WP Theme Users: Remove the Meta Sections from the Sidebar!

At DailyblogTips they have very good advice on why you should remove the meta section from your blog’s sidebar.

The Meta section includes some admin links like “Login” or “XHTML Valid.” While those links might be useful for the owner of the blog, they offer no value at all for the reader.

Movable Type 4 Beta Available

I’m a little late with this, as I’ve completely stopped using MT on all of my sites, but I just saw that Sixapart has released a beta version of Movable Type 4. The new interface looks kinda sweet actually.

Sixapart touts that MT has 50 new features, including a new easier setup that will have you up and running in minutes. Also very interesting is the summary of how your blog(s) is doing with some pretty cool stats built right in.

It’s worth another try I suppose, and I’m going to give it a test go and see how I like it.

The real question is whether or not this new version (or any subsequent ones) will be enough to win back the hearts of many MT fans who jumped ship to WordPress. Is it too little, too late?

What Is A “Fair Price” For Freelance Web Design and Development?

I was browsing through some bid requests a few weeks ago and noticed several common threads among postings. Clients want you to work as hard as you can as fast as you can for as cheap as they can get away with. For example, one request asked for TWO sites to be designed and coded and to be powered by CMS backends, but the budget was no more than $450…

I can totally respect budgets, but what about $450 for two complete sites design to code to CMS is fair? That barely covers the cost of the design for both sites, let alone the coding and implementation into a CMS! It certainly isn’t fair to any coder in the USA that would (desperately) take on that job.

A quote from another request:

I’m looking to have this done as inexpensively as possible (duh!)

Tartan Pattern Background Generator

Very cool find here – a tartan pattern background generator! You can adjust the width and color of up to 10 bands, as well as adjust the overall “yarn” (pattern) size. You can also change the orientation of the pattern from normal horizontal and vertical patches/stripes to diagonals. Also provides you with the option to preview the pattern fullscreen, in a smaller preview box, or a single tile. You can download your finished pattern (as a .png file) and share the pattern with other users of Tartanmaker by naming and tagging your creation. Check out the gallery too, which offers you the option of downloading other user’s creations, rating patterns or modifying them.

My tartan patterns:

Pownce Invites

I’ve got a few Pownce invites. Who wants them? I have to give many thanks to Dustin Brewer for my invite!