Anyway, I will be updating the portfolio accordingly – once I have done the site / page. Just thought you’d all like to know….

thanks all at Kerrang and all the people involved! I look forward to doing the page now

Smokefree West Midlands has teamed up with Kerrang! radio to invite 17 – 24 year olds to enter in the ‘Clear The Smoke’ design project, entries can be made by individuals into either category or indeed into both, a winner will be chosen from each category and prizes awarded as below.

My inspiration was from my own personal childhood (both my parents and siblings smoked). I not only had lacking health (not solely down to them smoking but it was a contributing factor) but I got bullied a lot due to the way I smelt at school (note to parents… stale cigarette smoke is not something that smells nice!)

The Competition

(read more about the competition here)

I decided to take it upon myself to design an entry for Brief 2 – Web Competition.

Find my entry below:

Click to view

Facebook, twitter, myspace… these are now household names. Just last night at dinner, my fiancée’s family and I were discussing Facebook status updates (from my fiancée’s mum through to her 14 year old cousin). It is a wonderful tool enabling us keep in contact with friends, colleagues and family (both near and far) and to share our opinion with the world (even if it doesn’t want to hear it) but, it also has its bad side.

The news has been full of stories where university students have faced consequences for what has been posted on Facebook, and people posting slander about their bosses and colleagues…

Just Google “slander boss facebook” and the results just come flooding in…
Google “oxford facebook students” for the other prime examples…

I use Twitter, Facebook (updated mostly via my twitter and a Facebook app) and I have a MySpace (yet it is really not used) and because of that, I have a lot of “following, friends and followers” but the other day, one of the people I follow posted what I would term “questionable content”. It featured swear words and their employer’s name within the same tweet, and this provoked the following question:

As we are all individuals we have a right to say what we like, but should companies monitor / regulate what their employees say about (or involve) their company?

Creating a strong corporate identity is about creating an identity for your company that reflects every aspect of what it does, from the first point of contact with the customer to how employees feel about the organisation / company. As a freelancer, I am very aware of what I do online under the alias “vivilanco” (as well in my full time employment) and I have taken extra care not to post obscenities or discrimination on any of my social networking sites.

I know as the owner of vivilanco.com that I would never want any employees denting the identity that I have taken time, effort and love to build up but should employers regulate how their employees use social media?

I choose to leave this question open and I welcome your comments…

The ice was so solid, i was able to turn the net upside down and the ice stayed there. (more pics below)

After almost a year with wordpress and its platform, I have found the plugins that are right for me. This isn’t going to be one of those “10 must have wordpress plugins….” bla bla bla, it’s just some friendly advice / wording on what I have found useful (both currently and in the past), so here goes.

Advanced Category Excluder
This plugin helps you to manage your content, RSS feeds, sidebar widgets, and fine tune where you want to display your posts, pages, links, link categories, or hide.
- This is a wonderful tool if your creating a design portfolio (such as on this website). You can exclude a category, in this case “portfolio” and have that only show on a separate page. Tutorial to follow.

All in One SEO Pack
this pack helps you to make you wordpress blog SEO friendly (seo = search engine optimization), this is a must if you want your blog positive in the search engines.
- A must have plugin for all your wordpress needs! It gives you that little extra control on what you let the search engines see.

Analytics360
Allows you to pull Google Analytics and MailChimp data directly into your dashboard, so you can access robust analytics tools without leaving WordPress. Compliments of MailChimp. (I don’t personally use the mail chimp application, but it’s a very handy tool!).
- This saves a lot of time, if you are like me and don’t sign into Google all that often! You can see the stats right there in your dashboard.

Dagon Design Form Mailer
this is the WordPress plugin version of my secure PHP form mailer script. This plugin has a wide range of features and was designed to be easy to use, while still being extremely flexible. If you just want a simple contact form, you can set one up with just a few clicks. For those of you who need something a bit more advanced, you can completely customize the plugin to fit your needs – whether it is 5 fields or 500.
- I love this item, it has helped me get the information from both my clients and the general public just the way I want it. I won’t lie, it took me a couple of hours to get it advanced and fully configured. I use it for both my general contact form and my design spec form for clients.

Dashboard Post-it
adds a simple ‘Post-it’ widget to the Dashboard that allows you to leave yourself or other authors a note. HTML allowed, HTML restrictions observed. Based on code from WP Engineer and Ricardo González Castro.
- Whether you have just one or a team of bloggers, this is an extremely useful piece of kit. It’s like a little memo pad for your dashboard… I personally use it to keep track of my clients “to-do” and mark any URLs that I find and would either like to blog about to read more into. With it being a compact plugin, it fits in with most people’s dashboard layout and style.

Exclude Pages from Navigation
Provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. IMPORTANT NOTE: This will remove the pages from any “consumer” side page listings, which may not be limited to your page navigation listings.
- I found this relatively recently (when I redone my website style). I use it so I can have the more informational pages at visible via the menu and the functional ones (and the ones that only my clients need) hidden (e.g. invoices and design forms etc.). Simple and easy to use “tick” of a box within the dashboard and it’s all done.

Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.
- makes life easier, simple as that really! Auto generates your sitemap… can’t really say more than that.

Lightbox 2
Used to overlay images on the current page. Lightbox JS v2.04 by Lokesh Dhakar.
- All I can really say about this one is look at working examples on my portfolio page. It rocks!

Page Links To
Allows you to point WordPress pages or posts to a URL of your choosing. Good for setting up navigational links to non-WP sections of your site or to off-site resources.
- I personally use this in conjunction with “Advanced Category Excluder”. I use it with my portfolio (tutorial to follow). I find it an easy app to use and really, it does exactly what it says on the tin!

Quick Stats
Logs hits with referrer, ip, host, client and url information. RSS tracker feature lets you tracker your visitors in near real-time using an RSS reader software.
- Simple stats on your dashboard, not unlike analytics360.

Twitter Friendly Links
Your very own TinyURL within your OWN domain! If you DO promote your blog posts in Twitter, then you MUST make your links look cool!
- As any twitter nut will tell you, the shorter the links… the better the tweet! But as twitter doesn’t make my links automatically smaller, this tool is a life saver. It fits right there on the page / post editor… and as soon as you hit publish, it makes you a shorter url for the post! Obviously if you have some epic domain (e.g. someepicdomainthatsthislong.com) it won’t really be to your advantage as you only have 140 characters to play with, but it keeps the hits on my site and not some other “url” service.

Twitter Widget Pro
A widget that properly handles twitter feeds, including @username, #hashtag, and link parsing. It can even display profile images for the users. Requires PHP5.
- display your tweets on your site… simple really.

Web Invoicing and Billing
Send itemized web-invoices directly to your clients. Credit card payments may be accepted via Authorize.net, MerchantPlus NaviGate, or PayPal account. Recurring billing is also available via Authorize.net’s ARB.
- This is a wonderful tool for keeping track of your invoices and payments all within the dashboard. The only let down is, it doesn’t allow print functionality at its current state (but I do think they are implementing it into future versions), and they don’t allow you to view invoices that have been paid.

Well that’s what I do and have used… so I hope you found it useful!

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