<?php echo date('Y');?>

That snippet of PHP code will always display the current 4 digit year and keep your copyright information current.

When you share a link on Facebook, it is getting cached by their servers for quicker posting by others. That is great for Facebook, but what if you change the photo and want it to immediately be changed? Fortunately there are two solutions:

1. Wait for Facebook to update their cache.
2. Hack the URL and force Facebook to recache.

To force Facebook to recache your webpage, simply add ?today=11-15-2011 to your URL. Any date would work. Anything after ? would work as well, but dates seem easier to type for someone unfamiliar with URL structure.

For example:

If I share calvingilbert.com on Facebook, but the wrong picture is popping up I would paste this link instead: calvingilbert.com?today=11-15-2011. The slight change in the URL will force Facebook to update it on their end.

NOTE: This trick also works on the title and description as well.

Step 1: Visit Facebook Ads

Step 2: Click on the green button “Create an Ad”

Step 3: A new page will load and the first option will be designing the ad

Choose the ad destination (#1 in the image below). This can be an external url, a page, an event or even a place.

If you choose a page on Facebook it will force the title and cannot be changed. If you want to run an ad for a website, enter the name and choose suggest an ad (#2 in the photo). Suggesting will pull a website’s title, body and image. From there you can alter it as needed. At the bottom you will see a preview of your ad (#3 in the photo).

Once you are happy with the ad, move on to targeting.

Step 4: Choose a location

You can target almost anywhere in the world on Facebook. For my delicious Moxie ad, I want to target Maine. You can filter down to specific cities and choose a mile radius around them if needed. Facebook does not limit you to one state at a time. This ad could run in Maine and New Hampshire if Desired.

Step 5: Choose Demographics

Make sure your ad is targeting the appropriate gender and age group. If you are trying to sell a product designed for middle aged women, why on earth would you target a 24 year old male?

Step 6: Choose Likes & Interests

Here you can choose things to target. For instance: if you are running an ad for a gym, you may want to target people that like weightlifting, running, or exercising.

Step 7: Choose Connections

Facebook gives you the option of targeting people already connected to a page, event or place. This is a way to run an ad targeting people that already support your brand.

Step 8: Advanced Demographics

Here you can show the ad on someones birthday, target singles, or even someone that speaks french.

Step 9: Education and Work

With this option you can target high school students or people with some college experience. It will even let you select a school to target, so if you want to run an ad and only show it to harvard student, Facebook will let you.

Step 10: Reviewing how many users will be targeted

Over on the far right side (inside the red circle) Facebook will show you how many users will see your ad. In my Moxie ad, it will be targeting 3,280 Moxie drinkers from Maine. If you feel this number is too low or too large in some cases, go back through the targeting and change some stuff. Try adding cities or altering the age range to get an ideal targeting group.

Once you are satisfied with the ad, right below that is your payment strategy.

Step 11: Name your campaign and set a budget

You can place this ad in an existing campaign or create a new one entirely. If you want to change this later, Facebook will let you do that too. Next, decide how much you want to pay. You can have the ad run for $5/day, but I prefer the lifetime budget option. Basically, you enter the max amount you want to spend on the campaign and Facebook will determine how much to spend each day. I have noticed Facebook will ramp up how many times your ad is served to make sure it meets the budget.

Step 12: Selecting how long to run the ad

Here you can select when to run the ad. Be careful not to choose “Run my campaign continuously” if you have the spend $$ daily option. As an example: If you run an ad for $25/day and your computer crashes, you will have to pay for the ad until you can get back on Facebook.

Step 13: Price Bidding

If you notice in the red circle below, Facebook is suggesting a bid of $0.88 per click. You are committing up to $0.88 for someone to click on your ad. Facebook looks at all the ads available and will show the one with the highest bid. Depending on who you are targeting and the location, this number could be really high like $5.00 or really low like $0.18.

If I do not like my suggested bid, I will go back and alter the text and demographics until it is lower. Bidding too low will also cause your ad to never be seen.

After hitting “Place Order”, your ad will be submitted and Facebook will review it prior to being shown to users.

• Upgraded to WordPress as a Content Management System
• Facebook Insights & Google Analytics to measure reach
• Custom plugins created using Pods CMS and PHP/MYSQL

What is happening?

