Oct 012012
 

Jesse Friedman, author of the Web Designer’s Guide to WordPress, helps us avoid common WordPress mistakes and takes a look at some myths and misgivings to boot

WordPress has made huge strides in the last year or two to become a full fledged CMS. With these changes comes the need to shed old myths about WordPress. As we move to become a ubiquitous CMS available to the masses, misconceptions and preconceived notions of bugs and flaws from the past can cloud our judgement of the future. Hopefully alleviating our thoughts of following 20 mistakes, myths and misgivings we can all realise the full potential of this CMS and work to make it better.

MORE20 common WordPress mistakes, myths and misgivings | Feature | .net magazine.

 


Oct 012012
 

This week, California took a big step forward in the march toward online education. Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a proposal to create a website that will allow students to download digital versions of popular textbooks for free.

The new legislation encompasses two bills: One, a proposal for the state to fund 50 open-source digital textbooks, targeted to lower-division courses, which will be produced by California’s universities. (Students will be able to download these books for free or pay $20 for hard copies.) The other bill is a proposal to establish a California Digital Open Source Library to host those books.

On the textbook side, California will ask the California Open Education Resources Council, comprised of school faculty, to create and oversee a book approval process — which will include the development of a list of targeted courses “for which high-quality, affordable, digital open source textbooks and related materials would be developed or acquired” by the University of California, California State University, or California Community College systems. The council will then solicit bids to produce these textbooks in 2013. (The first free books are set to be available for the 2013-2014 school year.) And the bill makes clear that the council has the option to use “existing high-quality digital open source textbooks and related materials” if those materials fit its requirements.

MORECalifornia Takes a Big Step Forward: Free, Digital, Open-Source Textbooks – Megan Garber – The Atlantic.

 


Oct 012012
 

Secret Social Marketing Tip: Find out which social media platform works better for engaging your fans.

Brands need to make the decision as to which social platform they should focus on in order to gain maximum fan engagement. So, we looked at 12 key industries and examined whether brand activity on Facebook or Twitter can engage fans better and what are the reasons.

For the Media, the best channel is Twitter

When studying media performance on both social platforms, we found out that media post on Facebook five times less than brands. The Media engagement rate is only 47% of what brands reach on Facebook. On the other hand, the media engagement rate on Twitter represents 88% of what brands achieve on Twitter.

MOREThe perfect diet for your brand – is Facebook or Twitter Engagement better? – Socialbakers.

 


Oct 012012
 

Time passes quickly and change is relentless, particularly in the digital sphere. So, if your busy life kept you away from the Internet this week, there’s plenty you may have missed.

But don’t fret — Mashable, your cyber ally, is here to relieve your digital woes. Our staff tracked down every new gizmo, app, game, website and service they could find. Check them out in our weekly roundup of digital resources,

MORE65 Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed.