SidekickBlog

Having finally decided to go with the Mimbo Wordpress theme for Recipe Mobile, it was time for me to start customizing it.  The themes author, Darren Hoyt, recommends that style customizations should be made using child themes so that changes can be retained across future upgrades.  I have heard mention of child themes several times before but have never delved into it before. 

Luckily, Darren provides a child theme called Vintage Green on the same download page to help get started.  Installing a child theme is similar to installing a regular Wordpress theme.  You unzip and upload the theme folder to your ‘wp-content/themes’ folder and activate it from Appearance-Themes on your Wordpress dashboard.  Make sure the parent theme folder is also present in the themes folder. (Note: The child theme folder does not go into the parent theme folder but within the Themes folder itself.)  The child theme contains references to its parent theme already so every thing should happen smoothly

I have been customizing Mimbo using a child theme for only a few hours now and have already seen the benefits of using a child theme.  The only code changes that I have had to make in the parent themes files were to: (continue reading…)

In my previous post, I mentioned that while switching Recipe Mobile to the Mimbo 3.0 theme, I will also implement a child theme right from the beginning.  This process has been going well and I have already realized many of the benefits of using child themes. (continue reading…)

The decision has been made!  The new Recipe Mobile blog will be powered by the Mimbo 3.0 theme.  These are the reasons: (continue reading…)

I have reached the limit of the Cutting Board Wordpress theme that we launched Recipe Mobile with.  It was a good theme to start with as it was my first experience with Wordpress and the theme came customized to use on food and recipe websites.  However, the theme seemed to have issues with Internet Explorer right from the start and these issues were only compounded as I continued to customize it and add plugins.  The final straw was when the category pages started going out of whack when viewed in IE or Chrome.  There also does not seem to be any forum, documentation or support to help solve problems with this particular theme. (continue reading…)

I have set up a Facebook fan page for Recipe Mobile.  This week, Facebook updated their business pages to make them look more like user’s profile pages.  They now have a ‘wall’, a photos and other media page and a ‘boxes’ page which can hold all kinds of applications.  Also, updates from fan pages will show in fan profile streams.  This increases the potential of exposure significantly.  Building a facebook page for your business or website is also the first step towards advertising on Facebook. (continue reading…)

I’m glad to inform readers that both Recipe Mobile and its companion Sidekick Blog are now CommentLuv enabled.  I have been considering implementing this great plugin but was concerned that it would attract comments by people just looking to promote their website without adding any value via their comments.  However, in the end, I realized that although it might generate a few junk comments, this is a good way to give back a little to our valuable readers and hopefully generate some good discussions.  Please test it out and I hope you are able to generate some traffic to your own websites by commenting on ours.  I also will be researching a good solution to make the comments of our regular readers ‘dofollow’.

I just edited the search box at Recipe Mobile to remove the search button that used to appear under it.  The ‘Search’ button takes up too much space and is frankly unnecessary.  

Most internet users know that if you fill in a text box and hit enter, the website will see that as a click on the button tied to the search box.  Some quick searches on Google got me to Bavotsan.com.  Along with with various other PHP tips, the blog also contained a smart way to edit the php code that controls the search box.

The short tutorial on Bavotsan.com uses the default Wordpress theme which contains a file called searchform.php.  However, since my theme does not have this file, I had to look around for the appropriate code to edit.  Since the search box shows up in Recipe Mobile’s right sidebar, I looked in the file sidebar-right.php in Appearance->Themes in the Wordpress admin menu and found the appropriate code there. 

This is what the new search box looks like now.  The text to ‘Type and Hit Enter’ shows up in the search box when it is not being used to educate the few users who might not be net savvy.

Wordpress celebrity Alex King just sent out a twitter update about the latest beta release of his excellent Wordpress Mobile Edition plugin.  This plugin enables Wordpress blogs to auto-generate a stripped down mobile version when being accessed by mobile browsers. (continue reading…)

I have been progressively taking SEO steps for recipemobile and one of the tools that I have used to point out SEO issues is the website grader service.  I have managed to consistently improve the score over the past week.  Getting indexed on google really helped my score.  Another issue that the service was pointing out was that I do not have a 301 redirect from http://recipemobile.com to http://www.recipemobile.com.  Although, there are probably quick ways to fix this using the .htaccess file, I was not comfortable mucking around with this.

Luckily, I found a good plugin that might help me get rid of this error.   (continue reading…)

Found a new Wordpress plugin TDO Mini Forms, that enables user generated posts.  Ill try it on the Submit-A-Recipe page of RecipeMobile.