blogsimplified.com

…and yes, I did use the embed trick described in my own presentation a couple of blogs ago. Strip out the divs before and after the object tag, then move the src and type parameters into the object tag, change src to data, and then you can remove the embed tag. It should give you valid XHTML and a more elegant embed in your blog.

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I just upgraded blogsimplified.com from Wordperss 2.6.2 to Wordpress 2.6.3, and I did it the easy way because there are only four files that have changed. If you download and unpack the Wordpress 2.6.3 release from the Wordpress.org site, find the following four files:

wp-admin/includes/media.php
wp-content/plugins/akismet/akismet.php
wp-includes/class-snoopy.php
wp-includes/version.php

If you copy these files into the respective directories where you host your Wordpress blog, then you don’t have to go through any of the configuration trouble. Just replace the four files and you should be good to go.

If you are reading this, then it must have worked!

I just noticed some differences in the blogsimplified Wordpress themes when trying them in Internet Explorer 6. It seems that IE6 treats a lot more things differently than I anticipated.

One of the things that doesn’t seem to work is min-height, which throws off the nice layout and matching of the main page area and the sidebars. It also looks like some of the padding and margins are treated differently.

Stay tuned while I test these themes out again and provide some updates.

[This should be fixed now. If you find any quirks in other browsers, please let me know by posting a comment. Thanks.]

Slideshare is a great service that allows you to upload powerpoint presentations and then embed them in your blog, but the default embed code is not valid XHTML and it also clutters your site with lots of extra links back to Slideshare.net. When your own presentation links with your keywords back to Slideshare, you will find that Slideshare ranks higher than you on Google for your own content. This presentation will teach you how to cleanly embed a Slideshare presentation on your blog while maintaining your own Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as much as possible.

Transcript

1. How to Embed a Slideshare Presentation in your Blog with Valid XHTML
2. Slideshare: YouTube for Slides. Slideshare.net is like YouTube for slide shows: You can upload PowerPoint presentations to Slideshare.net and share them by inserting some embed code in your web page. Unfortunately, if you use the Slideshare.net embed code “as is”, your web page will no longer be valid XHTML as determined by http://validator.w3.org. This presentation shows you how to modify the Slideshare embed code to produce valid XHTML as well as a cleaner presentation without the clutter of links back to Slideshare.net.
3. Here is the embed code that Slideshare gives you
4. Here is what it looks like with the default Slideshare embed code
5. It also doesn’t validate at http://validator.w3.org
6. W3 Shows you the errors in detail.
7. Some of this code is unnecessary, cluttering your slideshow with extra links back to Slideshare
8. Let’s remove the backlink code and see what happens
9. The code sure looks cleaner
10. It’s also cleaner on the screen without all those extra links
11. But it still doesn’t validate
12. The problem is with embed. embed tag is not not valid XHTML, but you can add more information to the object tag and you don’t need to use the embed tag at all
13. Make these edits
14. Here is what the new embed code looks like
15. It looks the same on the screen
16. And now you have valid XHTML
17. And you can put this badge on your site if you want to

Check out the new black neon blogsimplified Wordpress theme, which you can download in the Wordpress themes area.

This is a clean and simple minimalist theme, 955px wide with a black background and three columns set up or high performance adsense skyscrapers in the middle. The ads can easily inserted into a text widget and the 160px wide ads should format nicely with dark grey borders.

For an example of blogsimplified-blackneon in practice, see this Airport Codes website.

In this update, I made some changes so that the left and right columns are always the same height even if the content of the blogs or pages is longer than the sidebar.

Now both the main content area and the sidebar both fit within a mainpage id, which also has a min-height of 1240px, so that two adsense skyscraper ads can neatly fit in the minimum page size including margins.

I also removed the Google Analytics script from the footer. I use Google Analytics to generate site statistics for my sites, but I accidently left it in the theme footer. If you want to add your own Google Analytics code, you can cut and paste your own analytics script into the footer.php file just above the end of the body tag.