Templates

404.php
If your theme doesn’t have a 404.php template it will redirect to the main page, and the visitor will wonder why the page he was expecting to see is replaced with the main page of the site.

About page
Don’t forget to replace the default page text created by WordPress for the about page, you can find over a million pages with the exact same text.

CSS

Printer friendly pages or CSS
Try printing some pages of your site and verify that the result is readable. Consider creating an alternate CSS if necessary

WordPress Standard CSS classes
Don’t forget to include the standard CSS classes from WordPress (.alignleft, .alignright, .aligncenter, .wp‐caption, .cat‐item, .currentcat, etc…)

Browser compatibility
The goal is to give the visitor the best browsing experience possible, but we have to keep in mind that not all browsers are the same.  Test in different browsers, but remember that every browser has different grades of support for standards.

RSS

Verify that the RSS is reachable or redirects to Feedburner if you are going to use Feedburner.

robots.txt

Make sure robots.txt file is free from errors that can keep the search engines from indexing your site. And the pages that are not intended to be listed in search results should be disallowed in robots.txt. The easiest way to handle this without having to read a lot is with a plugin (for example: Robots.txt WordPress Plugin ).

Sitemap

Site maps are often neglected. Whenever pages are added or removed from your site make sure the site map gets updated as well. Again the easiest way to manage this is with a plugin (for example: Google XML Sitemaps)

Forms

If you provide a contact form that deliver messages to your email box, verify that you receive the email. Also if you use a form to gather email addresses to build a list for a newsletter don’t forget to verify that the email is sent and the information is saved to a database with the correct information from the form.

Site search

This is an important element of on-site usability. Verify that the search functionality works as expected and the template renders the results. If it doesn’t work it does more harm than good. You can use the search functionality build into WordPress or implement a 3rd party service like Google Custom Search.

Redirects

If you are migrating an old site or a site from another domain don’t forget to set redirects (using .htaccess or with a plugin) and verify that the redirects work by checking a couple pages or posts using the old URL and verifying that you end at the right (new) URL.

Statistics scripts

Check that the script needed to track visits is included on each page, is irritating when you lose statistics because you forgot to include the tracker script.

In the WordPress Codex about Theme Development Checklist are more things to consider before declaring a site ready to go live, please note that I didn’t finished, because you still need to check if the HTML code is valid, add tracking & statistics code, load times optimization, etc…

And I’m sure everyone has a similar list, please add a comment and share the things you check.

Image by psd

Like everyone in web, I have an opinion on Yahoo/Microsoft deal, after reading a lot of post about this subject I don’t understand why all the tables comparing the earnings includes all microsoft divisions (HW , software, web, games) or at least that is what looks like, because I didn’t see any indication of the contrary and as far as I know Yahoo or Google don’t produce consumer hardware, games, OS or office suites with a licensing business model.

The tables should have been the numbers of Yahoo + the numbers of MSFT but only the web divisions and then comparing that to the numbers of income and profit from Google.

But for the analysis and predictions I will point to some posts were A list blogs have made a better job in describing the situation, effects and timelines.

• Techcrunch
• Enrique Dans

Read/Write Web

• SEOmoz

As a user how will this affect me?. well, first let’s make a list of the services I use on each one.

What services do I use currently or have used in the past on:
Microsoft

• Hotmail/Live Mail
• MSN Messenger

Yahoo

• Answers
• Buzz
• Del.icio.us
• Flickr
• HotJobs
• Instant Messenger
• Mail
• MyBlogLog
• My.Yahoo.com
• Pipes
• Site explorer
• Yahoo User Interface Library
• Zimbra
• Search Marketing

And for comparison the services I use on Google:

• Alerts
• Analytics
• Blogger
• Calendar
• Docs
• Gmail
• Groups
• Jaiku
• Maps
• Reader
• Talk
• Webmaster Tools
• Youtube
• Adsense
• AdWords

And I’m sure that some services I use are missing, but as a web user this could mean that I may need to start searching for alternatives to the services that I use on Yahoo, because if we look at this and this the services provided by Yahoo and converted or redesigned to comply with MS guidelines and corporate/web standards will be ruined and/or covered with ads. or I may not like them changed, as simple as that.

As a developer, what can I say? I haven’t used IE for the last 4 or so years and I have suffered with the incompatibilities caused by the MS browser, I don’t use any service or API provided by Microsoft, is there any?

As an advertiser, I have used only Yahoo or Google. But I have read about the new tools that Microsoft implemented for advertisers in their network and they seem to be really good. This may be the only good point in the acquisition for me if MS integrate the search volume and the tools of both companies.

In Evil Mad Scientists they are working on a toaster device to draw with a Hot-air gun and a X-Y motion control system.

It’s not a bad idea. Impractical, but not bad.

Como todo servicio que se precie de ser 2.0 twitter cuenta con un API y muchos la han aprovechado para crear cosas como NYTimesriver.com o algunas mas elaboradas como Twittervision

Estuve observando durante un buen rato y me di cuenta que la gran mayoría de posts en twitter son de USA, Canada, Europa (Inglaterra, Francia, Italia, España) y alguno que otro de otros paises perdidos entre la proporcion de 4 a 1 o mas de los posts provenientes de los 2 paises que menciono.

De repente vi unos de Argentina, Mexico y Chile, pero muy pocos en comparacion con los provenientes de los demas paises.

El sitio esta en “beta” siguiendo con la tendencia de los sitios y servicios web 2.0, pero para poder obtener una invitación y crear una cuenta para poder probarlo solo tienes que registrarte para recibir su newsletter/boletin y en poco tiempo te enviaran una invitación para crear tu cuenta y que puedas probar haciendo tus propios mapas mentales

Es similar a Cmap Tools, Kdissert y algunas otras aplicaciones; asi que si usas alguna de estas herramientas o te es familiar el concepto probablemente te gustara. A mi me pareció muy útil para organizar ideas de una manera estructurada lo que te puede facilitar el desarrollo de estas.

Durante la beta puedes usar todas las opciones, una vez terminada esta habra una opcion gratuita restringida en el numero de mapas y opciones que puedes usar y otra que te costara alrededor de $50Dlls anuales.

Algunos dicen que no hay burbuja, otros dicen que las aplicaciones web 2.0 si tienen planes de negocio viables y rentables y claro que tambien hay detractores que dicen que es lo mismo que sucedio en el 2000-2002. Pero las aplicaciones siguen surgiendo por todas partes y hoy me llamo la atencion ver Walabay y vpod.tv (otro clon de Youtube).

A la primera no le veo mucho futuro ya que provee de un espacio en internet, para alojar archivos de audio y poder reproducirlos mediante el browser en cualquier parte. ofrece 512MB de espacio de forma gratuita, lo que equivale a unas 170 canciones, y se puede ampliar esta capacidad a 1GB o 5GB, con precios de 1.99€ y 2.99€ mensuales respectivamente. Los archivos se pueden marcar como públicos o privados, de forma pública los demás miembros pueden escuchar esas canciones, buscándolas a través de nubes de tags o de manera aleatoria.

Que me dicen de los derechos de las canciones que estan almacenando y reproduciendo??. Y acaso las disqueras no podrian pedir en un momento dado los datos de los usuarios y con eso empezar a indagar a los que tienen mas canciones para averiguar la procedencia de estas?. No se, yo no le veo mucho futuro.

En el caso del clon de Youtube, creo que ese mercado ya esta mas que saturado, sin contar a Youtube, estan metacafe, iFilm, veoh y muchos otros sitios que de momento no recuerdo, que se pelean por el resto del mercado.