These are the results we got after running “Benchmark”. I’d say we weren’t imagining things.

Now, in one handy location, A complete list of every (important) social network’s image dimensions!

http://www.trackur.com/social-networks-image-dimensions

This plugin simply creates a widget called “Black Studio TinyMCE” and when the widget data is edited, it opens the standard WordPress page/post edit.

Now if there was only an easy way to add table data into a post…

I never realized how much I use Wikipedia until today. Makes me think I really should get around to donating to the Wikipedia project.

Wow. WordPress, too! Let’s hope these acts get the point across and stop SOPA and PIPA.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/proper-network-activation/

From the plugin’s page:

When running WordPress MultiSite, you have a very handy feature called network activation. It allows you to activate a plugin for the entire network of sites. The trouble is that it only does half the job.

Some plugins have an install procedure that is meant to be run only on activation. However, when you do a network activation, that install procedure is only run for the current site. So, you end up with plugins not working properly on all the other sites.

What this plugin does:

• when doing a network de/activation, it triggers the de/activation hook on all sites in the network
• when creating a new site, it triggers the activation hook for all active network plugins on that site

A real plus of Event Expresso? It looks like you can charge customers credit cards using your own Authorize.net account (among other payment processors).

My biggest frustration with EventBrite is that you either have to use their credit card processing services or PayPal. If you use EventBrite, you have to wait 5 days until your event is over to see your money. If you run your event like many organizations, the money brought in is needed for preparing the even in the first place.

If you want your money from EventBrite immediately, the only option is to let PayPal handle your processing. Regardless of whether you love or hate PayPal, that just adds an extra step to the checkout process — And I’m still amazed in this day and age how many people seize up thinking that they must have a paypal account to pay somebody through PayPal.

Has anybody used Event Expresso? It certainly seems like a very thorough solution that you’d have complete control over, as opposed to playing by EventBrite’s rules. What did you find to be the break even point for moving from EventBrite to Event Expresso?

Whether you know it or not, your buying decisions are oftentimes based on color. The next time you’re looking at an advertisement or packaging for an item you’re considering, pay special attention to the colors you see. Observe how those colors make you feel. Once you understand the effects of color on buying habits, you can make marketing decisions based on that knowledge.

Shoppers put visual appearance and color above other factors when considering a purchase. According to research compiled by KISSmetrics, 85 percent of shoppers said color was a primary reason they made a buying decision. Additionally, 80 percent said that color increases brand recognition. Brand recognition improves consumer confidence. Before you make the next color choice for your brand, consider this:

Red
Think of a clearance sale and you’ll be seeing red. There’s probably a good reason as red creates a sense of urgency. Red is the color energy and is known to raise your heart rate. Red usually draws attention first.

Black
Black is the color of power, luxury, elegance and authority. Now you know why so many luxury items have black in their marketing. However, black is also associated with death and evil and can evoke strong emotions, so beware of how black will relate to your products.

Green
The color of money, green is associated with wealth. It’s also easy on the eyes and often used as a relaxing color in stores. Light green shows change while dark green shows balance.

Blue
Blue is a color you can trust, so it’s often used in banking and business. Blue causes the body to produce chemicals that are calming. It is also associated with wisdom and loyalty. However, too much blue can make a message cold and uncaring.

Orange
If you have a call to action, orange creates the need to subscribe or buy. Orange is another energy color associated with happiness and ambition.

Yellow
Stop those window shoppers with yellow. It causes your body to release the feel-good chemical, serotonin. Yellow is associated with happiness, laughter and creativity.

Purple
Purple is the color of sophistication and prosperity. It is often associated with royalty. Purple can increase brain activity that helps with problem solving.

Source: Color Choice Can Make the Difference on a Sale

We’ve found Free Video Dub, an easy Windows tool that quickly and easily lets you cut out segments of your video and save the results as a new video. Mind you, this is certainly not a replacement for a full editing suite. Besides, you’ll never master a full editing suite in only 5 minutes. Free Video Dub does its job and it’s free to boot!

Every once in a while we come across something that we wish Techozoic Fluid could do and we’ve found the author of the theme to be very accommodating. We’ve seen many of our suggestions and requests incorporated into the theme.

An interesting feature of Techozoic is that you can make layers transparent to give a different effect to your pages. We got crazy on one site and turned off all background colors and images. There was some remaining lines and shadows, so we rang up our favorite theme coder and they provided us with this css snippet that we could install.

#headerr, #headerl, #header_top, #navmenu, #pagel, #pager, #footer, #footermain{
background: none;}

Another beautiful thing about Techozoic Fluid is that the author has put an area that custom CSS can be added into a safe area so that if you do custom the theme, your work will stay even after a theme update.

Here’s where “Microstock Photography” comes to the rescue. Listed are some less expensive stock photography sites that we’ve come across. We’ll catalog them as we use them. At the bottom of the list are sites we’ve stumbled across but haven’t actually used yet.

Let us know if you’ve got a favorite cheap or free stock photography site.

cheap

http://depositphotos.com (one of our favorites)
http://www.dreamstime.com

free – no registration

http://morguefile.com (free is nice!)

free – registration

http://www.sxc.hu
http://www.everystockphoto.com/

not tested:

http://www.123rf.com/
http://freestockphotos.com/
http://www.stockvault.net
http://commons.wikimedia.org