Just thought I’d pass along a handy little web page for those times when you want to resize an image and maintain the proportions, but don’t have time for the math.
From time to time, I’m trying to fit an image on a web page and know that I have only X amount of space. For example, I know a space on the web page is 380 pixels wide and 118 pixels high. Unfortunately, the image is 452 pixels high, so I need to resize it in the html to a height of 118 pixels. But how wide will it be?
That’s when I just go to Jennifer’s handy, dandy online Proportional Calculator, bunch in the numbers and let it do the math.
Oh, and if you find this a useful as I do, consider a small tip for her efforts. It’s good karma — and smart business to keep encouraging talented programmers and designers to offer their work for the price of a latte!
Several times I’ve had folks ask what plugins I recommend. Well, there is no single list that works for everybody. There are a couple of plugins I believe everyone should use and then there are the ones that I use a lot with projects and clients.
Let me also make a pitch for making donation to the plugin developers, if you find you are using their plugins. If care about improving our quality of life, the courtesy of saying “Thank You” with a gift goes a long way whether it’s bottle of wine for a hostess or gift card for tech support from a friend, so a US$5, $10 or more donation for feature support is a tangible “Thank You”.
If you are just interested in the bottom line, a donation is a smart business move because having to hire a programmer to customize your Wordpress features is a lot more expensive than encouraging plugin developers with a modest payment.
In short, give a donation to the plugin developers whose work you use. End of sermon.
These Are Basic Plugins I Install on My Sites
a) Askimet which comes with WP but needs a key you can get by registering for a Wordpress.com account. You don’t have to start a blog on Wordpress.com, but you do need to register for an account.
b) Google XML Sitemaps is another I consider an essential. Google likes you to have a site map and this handles that for you. the other search engines — Yahoo!, Bing, et al — read and use the file as well so you’re killing a lot of SEO birds with one plugin.
c) Wordpress Database Backup is another one I install on all my sites — except my primary. The only reason I don’t have it activated on my primary is that because of the wonky set-up by my hosting service, which prevents me from using the new automatic upgrade, plugin install and theme install, I can’t use it. (Well, I *could* but only if I set my permissions to 777 which I’m not about to do…) This is another large part of the reason I’m moving to a new hosting service this summer for my primary domain.
d) I’ve also become quite fond of Bad Behavior which blocks some spammers and some script kiddies. It’s not essential, but I run it on my primary domain.
