So we’ve decided to do 2 things. The first is to provide an update to the plugin which will include adding Pintrest, Google+ and Instagram which means we will be doing away with some of the none used networks to clean up the plugin admin. We also want to build in support for the ordering of the icons.

The next option is to add a support forum where you can post your ideas so that we can see the demand and also support any issues you may have.

These may seem like small things to do but we think it will be important to building a relationship with the over 30 000+ download of The Social Link plugin over the last 6 months or so.

What we’re trying to say is that we’re not ignoring you.

This has been an exciting year for WordPress. We’ve grown to power 14.7% of the top million websites in the world, up from 8.5%, and the latest data show 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US are running WordPress.

This bodes well for any of our clients because right now the WordPress community is bigger than ever. More importanly we, as a WordPress design and development company, have tons of resources at our disposal which are growing daily.

Have a look at Matt Mullenweg’s keynote on the State of the Word 2011 to see exactly what’s up in the world of WordPress.

Back in the day we used to make pretty static websites with the odd animated GIF. This was of course the standard back then because IE6 was easily the most used browser. Then came along the likes of Opera and Firefox which had new features and great support for JavaScript and the latest standard in HTML and CSS. This brought along another way of creating websites.

We, as creators of websites, now had to develop a website that would have great features, rich with JavaScript functionality and then use IE specific stylesheets and features. This in essence meant we basically create two websites; one for the futuristic web browsers and then one for IE6.

Microsoft quickly realised that they were falling behind and released two new web browsers; IE7 and IE 8. They were better but not close to the standards set by the other browsers. So this meant we now developed websites for the standard compliant browsers, IE in general and then IE6. Can you see our frustration here?

This finally brings us to the last way to create websites and one that we hope many people will start implementing. We as a website making company won’t support IE 6 unless it is needed. We would much rather suggest putting up a message asking visitors to upgrade their decade old web browser if they are on the website and still using IE 6.

Microsoft agree with us and have launched a campaign (the reason for this post) called IE6 Countdown. They have decided that enough is enough and are willing people on to add notifications to IE6 users that there are newer options available including IE9 which is pretty much standard-compliant. As of this post, 12% of the world still use IE6 and we can finally write it off when it goes below 1%. Here is a break down of this figure spread around the world.

As you can see South Africa is ranked pretty high up there and is in fact the 8th highest user of IE6 in the world. This is just so not cool!

So let’s support this campaign, even if you don’t support Microsoft, because we (and many other people) think it is time for IE6 to be removed off the web. Even if we only attempt to get 1% of South Africans using IE6 we would already be happy. The first step is to share this post with as many people as possible.

…the difficulty of…

I think it’s a misconception that WordPress is hard to install and that i wonder if people even know that you do not need to use  wordpress.com, blogger.com and all the rest of the blogging communities out there. This is especially true if you want to break away from the restrictions placed on you by these sites or if you want to keep your content a bit more secure.

This made me think that there are actually not to many articles out there about setting up WordPress and how easy it is to get going with your very own self-hosted installation of the award winning software.

Step 1 – Hosting

The first step to getting your very own WordPress installation is taking out a hosting account. This is where you will store the files needed to run WordPress and it is also where you will keep all the content you upload. Our website is hosted (by us obviously) but the point I am making is that every website will need to be hosted somewhere on the internet so that people can see it.

Finding the best hosting package is all down to personal preference. There are hundreds of companies that offer hosting for WordPress alone nevermind in general. You can look at our hosting packages or you can go have a look at the hosts WordPress recommend. Whoever you choose all you need to do is make sure they give you FTP access and can support MySQL and PHP 5, but you can also check this before signing up.

If you are lucky enough to have a host that supports one-click installs then you do not need to do any of the following just go to step 2 already.

Once you have signed up you should get a whole load of access details sent to you. Some hosts will give you access to a backend and FTP and let you sort out the rest while other hosts will give you console access, FTP access and pre-setup a MySQL database for you.

If you do need to set up a MySQL database contact your hosting provider to get information on how to do it and note down the database name, database location, database username and database password.

Step 2 – Installing WordPress

If your hosts allows one-click installs for WordPress then simply follow the instructions and head to step 3. If not then you need to read on.

This is probably the most complex part of setting up WordPress although they are now famous for the 5-minute install process. Here is how you do it:

1. Set up a MySQL database noting the database name, username and password. If the database is hosted elsewhere then you need to take that down as well.
2. Head over to wordpress.org and download the latest version of WordPress and unzip it to a location of choice.
3. Use your FTP details and a FTP client like FileZilla or Smart FTP to upload all the files within the wordpress folder you just unzipped (you should see wp-content, wp-admin etc. and a few other files) to a location on your server. Usually hosts have a folder called “public-html” or “wwwroot” where you need to upload the files to – whatever is in this folder will be accessed from www.yourdomain.com. If you want to have your WordPress setup in another location like www.yourdomain.com/blog or www.yourdomain.com/wordpress then you just need to make that folder in your “wwwroot” or “public-html” folder.
4. Now that you have uploaded the WordPress files all you need to do is install it. To do this just browse to the location you installed WordPress on. For example http://www.yourdomain.com/wordpress. You will now see a button asking you to install WordPress. Click it.
5. The next page asks you for your database information (remember point 1?) and this is where you enter it all in. After you have done that you can submit that form.
   • Database name is the name of the database you set up.
   • Username is the username you set up for the database.
   • Password is the password you set up for the database.
   • Database host is the location where the database is hosted. Usually it is on the same server (enter localhost) but if you were given another location by your hosts then you can enter that here.
   • The prefix is only used if you want to have multiple WordPress installation on the same database. You can make it whatever you want but it’s generally fine to leave it as “wp_”.
6. WordPress will now check your database connection and if everything works it will ask you to begin installation. Once you have cliked to begin installation almost instantly WordPress will be installed and you will be on the final page asking you for your information.
7. In the final step you can enter your blog title, admin email address, username and password, and if you want your blog to be listed in search engines. Enter this all and complete the process.

