Author: vdebolt

4 Tools to Add a Pinterest “Pin it” Button Anywhere

Pinterest is more than a social networking site, it is a new addiction. Just as Facebook and Twitter have become a daily part of the average citizens life, so to has Pinterest become a pinnacle of the day to day actions of many women in particular. Making social media the official drug of the modern day, and growing in use by the moment.

But do you feel like your recent Pinning just isn’t enough? Do you wish you could expand it to other pages and sites? Especially since so many are either not compatible with the Pin It button or actually blog direct repinning now?

If this has become your greatest online desire, then you are in luck. There are four different tools that will help you to expand your current Pinterest arsenal.

Pinvolve

Pinvolve

Originally, there was no need for this tool unless you were a frequent double sharer, and so needed to be able to work more quickly and efficiently. But now, Facebook has blocked users from repinning directly from their site. Which is weird, given the fact that you have a logon option using your Facebook account.

The reason that they did this is unclear. It might be that grown slowed a bit for awhile, and they decided to start putting some distance between the two. Or maybe because Pinterest has more appeal for women than men, and so cleaves their user base in half.

Which is where Pinvolve comes in. It allows you to create a link between the two, so you can pin images found directly on Facebook like you used to. It works as a Facebook app, so you just add it to your Timeline. It lets both you and your friends use it, for your own content. Which might be a little annoying, as you have to put it on your profile first.

But the general usefulness makes it less aggravating, and it is worth adding.

Pin It Button

Pin It Button

This is a general Pin It button that has been slightly extended as a Chrome plugin. It works by increasing the number of websites that allow you to pin images. Think of it as an update to the original, which isn’t compatible with many sites on the web thanks to their style of older coding, and the relative newness of Pinterest as a site.

You can also see the “pin count” for each website you visit, similar to those that show how many times you have been tweeted or shared on Facebook. So when you combine it with other tools, such as Pin Search, you have a really comprehensive toolbox that allows you to get the most out of Pinterest.

Pinterest Button Extension for WordPress

Pinterest Button Extension for WordPress

What could be better than a Pinterest button for the blogging powerhouse WordPress? Not much. You can finally add a Pin It button to your WP blog, thanks to his excellent extension by WooCommerce. It is easy to use, and great as it will specifically configure to your blog when you integrate it into your general widgets.

Of course, there is one downside. In order to use it, you have to have the WooCommerce extension, which can be downloaded through their official WP plugin profile. But it isn’t a huge inconvenience, and it is the best WP Pinterest button I have found.

Flickr

Flickr

Pinterest has been accused by many sites as promoting (if indirectly) the pilfering of copyrighted images without proper credit. Which has led to many refusing to participate in pinning, putting up blocks similar to those used by Facebook to keep from content being pinned on their site.

However, Flickr is one of the first to get around this by allowing pinning that also includes direct attribution with every taken image. This includes an active link and a mention of the photographer or artist name.

For the first time, people on Flickr can participate and even gain a certain amount of followers through this method. It is a great tool.

Conclusion

Pinterest is an excellent website with a lot of potential. As the popularity of image sharing spreads, the tools for better utilizing the resource will increase. Until then, these four options give you a way to expand your pinboards across the web.

Guest Author is the SEO manager at PsPrint, Chicago commercial printing company specializing in business card and poster printing among other popular services. Find him in Google+

In Case You Didn’t Notice – the Internet is All New

IPv6 logo

Sometime in the wee hours of the night on June 5, much of the Internet switched over to Internet Protocol v6, a change 10 years in the making. The previous version v4 (there was no v5, oddly) is still out there in use. Not everyone has jumped on the v6 bandwagon. The move should increase the number of internet addresses from 4.3 billion to 340 trillion trillion trillion and was first implemented by big business: e.g.,Comcast, Time Warner, Cisco, AT&T.

It that sounds to you like a move to facilitate big business, you may be right. Here are some useful links to help you understand what happened and why.

Useful links: WebAIM Survey, Ladies Learning Code

WebAIM conducted a large study of screen reader users, its 4th such survey, and published the results. They surveyed everything, including mobile screen readers. Go. Read. Learn.

