Category Archives: Web Design

Holiday Print sale

By Ari Salomon | Published: October 21, 2011

Holiday Print sale, starting November 29, 2011 through January 27, 2012. I’ll have my pens and some unframed prints in this great new gallery in downtown Oakland. Hours: Tuesday – Friday 11:00 AM to 5:30 PM Collaborate Studio & Art Gallery 431 13th Street Oakland, CA 94612 Located in City Center Oakland, at 13th and Broadway, […]

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WCSF: Notes from WordCamp 2011 (part 2: WordPress theme framework review site?)

By Ari Salomon | Published: August 18, 2011

One framework to rule them… One idea I had recently (and discussed with Ryan of WPCandy and others at WordCampsf2011) was to create a WordPress theme framework review site. I’d like to present this idea here and see if anyone is interested in pursuing this idea with me. There are so many frameworks out there. […]

Also posted in WordPress | Tagged SEO, WordCamp | 1 Response

WCSF: Notes from WordCamp 2011

By Ari Salomon | Published: August 13, 2011

WordCampSF2011. Lots of great conversations and presentations. Here’s some notes and links… 2 apps for converting a WordPress site to a mobile app. Curiously, they both seem to come from Israeli startups. There’s an entrepreneurial flavor to the fallafel I suppose. wiziapp.com: not free and iOS only uppsite.com: Free and connects to Anroid as well […]

Also posted in WordPress, WordPress WooCommerce | Tagged WordCamp | 3 Responses

WooCommerce, WPEC, Gravity Forms and other WordPress Plugins for Ecommerce

By Ari Salomon | Published: August 2, 2011

Updated 4/2014 So many options out there – how to choose? First, educate yourself on the difference between a self-hosted Ecommerce solution (an Ecommerce plugin like WPEC or a dedicated solution like Magento or Zen cart) vs a hosted Ecommerce solution (like Shopify, Volusion, Bigcartel, Tictail) and decide what features you really need before you select a […]

Also posted in WordPress, WordPress WooCommerce | Tagged ecommerce, Form building plugin, Gravity Forms, magento | 2 Responses

Yelp: How to Respond to Negative Reviews in an Age Yearning for Authenticity

By Ari Salomon | Published: July 30, 2011

I’ve had a couple clients recently who came to me with the issue of how to deal with negative reviews on Yelp. Yelp is such a powerful resource for consumers and can be a really great tool to build your business. It’s brought me alot of work and I appreciate that. But negative reviews […]

Also posted in Product Reviews | Tagged yelp | Leave a comment

How to Flush the DNS cache in Mac OSX for WordPress

By Ari Salomon | Published: July 11, 2011

Mac OSX uses a time-saving DNS cache. It’s generally invisible ot the user and helps speed things up a bit. If you are setting up a new WordPress self hosted site (or other CMS like Drupal) this can prevent you from being able to conenct to your new site – you might have to wait […]

Also posted in WordPress | 1 Response

Go Daddy concurrent processes and Apple Mail

By Ari Salomon | Published: July 5, 2011

Can someone say “SlowDaddy”? WPMU has an interesting article about how using Apple Mail (aka mail.app) can slow down your site since it keeps a connection to the server open all the time. It might be a hint at why my iPhone mail app only works on 3g and not on WiFi but that problem is […]

Posted in Web Design | Tagged elephant kiling, godaddy, hosting | Leave a comment

DNS propagation viewable on a world map

By Ari Salomon | Published: March 20, 2011

I just discovered a great tool for anyone who deals with the arcane world of DNS. It shows how DNS changes are propagating across the world with a neat world map view. It’s great to have a visualization tool for something so abstract. I can dig the command line for its simplicity and power but sometimes […]

Posted in Web Design | 1 Response

JCSEO: Dirty Little Secrets

By Ari Salomon | Published: February 14, 2011

The New York Times had a long article about Black Hat SEO they uncovered for JCPenny.com over the last few months. Google has severely lowered their ranking as a result. …the digital age’s most mundane act, the Google search, often represents layer upon layer of intrigue. And the intrigue starts in the sprawling, subterranean world […]

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Building an HTML email is not like building for the web

By Ari Salomon | Published: December 1, 2010

A great article about the challenges of building HTML for email clients. I had banged my head on many of these challenges and want to reiterate his point below to “keep it simple”. While web browsers continue their onward march towards standards, many email clients have stubbornly stayed put. Some have even gone backwards. In […]