Have you ever wanted to customize your WordPress admin login screen without using a plugin?  Here is a very simple way to achieve this by only making changes to your functions file in your theme.  By making the changes to the functions file you will avoid losing your customizations when WordPress makes its next update.

Step One: Create your WordPress login page images. If you want to replace the WordPress logo on the login screen with your own you should try and limit it in size. A good size to use to replace the WordPress logo would be about 320px X 65px.

Step two: Open up your functions.php file in your WordPress theme folder.

Step three: Insert the following snippet of code. Be sure to change where it says “your-image-here” and put the images in the themes image folder.

That’s it! You should now have a customized WordPress login page!

On Thursday, September 29th, Facebook is scheduled to make one of its biggest announcements in its short history.  If you thought the recent changes to your Facebook page were drastic, you are in for a big surprise.  In anticipation of these changes it is suggested that you download a backup of all your Facebook data and store it in a safe place.If you don’t care about your photos, videos, status updates, etc, then ignore this altogether.

To download your data file follow these simple instructions:

1. When logged into your account, click on the arrow tab to the right of “Home” and select “Account Settings”
2. Next, look at the bottom of the page just below “Language” and right above the Facebook Copyright clause.  Click on “Download a copy of your Facebook data.”
3. Enter Your Password
4. Wait for Facebook to Email You
5. When you get the email, click the link to download your file

Super easy.  Depending how long you have been on Facebook your file could be up to a GB in size.  The file includes EVERY single update you have ever made on Facebook. It is like a time capsule and is actually very cool to look through.  What else can you take away from this?  Your digital footprint does not go away.  The things you say and do online, on Facebook, are there forever.

Want to learn more about the upcoming changes?

Mashable Write-up: http://mashable.com/2011/09/22/facebook-timeline-zuckerberg%E2%80%99s-biggest-gamble-yet/

The official F8 Page: https://www.facebook.com/f8

These short videos are definitely worth a watch.  Learn about creative influences and why “copying” can actually be a good thing.

When it comes to checking your website’s search engine rankings, people often make the mistake of simply running a search in their browser using Google. The problem with this is Google tracks your activity and if you have visited your website alot, they will artificially push it to the top of the results. The catch here, is that it is only pushed up on YOUR computer. No one else will see the same rankings as you. So to get accurate rankings it is important to do one of two things. 1) You can clear all your cookies and then redo the search. 2)Use a service like PageWash.

I prefer #2. Go to http://www.pagewash.com/ and then go to Google through their service.  You can then type in your search phrase to get the correct rankings.

Here is an example of a search for “Portland Web Design” using Google without Page Wash or cleared Cookies:

In the above example I could mistakenly assume that I am ranking in the 4th spot for the term “Portland Website Design” however this is not true.  Google simply noticed that I go to my website alot and they pushed it to the top for me to make it easier to find.

Now, lets look at the exact same search using Page Wash.

Notice how Moore Web Exposure doesn’t show up at all? This screen shot is only for the first half of the page, however I can tell you that I am on the second page for the term “Portland Website Design”. In fact, I have moved up since the last time I checked and am the very first result on the second page, which is exciting.

Anyways, this was a longer post than intended but hopefully it illustrates how you can get served up different search results based on your search history.

Have you ever found yourself looking for a certain filetype? This little search tecnique may come in handy for the student who is trying to find a report, or a business person looking for a certain document. I have personally used this to try and find pdf files or photoshop (psd) files.

Let’s say we want to see some business plans other people have put together. Enter the following search into Google:

If you wanted to search for Word Docs you would do the same but with a different filetype:

The filetype is interchangeable and you can pretty much search for any filetype and if it is on the web Google will sniff it out for you. Enjoy and share!

Google is good at alot of things but did you know you can use it for unit conversions? Here is how:

If you want to know how many MPH 50 KPH is simply type the following into Google:

You can use this approach for many other conversions as well.

… and so on and so on. See what ones you can come up with and don’t forget to share this tip!

I call it a “quicktionary” because it is quicker than finding a dictionary or going to dictionary.com.  In Google, you can very easily lookup the meaning of a word by using a simple search string.

Today’s tip is similar to yesterday’s tip in that we are going to be excluding something from our search results.  This time, however, we are going to be excluding a specific website from the search results.  Let’s say I wanted to search for WordPress Lightboxes but I don’t want any results from WordPress.org or WordPress.com.  I would run the following search:

Simple. You can add as many websites as you would like to exclude.

For today’s tip I am going to show you how to exclude a certain phrase from you search.  Let’s say you are searching for drinking glasses but keep getting results for seeing glasses.  In this situation you would want to run the following search:

This will yield us more relevant search results for drinking glasses. Try it yourself. This little trick is very helpful when you need to narrow down your search results.

Google is obviously a pretty powerful tool.  To get the most out of it, however, you have to know how to use it.  Here is a quick tip on how to search a specific website using Google’s search engine.

Let’s say I wanted to search within the WordPress Community Forums pages for support on a Lightbox. Here is how I might do this.

Go to Google and try the following:

You can also search a phrase like the following:

To search a specific phrase simply put parenthesis around your search term. This will work without the Parenthesis but it will return less relevant results as it won’t search for the exact phrase.