That’s it; you now have your very own installation of WordPress that you can do anything you want on. To access your backend you just add /wp-admin to the location you installed WordPress at, for example www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin, and you will then be taken to that oh-so-familiar WordPress Dashboard.

Step 3 – Customisation with Themes and Plugins

Now all you need to do is make your blog/website more… well… you. This is where the magic of having your own WordPress installation happens.

In the themes section (Appearance in your Dashboard) you can install a theme that you have dowloaded or you can search for one if you have not. There are plenty of options out there and a quick search for “WordPress Themes” will give you 18 500 000 results in Google. If you more inclined to have quality you can have a WordPress theme developed (by us) or use anyone of the premium theme developers out there (some of the best actually come from South Africa).

The plugins section is where you will find the most exciting enhancements. You can search the web for some of the most interesting and handy plugins for WordPress and I am pretty sure you will find quite a few options that suite you and your blog/website’s needs. If you come back over the next few weeks I will compile a few lists of ones we recommend and some that are usefull.

If you find anything hard to understand please let me know in the comments below and I will be glad to help. If you understood it all, did you find that it helped you out?

Within minutes of things going wrong at the venue, people were tweeting about the poor organisation, lack of proper management etc. There was even a tweet from Goldfish who complained about only having 60% of the sound for their act.

People then used the Real Concerts Facebook page to have a go at Real Concerts and give them a piece of their mind.

Where Real Concerts made a mistake was not attending to or commenting back to these comments, instead they let their brand get tainted by more and more complaints. Instead they should have immediately attended to these comments and given the people the truth as to what went wrong, instead they just said this:

Real Concerts is doing a full investigation of the problems of Saturday night. We will revert back to complaints as soon as this is completed

Social media is all about now and immediate responses. When people have something to say, especially when it bad mouths your brand, you should get on top of it and attend to the comments immediately with real answers, not these diplomatic answers (as above) – people want answers!

A great line I once read was

One key message is that the consumer is king. Companies do not own their brand, the consumer does!

So lets hope Real Concerts learnt from this mistake and in the future harness the power of social networks.

Neil will be responsible for creating brand awareness in the digital world for our clients especially focusing on Facebook, Twitter and blogging; although every client is treated as a unique project which could include more or less than those three platforms.

Of course we will be recommending WordPress to our clients as our recommended blogging platform although it is not a requirement to port your current website to it.

We must just add that it’s not only about promoting your brand but also promoting and creating awareness of the products and services you offer.

Catch Neil on Twitter or send him a mail on neil at digitalleap dot co dot za

We started 2011 off with a bang and found ourselves in new offices in Bryanston, Johannesburg. This is a big step up from the Coca-Cola Dome and it puts us slap bang in the faces of many businesses. Apart from the business side of the move our new offices have a shower, our own kitchen or 2, a coffee/chill area and more importantly it has a patio that looks onto a very beautiful pond area. This is part of our office:

This year we are focusing on extreme growth and to achieve this we needed to create an environment which is condusive to productive workflow.

We have our goals for this year but once we have finished a few brainstorming sessions we will be able to let you know what they are along with some exciting announcements.

This is allowed us to move some of the websites we have done onto WordPress whilst giving them a neat design update such as TuneTech.

We also got involved with two dynamic companies who have now fully embraced digital technology. LW Mag and FLUX Mag are two online magazines; they are not just running magazine like themes on the WordPress platform we set them up on but they are running a fully digitized flip through magazine supplied by Dogma Media. The are two exciting projects we have done and we are looking forward to an innovative future with them.

Moving away from the WordPress projects because that is not the only work we do. We have taken on two brilliant projects that have a brilliant future. They will both be custom applications that we have built from scratch using the CakePHP framework. Our aim for these projects is not only to build a solid application but to recreate and innovate.

This has left us with the prospect of an even more exciting year. We hope you have a safe and merry festive season; we will be back on the 5th of January ready to take on 2011 and all the exciting business it will bring.

The major change is what we focus on. Through-out most of last year we began to embrace WordPress and creating easy-to-use CMS websites that incorporate some of the lastest technology. After many hours of discussion we have a full range of features that we can offer you:

• Website Design/Development – HTML/CSS websites all ported to work on WordPress giving you complete control over your website.
• WordPress Services – We love WordPress and all our services are based around it. We do WordPress hosting, WordPress customisation, WordPress themes and WordPress plugins.
• Hosting – We not a focused hosting company but we do offer a solid hosting service. Our foucs is to get your website on the web as quick, as easily and as cheaply as possible.
• Development – We have not moved away from custom development. We can still create web applications to your specifications.
• Web Marketing – Having a website is not enough, you need a website that is visible and findable on the web. We make this happen, everytime.
• Email Campaigns – Email campaigns are still very beneficial but only if they are done properly. We manage everything from opt-in email lists to email template design.

Don’t hesitiate to contact us if you need any information. We are always glad to help and even just talk about the lastest technology.

Oh and before we forget, follow Digital Leap on Facebook and Twitter.