It’s finally happening. A big tech event I’ve actually heard about before is coming to Atlanta. It’s called Webmaster Jam Session and it is a forum for designers, developers and the rest of the lot to exchange knowledge and socialize. I usually don’t use my blog to spread the word about events like this but I’m rather excited to finally Continue Reading »

John Ratcliffe-Lee writes in with a question about how to use Subversion to easily keep tabs on a frequently updated software CMS he wants to use. First off, what is Subversion? It’s a widely used version control system, or in Continue Reading »

Over 300 people have suggested via Skribit that I chime in on what’s involved with maintaining, writing and developing for this blog. With this post I aim to cover every aspect of how I work and keep PaulStamatiou.com rolling. Some things might be common sense while others might make you wonder. Enjoy. Continue Reading »

I have recently been keeping revisions of my shoddy coding practices with Subversion, which I ignored until I picked up a “Practical Subversion” book a few weeks ago. Naturally, I figured it only logical to expand this to my own WordPress installation, making WordPress updates as simple as a single SVN command. That’s all kittens and daisies, but for some reason I thought it would be cool to update to trunk Continue Reading »

Daniel Kovach, the guy responsible for The Daniel Kovach Scholarship Foundation from which I received a $1k blogging scholarship last year, is running a web design scholarship contest. If you’re a college student and can design a WordPress template by August 13th 18th (extended), you could have $5,000 taken off your tuition. Continue Reading »

I was browsing through Jonathan Snook’s blog earlier this morning when I noticed something at the bottom of his posts; a link for users to bookmark his posts on del.icio.us with a count of saves. I love stats and rather than going to sleep I decided to investigate this and roll it out on my blog. Continue Reading »

One year ago today I was up very early in the morning in Sunnyvale, CA helping launch Yahoo!’s now 1 year old corporate blog, Yodel Anecdotal. Yodel Anecdotal is praised for being a real blog into the life and culture of Yahoo! and not just a press release outlet. In addition, Yodel Anecdotal is able to get vital feedback from real users with comments as opposed to Continue Reading »

Up until now there had been only a few tools to help web developers assess the speed and optimization status of their websites. Primarily, there is the Net tool of the ever-popular Firebug add-on for Firefox. The Net tool can tell you what a website is loading, how long it takes, if it’s cached, headers and similar items. Yesterday, Yahoo! released their own add-on to Firebug called YSlow. Continue Reading »

With my last few posts on website optimization, one of the larger areas of focus was reducing HTTP requests. By reducing the number of requests your browser must make to retrieve all of your website, you speed up your site’s loading time with less overall HTTP latency for requests. Continue Reading »

As an update to my flickrSLiDR slideshow tool post, I’d like to announce that I have sold flickrSLiDR. It is now owned by a guy in Sweden who bought it from me for a cool $3,000. Not bad for a weekend project if I may say so myself. As part of the deal, the flickrSLiDR graphic will appear in my sidebar for the next 3 months. If you have any flickrSLiDR-related questions, please direct them to AdMarket. Continue Reading »

When it comes to high-performance, speed and optimization, I’m there. I have written several articles about this subject in the past with 5 Ways to Speed Up Your Site, How To: Optimize Your CSS Even More and a brief look into image maps to reduce HTTP calls and bandwidth usage. However, similar to modifying a car there is always something more that can be done. Continue Reading »

Today I’ll be taking a look at a service called XHTML Slicer that takes the hard work out of web development by doing all the coding for you. XHTML Slicer is ideal for busy web designers who want to be productive and outsource the tedious XHTML/CSS work as well as the casual Photoshop tinkerer that Continue Reading »

Search forms on most sites lack any styling at all, leaving for the browser’s default appearance which can be ugly at times. By simply adding a border to the form in CSS you can easily improve the look. Of course, this also applies to any text input form, not just search boxes. Continue Reading »