Common Look examined just the survey results about headings, and wrote Headings Matter to Users of Assistive Technology.

Ladies Learning Code Team Aims to Fix Programmer Education – One City at a Time

LinkedIn and eHarmony Hacked

In case you missed it, LinkedIn was hacked and password information was taken. The linked article explains what LinkedIn is doing.

What you should do is change your password. I changed mine early this morning when this news first came out, even before LinkedIn had confirmed it to be true. My old password was too short, too simple, and several years old. It was in need of a change even if nothing had happened. Now I have a much better one.

I was inspired to change a few other passwords around the web, too. They were holdovers from past years when password security was much less in need of rigor. Make this a day to beef up your passwords everywhere, too.

Update 6/7/2012. Late last night it was announced that the LinkedIn hacker also leaked passwords from eHarmony. Again, change your password.

Basic Knowledge for Bloggers

You don’t need to know anything technical to have a blog beyond how to get around on a website and follow instructions. It’s no more complicated than setting up an account on Amazon and ordering a book. But you could be a better and more effective blogger if you did take the time to learn some of the basics of how your website works.

blogger
Blogger by Virginia DeBolt via Flickr

Why would you be better and more effective, you ask? Here are a few reasons.

  • You would have more control over your website
  • You would be able to customize your website
  • Your website would work better in all devices
  • You would be better able to handle the inevitable technical issues that would arise
  • When you wanted to try something new, you would understand how to do it
  • You could avoid newbie mistakes

It’s worth a moment to explain the newbie mistakes item, and how it relates to the item about your website working better in all devices. The cleaner and simpler your HTML is, the better it’s going to work in all devices – from big old computer monitors to tiny smart phones. The biggest newbie mistake is forgetting that not everyone is looking at your website on your monitor, at your resolution, under your circumstances. Using those lovely tools above your text entry box on your blog dashboard to center text or images, to change the colors of text, to use several different fonts and text sizes, to add extra lines of space – all those things add complexity to your HTML. Adding complexity to something that works best when its simple and basic means that things may not work so well for someone who is not looking at your website on your monitor, at your resolution, under your circumstances.

If you want to start learning more about what goes on behind the scenes on your blog, here are the steps to take.

  1. Learn some HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). HTML is very simple, but it’s the foundation of everything else on the web. Using it right makes everything on your web page work better in every browser and in every device.
  2. Learn something about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Styles are what make your correctly marked up text look beautiful on a page.
  3. Learn a little about programming languages such as JavaScript and PHP. You don’t have to be able to write a program, but you should have a glimmer as to what’s going on when you try to customize things.

What I want to share with you in this post are pointers to places where you can get started with the basics of HTML, CSS, and programming. Just knowing the basics will be enough to make your blog more your own and more what you really want it to be.

Where to Learn the Basics of HTML

HTML is used to format text. Text is marked as a paragraph or a heading or a link or a list. When the text stops being a paragraph or a heading or whatever, the formatting is turned off. This works with tags that open and close the formatting – or you might think of it as turning on and off a section of formatting. Here are a few places to learn some HTML:

Where to Learn the Basics of CSS

CSS is used to control the appearance of everything you formatted in your HTML. It can set backgrounds, colors, fonts, positioning, whitespace, line height, widths and heights, how lists look, and much more. CSS doesn’t use tags, but it selects tags using a system of selectors. Once something is selected, a rule for how it will appear is written – and bingo bango, the way the selected item appears on your page is changed. CSS is more complicated than HTML, but you can start slowly with it until you get the hang of what you’re doing. Here are a few places to learn some CSS:

Where to Learn the Basics of Programming

Programming languages abound, but the most common ones bloggers run up against are JavaScript and PHP. The programming behind your website does the heavy lifting of making in interactive, making it possible to receive comments, and sending in mail from your contact form. Programming is the most complicated thing you need to learn about in understanding how the web works. Get a grip on the HTML and CSS first, before you start learning about programming. Here are a few places to learn something about programming:

What are you waiting for? Go get started on being a better blog owner.

[Note: Cross-posted at BlogHer.]