My best guess would be that WordPress is not obeying the permalink structure in your .htaccess file. When you run a blog on WordPress, you have the option of choosing how you want pages shown. By default pages will show up as calvingilbert.com/?p=1234. This is an ugly and un google friendly way of displaying your website pages. By changing your permalink structure, you can have this page now show up as calvingilbert.com/king-of-content/.

Briefly put, the .htaccess file is a small text file that can manipulate your websites directory structure (?p=1234 to /directory/), or redirect out dated content to new content.

When WordPress tries to look at this file, I think it is failing to interpret it and causing the page to return an error.

.htaccess? How on earth do I fix that?

I found an easy fix to this problem, and WordPress can manipulate the .htaccess file for you.

Step 1: Locate Settings >> Permalinks in  your admin menu.

Step 2: Click save to regenerate the file structure.

That is all you have to do. Once you hit save changes, go back to your website and it should be error free.

Step 1: Create and select an ugly green box.

Step 2: Select edit >> Step and Repeat…

Step 3: Choose how many times to repeat and the offset.

In this example I am using a count of 2 which means InDesign will create 2 copies of my object. Offset tells Step and Repeat how far apart to make them. As you can see a positive vertical offset will create copies down the page. Using a negative measurement will copy the object upwards. When the spacing looks good hit the ok button.

Step 4: Turn 3 boxes in to 9 with a horizontal offset

Now that we have 3 green boxes, select the three new boxes (important) and go back in to the step and repeat menu. This time we will be changing the horizontal offset. In this example we are duplicating the first 3 boxes to the right two times. Make sure the vertical offset is at 0 and change the horizontal offset to the desired amount. Positive numbers will copy your object to the right, and a negative number will move it left.

Additional Notes:

If you step and repeat an object and enter a vertical and horizontal offset, it will create staircase effect.

Real World Uses:

I use this technique to create 2-up and 4-up fliers. It can also be used to set up business cards or labels.

The site allows users to save a video game to their personal dashboard and lets them determine the best time to buy it. The “total savings” feature gives a nice overview of how much money you are saving vs purchasing a game at a big box store.

Geek stuff: Website uses Amazon’s API, PHP and MySql and a custom WordPress theme. Future updates will include programming WordPress short tags to add content to news posts and blog updates.

When a link is shared on digg or facebook, the user gets to cycle through a couple photos on the page to add as a thumbnail.

If you want to add additional images as options all you need to do is add html image tags to your website code and hide them with some css. I prefer to add them directly after the <body> to force them as the default image on digg.

Here is the code :
<img src="replace with image link" style="display:none;"/>

Note: Even though your image does not appear on the web page, it is still being loaded. Be careful using very large images. It can slow your pages load time.

All because of my grandfather, I started drinking Moxie at a very young age. When I saw him drinking this soda from a bright orange can I was intrigued. I asked him for a sip of it and he replied, “No way, this stuff will put hair on your chest!” So naturally as a 5 year old boy, I started drinking Moxie in hopes of growing a thick forest on my chest.

… back to the badge:

This badge idea came from Justin Ellis (@justinNXT)

To unlock this badge, a Foursquare user must mention Moxie on 4 separate occasions when  checking in.

“Buying some Moxie” or “Trying Moxie at this restaurant” for example.

What do you think, does this badge have what it takes to be implemented? Suggest it to foursquare! Make sure you include a link to this page so they can see what the badge should look like.

Like it or hate it, let me know. Also, any ideas for other badges?

The badge is called Now that’s a Boot! and can be unlocked by visiting L.L Bean’s flagship store in Freeport, Maine. For anyone unfamiliar with L.L Bean’s Freeport store, there is a giant boot outside the entrance that makes you say “Holy Crap, now that’s a boot!”

It is safe to say, L.L. Bean in Freeport definitely receives enough traffic to have this badge implemented.  Also, why wouldn’t L.L. Bean want this badge on Foursquare to pull in new customers?

What do you think, does this badge have what it takes to be implemented? Suggest it to foursquare! Make sure you include a link to this page so they can see what the badge should look like.

Like it or hate it, let me know. Also, any ideas for other badges?