WordCamp 2007: Matt Mullenweg - State of the Word

Matt MullenwegThis one hour session, entitled State of the Word, from the WordCamp 2007 conference features Matt Mullenweg giving an update on the current state and future plans for WordPress.

This lecture occurred on Sunday July 22, 2007 from 3:30-4:30pm in San Francisco, CA at the Swedish American Hall. Matt gave the updates and then allowed those in attendance to ask questions and make comments.
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Matt Cutts’ Lecture - Whitehat SEO Tips

Matt Cutts’ WordCamp LectureThis is the video of the one hour long lecture given by Matt Cutts at the WordCamp 2007 conference in San Francisco, CA two weeks ago on the topic of Whitehat SEO tips for Bloggers.

For those not familiar, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and this lecture is all about ways to make your Web site rank higher in Google and the other search engines. I’ve also written an article on this topic called Improving Search Engine Rankings.

Matt’s presentation is available here, and when I get a chance I’ll try to go back and plug them into the video in the appropriate spots. In the meantime I did manage to get most, if not all, of them on film although they might be a little difficult to read - especially in the low quality versions required by the video hosting sites.
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Massive Hex Code Color Chart

Hex Code Color ChartHere is a massive color chart with the useful hex codes for about 1,500 different colors.

What I like best about this chart is that it keeps all the similar colors grouped together (unlike just about every other color chart I can find.)

There is also a complimentary Black and White color chart here.
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Black and White Hex Code Color Chart

Black and White Color ChartFor quick reference sake, here is a table with hex codes for a wide range of grays from White to Black. It should assist when you are needing to pick a color for text or backgrounds.

There is a complimentary color hex code chart here.
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HTML Elements Illustrated

SubThe following images come from a collection on Flickr entitled “Visual HTML Jokes“. I got a good chuckle from some of these so I thought I’d share just a few.
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HostWay / ValueWeb Incredibly Long Server Outage

Something went horribly wrong with the previously planned server migration at ValueWeb and the company was responsible for keeping thousands of servers off-line for much, much longer than expected.

HTMLHelp’s two dedicated servers were offline for over 75 hours.

The worst part was that the company failed to communicate to anyone during the longer than expected outage as they went completely silent - at times not answering customer service phone calls, and sending no status update e-mails.

Although unforeseen issues sometimes arise in complex hosting environments, I feel the complete and utter lack of ability to respond during this crisis means their systems are critically flawed - and I would not recommend Hostway / ValueWeb to anyone.

More detail about it over on my personal blog.

HTMLHelp.com Server Migration July 27-28

As a heads up to everyone, our hosting provider has notified us that due to an aquisition they will be physically moving our server to a new facility sometime after 8pm on Friday July 27 on east coast US time (GMT -5).

Since HTMLHelp is hosted on two different dedicated servers I’m not sure if they will both go down at the same time, or at different times, but when they do go down we are expecting it to take about 12 hours to bring them back up.

Please keep this in mind if you are going to be needing to access any of the reference materials or forums over the weekend as there will be periods of unavailability.

HTML as Art

HTML as ArtNow here is something you don’t see every day… someone creates a work of art from what appears to be a massive table comprised of various colored backgrounds.

Very unique, and you just have to check it out.
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Bust a Name - The easy way to find domain names

This has to be one of the best tools I have seen for a while.

I’m sure we all know how hard it can be to find the right domain. You know the drill. Come up with two or three keywords relating to your new Web site, then do a WHOIS on every combination you can think of, with every extension you can think of, only to come up with two poor choices after an hour of searching.

Bust A Name means we don’t need to do that anymore! Just enter your keywords, click “Add”, and Bust A Name will search all combinations and find ones that are available.

It’s actually quite addictive!

WordPress WordCamp July 21-22

WordCamp AttendeeHowdy gang, I’ll be in San Francisco for WordCamp from Friday the 20th through Monday the 23rd. If anyone else is going and you’d like to meet face to face let me know. Otherwise if anyone has any good questions, suggestions or topics which you’d like to see addressed please let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

Incidentally I’ve been talking to Matt about filming the speakers so hopefully that will go well and I’ll be able to share some or all of the lectures later after the event for those who were not able to attend.

If you are anywhere near San Francisco and you use Wordpress I would highly encourage you to attend. The event only costs $25 (scholarships if you can’t even afford that) and you’ll get to meet a lot of great folks and hear some fantastic lectures I’m sure.