One of the most common things web coders run into is the need to parse some type of XML file. Many web services return API calls in XML format, so it’s just handy to know how to parse these results quickly. With PHP4 you usually have to rely on some large parsing library to get the Continue Reading »

Over the summer I wrote a post called 5 Ways to Speed Up Your Site that went through some basic tips for getting your site to load faster. I mentioned enabling gzip compression in WordPress and using services that remove the whitespace Continue Reading »

Back in July I “realigned” this site’s design after having gotten bored with the old design. I began thinking this realigned design lacked some branding and could be tweaked up quickly. I ended up taking a break from watching all the cool SXSW happenings on twitter to “refresh” the design tonight. If you’re reading this through RSS, click on over to see the new look. Continue Reading »

24ways.org, the amazingly helpful and interesting “web geek advent calendar” organized by Yahoo! employee Drew McClellan, has finished for 2006. The 24 article run began on December 1st of this year and ended today with Dan Cederholm’s article about gravity-defying page corners. Continue Reading »

Okay that title might be a little ambitious but I truly believe that 281 is different from most WordPress themes. 281 is a joint project between myself and Neil Patel of Pronet Advertising. Neil approached me a while back and we started talking about how there was really no strong WordPress theme that combined slick minimalist aesthetics, speed and search engine optimization. That’s exactly what 281 promises to be. Continue Reading »

WordPress.com users rejoice, the WordPress team has added a new and welcomed feature - custom CSS. Until now, you had to stick with the limited customization that came with the stock themes. By purchasing the custom CSS upgrade in your WordPress.com blog’s admin panel for $15 USD, you have the ability to edit Continue Reading »

Today is a great day. I get to open my mouth and let you in on the project I’ve been working on ever since I arrived at Yahoo! earlier this summer. I present to you Yodel Anecdotal, the corporate blog for Yahoo!. So I bet you’ve got flashes of Dell’s One2One corporate blog floating around and thoughts pondering whether Yahoo! already has a similar blog. Well I’m here to tell you that Yodel Anecdotal is completely different. Sure Yahoo! has over 10 blogs for just about Continue Reading »

If you’re looking to expose some detail on any of your photos and have Photoshop, check out these easy tips. I’ve been using the first one, unmask sharpen, for a long time, but more recently with some stuff at work and it makes a huge difference. It seems to add fine detail to images and lessen the appearance of blurryness. Open up an image in Photoshop and navigate to Filter » Sharpen » Unsharp Mask. In the window that pops up, set the amount to 100%, radius to 0.5 pixels and keep the threshold at 0 levels. Continue Reading »

Several people have asked me how I created the header image in my sidebar, so I figured I would make a post out of it. Most of the stuff is easy to do, the only area of contention being the creation of the shape layer. To start out, find an image or color of your choice and crop it to a respectable size. In Photoshop make a Continue Reading »

Being surrounded by technical genius at work everyday, I was bound to pick up a few pieces of wisdom. Working on some top secret stuff for Yahoo!, I quickly learned that every website or blog that Yahoo! dishes out must comply with the graded browser support theory. The project I am working on must abide by “A-grade” browser support as do other Yahoo! sites. A-grade support unfortunately Continue Reading »

After exchanging a few design words with Mike Rundle, jet-setter and 9rules designer extraordinaire, I’ve spent most of the evening tweaking my sidebar. Since the recent realignment, I had always felt uneasy about the composure and structure of the sidebar area. Mike assured me that text-align:right; was not working. In addition to aligning text to the left, I split up the main menu into 2 columns Continue Reading »

To deal with the influx of new members that joined 9rules in Round Four, the 9rules crew just decided to go ahead and completely revamp the site. One of the main problems with the last design regarded usability concerns surrounding communities. The focal point of the redesign, codenamed Phoenix, is the communities section with notes. Notes is a new feature that allows 9rules members and readers alike to discuss posts and news items in every community. Hurry up and Continue Reading »