I’ve been working off-and-on at creating a plugin that will automatically update copyright dates. Granted, it’s a simple plugin, but there is still some basic functionality that I feel every piece of code should have, and I’m not quite there yet. I’ll post more about this as I have the time. Right now I’m in the middle of several very large projects and don’t have a whole lot of time to devote to the last bit of fine tuning.
I’ve seen this around before, but just came across this lovely graphical version.
This should apparently be credited to www.udderbuffoonery.com, so if you’ve got a moment, go take a look!
Copywriting is a good way to gain income, and offers a steady source for those who are good at it, but finding an “in” to the copywriting market can be difficult.
I recently came across an article titled “How to find Copywriting Assignments” at Copywriting Basics 101, that givs a few good insights into the process. Definitely worth a read if you’re interested. I know I’ll be looking into a few of the options mentioned.
It happens to everyone. You’ve set up the perfect blog theme, gotten your sidebar(s) just the way you wanted and it’s time to add that last little snippet. And it doesn’t lay out properly. It may be Google AdSense, and Amazon affiliate widget or a Flickr badge, but whatever it is, it’s interfering with your layout.
Perhaps it’s drifting outside the column to the right. (This is what happened to me. The widget creator had added padding that forced the widget just outside my theme’s boundaries.) Maybe it’s too far to the left by just a hair. I have a solution.
Most likely this third party add-on was dropped into your sidebar using the Sidebar Widgets in your Presentation menu. If so, simply add the following…
<div style="margin-left: -15px;">
<YOUR WIDGET CODE HERE>
</div>
You may need to adjust the margin-left value to a positive number, or just a lesser number to fit your needs, but you’ll immediately see the widget (or whatever it’s called) slide to the left by 15px. Pretty easy, huh!
If you’ve hard coded your theme, just find the spot where you’ve added your third party code and place the <div> tag around it as seen above. As long as you don’t have a generic style set for DIV’s in your CSS file (and why would you?), it’ll work like a charm every time, without modifying the third party code, which can be a violation of some Terms of Service. (Can you sy G00gle anyone?)
One of the things I see constantly when looking at blogs is the outdated copyright. To me there’s nothing that will make me chuckle faster than a copyright notice at the bottom of a blog or website that reads something like:
Copyright 2002 – 2005, some company name. All rights reserved.
This, to me is the epitome of site neglect. It’s also a free license for someone to steal any content on your blog with a dates tamp newer than 2005!
Don’t let this happen to you. If you’re running WordPress (or any other php based platform) the solution couldn’t be simpler. simply add the following code in your footer.php (or wherever your footer code resides.)
<?php echo date(Y); ?>
To show this in context, if your copyright reads:
Copyright 2005 – 2007 MyCompanyName
Find the portion of your footer where the copyright is displayed and make the following changes:
Original
Copyright 2005 - 2007 MyCompanyName
Change to:
Copyright 2005 - <?php echo(Y); ?> MyCompanyName
And there you go, a perpetually correct copyright date. If you’re asking “Do you use this on your blogs?” The answer is… If you see a copyright notice in the footer, I’m using this method, or one very near to it.
I’ll be back on this topic with an even simpler solution in the very near future.
