

// .each loops through the array
$.each(dataArr, function(i){
    $('#optExample').append($("<option></option>")
                    .attr("value",dataArr[i]['value'])
                    .text(dataArr[i]['text']));
});

Adding multiple options by criteria

If you want to take an array of data and populate the select box only when the criteria is met the code is similar in nature. See example:

var dataArr = [{'key':'1','value':'val1','text':'text1'},
               {'key':'1','value':'val2','text':'text2'},
               {'key':'2','value':'val3','text':'text3'},
               {'key':'2','value':'val4','text':'text4'},
               {'key':'2','value':'val5','text':'text5'},
               {'key':'3','value':'val6','text':'text6'},
               {'key':'3','value':'val7','text':'text7'}];
// Removes all options for the select box
$('#optExample option').remove();

// .each loops through the array
$.each(dataArr, function(i){
    //only append options with a "key" value of 2
    if (dataArr[i]['key'] == '2'){
        $('#optExample').append($("<option></option>")
                        .attr("value",dataArr[i]['value'])
                        .text(dataArr[i]['text']));
    }
});

A common use for something like this is where an option list is populated when another form option is selected. Based upon your page design rather than execute an AJAX call you could populate the entire array with all the options on page load. This would increase initial page weight but reduce I/O later on.

There are possibly more jQuery plugins that complete similar functionality but this is all possible with native jQuery.

We understand the needs of small business, and can offer crucial support to large companies. Whether your looking to freshen up your existing web presence or start from scratch we are prepared to support your company. Our professional staff will do what it takes to execute your needs within your budget. We’ll provide exceptional server to ensure you get what you want. 

We’ll take care of it.

Oh No… Not another template!?!

How can you make your company standout when your information is jammed into a template that already resides on many other websites? We work with you to custom design your website to me the specifications required by your branding, tastes, etc.  If you have an exact design in mind we will create it, if not then we will create one with you.

Your website will appear professional and elegant, never homemade. Your website is an extension of your marketing department. If it doesn’t portray your business as professional you could lose potential clients.  Because of this we will make sure there is no use of templates, clip art and low quality artwork.  We employ nothing but high quality design elements that instill trust, and credibility to your business.

Listening to Our Clients

Clients know what they want. We hear you and will follow your wishes.

• No templates, please. I don’t want my website looking like …
• I want it done right the first time. I want all the functionality to operate correctly for everyone.
• My clients are disabled. I want my website to be completely accessible.
• Search engine placement is important. I need a site that search engines will push to the top of the results.