Thanks to the simple tutorial from http://www.briandalessandro.com, we were able to take a client’s old animated GIF and give it an updated look easily in Photoshop. And of course we want to share …

1. Open a new document matching the dimensions of your source images.
2. Each intended frame of the animation should be it’s own layer.
3. Open the Animation palette (Window > Animation).
4. In the Animation palette menu, click Make Frames From Layers. You can also click Reverse Frames if needed. This will take each layer in your document and set it as an individual frame in the animation.
5. Now we will change the duration of each frame. Make sure you are in frame view, not timeline view. If you do not see thumbnail icons of your layers in the Animation palette, click the icon in the lower right corner (the hover text will say “Convert to Frame Animation”). Now, back in the Animation palette menu, click Select All Frames.
6. Click the drop down button just underneath each frame image (circled in red in the image below). This will bring up a menu where you can set a duration. Since all frames are selected, all frames will be set to the same time. Each frame can be changed individually, if desired.
   
7. The drop down button circled in black in the image above will change how many times the animation will loop; either a fixed number of times, or forever.
8. Once the frame order and timing as been set up, it is time to save the image! Click File > Save for Web & Devices, make sure the file format is set to GIF, change any other options if needed, and save the image!

AT Flying change Webs & Graphics, we often work with organizations that offer information for staff or membership only. WordPress has some nice password protection functions that are easy to use. However, the problem comes when using PDF files that need to be password protected as well as unseen on search engines. Sure, you can password protect a page, which protects the link. But if someone has the direct link to the pdf file, there is nothing to “stop” this direct link from seeing the document.

Surprisingly, this is a function that is lacking in wordpress and I have yet to find a plugin that will protect actually protect the pdf from both direct links from non-members and search engine indexing.

The search engine indexing problem was taken care of by adding a robot.txt file that excluded the upload folder.

The password protecting the pdfs were a little more difficult. Since I couldn’t find a wordpress plugin to do the trick, I think I have come up with a suitable workaround. It takes two easy steps:

1. Using the Media File Manager plugin to create a members only directory in  my upload folder and used their basic instructions to move the client’s pdf files into the special folder.
2. Logging into the host control panel, I could navigate to the special folder and password protect the entire folder – just like I would for a non-wordpress website.

Voila! Password protected and search engine safe!

Having been involved in designing websites since 2000, there are many times when I’ll make a change on a website, load it live, let the client know the changes have been made, only to receive an email moments later in a panic “the changes are there”!

What’s happening here is that the browser has cached (saved) a copy of the page … the old version of the page … and isn’t actually viewing the live version. The fact is, it might only be a few minutes before your browser has recached updates form any website that may have made changes since your last visit.

The Solution: Refresh Your Browser

A simple refresh may be all your browser needs. This is accomplished by hitting the reload button (the button that often looks like a recycle image).

If this doesn’t work, try deleting the cache. This is done differently on each browser. For instance, in Firefox (Mac) it’s done by clicking on Tools > Clear Recent History > Check Cache > Click “Clear Now”.

If all else fails – open the page in a different browser. It might be your internet connection blocking the refresh.

I finally found something that helped me upload from local to live. These area not perfect, but thanks to the “Students of Parsons“, I found this enough to help me.

We have many clients who want photo galleries and for one particular site, I thought the carousel would work. I wanted to put the carousel into the header but couldn’t find ANY documentation other than using the short code [jj-ngg-jquery-carousel html_id="about-jcarousel" gallery="2" visible="6" scroll="1" auto="1"]. That shortcode didn’t work in the header php.
FINALLLY I found someplace that stated that I needed this phrase to make the jj nextgen jquery carousel to appear:

<?php echo do_shortcode(‘[jj-ngg-jquery-carousel html_id="about-jcarousel" gallery="2" visible="6" scroll="1" auto="1"]‘); ?>

In general, to use shortcode within the php files, see this documentation: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/do_shortcode