Creation-1

We recently had quite the experience battle with Facebook Open Graph Protocol.  From here on out we will refer to it as OGP.

Okay so what is it?

Well, to make a long answer as short as possible, OGP is a series of tags you can use in the metadata of your web pages to help push info to Facebook and make sharing more seamless between your website and Facebook.

How will I use it?

Most people use OGP tags on their website and blog posts to tell Facebook what descriptions, titles, and images to use when a user shares your content on Facebook.  There are many other advanced ways of pushing other OGP tags to Facebook.  You can learn here about more advanced uses: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/

How do I implement Open Graph Tags?

If you are working in a CMS like WordPress, don’t bother entering your tags manually.  There are plenty of plugins to help you out with this.  If you need to enter the tags manually it’s pretty easy.  Go here and paste in the tags above the </head> tag in the HTML of your page.  Then just make sure to edit the metadata appropriately for your URL and info.

How do I check my work?

To make sure Facebook is reading your OGP tags go to the Facebook URL Linter and enter the URL of the page you entered the tags on.  The URL linter will catch any errors in your metadata and display the data you are pushing to Facebook.  Edit the OGP tags so that no erorrs are returned on the URL linter.

What else should I know?

• You need a unique URL to share an item on Facebook.  If you have a slideshow that does not display unique URL’s for each item, you cannot share slides from your slideshow.
• Keep in mind when you are testing your work that the title becomes fixed after you share something 50 times. So, if you are testing a URL too much and are not seeing any changes, that’s why.
• Also, sometimes the URL linter has to refresh its’ cache so don’t be impatient.  If you change something, and it’s not displaying in the URL linter, check your work.  If you are sure you did everything right, wait.  Log in tomorrow and enter the URL again.  Everything should be fine.

I would love to hear about your experience with Facebook Open Graph Tags.  Do you have any tips of your own to add?

This is a just a quick reminder to all of our friends using WordPress.  Make sure you update to the new version- 3.1.3.   This will likely be the last version before 3.2.  It has several security fixes.  One of the most common reasons for getting hacked is having as outdated (and vulnerable) version!  Here are some of the updates that were made:

• Various security hardening by Alexander Concha.
• Taxonomy query hardening by John Lamansky.
• Prevent sniffing out user names of non-authors by using canonical redirects. Props Verónica Valeros.
• Media security fixes by Richard Lundeen of Microsoft, Jesse Ou of Microsoft, and Microsoft Vulnerability Research.
• Improves file upload security on hosts with dangerous security settings.
• Cleans up old WordPress import files if the import does not finish.
• Introduce “clickjacking” protection in modern browsers on admin and login pages.

So I was planning on writing this really great article about how to setup an internet merchant account and payment gateway for eCommerce. It was going to have all of these great referenes and break down the whole setup process for client’s to truly understand what they need to do.  Well, Smashing Magazine beat me to it! Go here to read the article,  It is quite handy if you ask me.

Do you have a blog hosted at WordPress.com? If so make sure you go in and change your password. There was a small security breach detailed here: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/security/ It doesn’t sound like a major security threat but it doesn’t hurt to take a bit of precaution. If you are running WordPress on your own server there is nothing to worry about. Happy publishing!

On the same theme as our last post I wanted to highlight this fascinating report by VBS TV about email fraud. It is imperative that people understand internet fraud is not only an underground black market enterprise, but also an economy driving cultural phenomenon. People think I’m crazy when I say the next wars will be fought primarily online but it is slowly but surely moving in that direction. Watch and enjoy:

I was reading an article at Media Temple and was surprised to see the figures produced by this chart. It shows that Web Malware increased by 139% in 2010 compared to the previous year! This is a very dramatic increase.

We should all do our part to protect the valuable information on our websites and personal computers.  The more importance we allocate to technology in our daily lives the more it will be exploited by shady characters.  Are you doing enough to keep your information secure?

Take a look at this checklist on the Gmail site to help you keep your email and computer secure.

As a part of the new website rollout we wanted to make ourselves even more accessible to our clients.  One of the most commonly heard complaints about web developers and designers is that you can NEVER get a hold of them.  Calls go straight to voicemail (or worse- VM box is full!), emails are never returned, projects are delayed (even forgotten); unfortunately this is all too common in our industry.

We strive to return all emails and phone calls within 24 business hours and be on Skype, AIM, and iChat during business hours for instant availability.  You can click on the contact page of our portfolio site at  Creation-1.com and check our Skype and iChat status.  Drop us a line and say hi!

We have a few videos that we show to clients from WordPress.tv to help them understand the WordPress admin.  They serve as a precursor to our one on one walk-through of a client’s website and also to help the client decide if WordPress is the right CMS for them.
Intro to the WordPress Dashboard

Moderating Comments

Editing a post in the WYSIWYG

Adding photos, video, and other media, to your site

I just read a great article at SixRevisions called, Planning Your E-Commerce Website.  This is a great intro article to someone who is planing on starting an online store.  There are a lot of questions to ask yourself before you jump into something that is either 1.  Overkill for what you need.  or 2.  Something you will grow out of in 3 months.