Traffic Metrics Require Context

Oct 2 2012

Last Friday, Chris posed a question to the team regarding the traffic numbers that various analytics tools provide: why do we trust the numbers so much, regardless of their source? This got me thinking… why do we put so much faith into the numbers we’re looking at? Are we applying the correct context to these metrics?

I did some further research into two different tools we leverage at RD2, Inc...

Youtube Browser-Based Uploader with PHP

Aug 21 2012

Download Example

RD2 wanted to add something special with our 3rd iteration of building the World Traveler Internship website. We created a very unique feature within the application process...

Responsive: Fluid Width YouTube Videos

Jun 28 2012

Building a responsive website requires many variables. You have to think about every element in the DOM and how it will react when the browser is resized. Here at RD2, we recently converted our site to be responsive. I have to say, it’s pretty awesome. But when I threw a YouTube video in one of our blog posts, it wasn’t responsive to the browser window or any smaller device.

Problem

Using WordPress’s auto embed feature, how can I modify the video’s width and height when I resize the browser using YouTube’s iframe code?

Answer

My original attempt at accomplishing this with CSS alone was not successful...

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One Big Responsive Family

Jun 27 2012
One Big Responsive Family

It’s a sign. A signal that something special is happening at RD2. Today we’re rolling out something for ourselves and that is altogether different for us. Typically we’re the last to get the good stuff, but this time it’s different. We wanted to be the test subject. This version of our website offers a glimpse of our new framework that we’ve been building as a WordPress add-on. Known in our industry as “Responsive Design,” this version of our website takes on a new design approach.

No matter what your website is all about, chances are if you look at your google analytics over the past few years you will notice new device types (mobile devices) are requesting content from your website...

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PHP Weather widget using Google’s weather API

May 17 2012
PHP Weather widget using Google’s weather API
UPDATE 08/28/2012

Google has abandoned their weather API and are now using wunderground.com Weather API. I will be creating a new tutorial showing the API in action very soon. Check back to the RD2 blog for updates. Please disregard the below code.

With the recent launch of the Elbowz Racing team website, we decided to add something a little bit fun, but still applicable, into the project: a self-maintaining weather widget using Google’s weather API and PHP...

The Three Second Rule

Apr 21 2012

Engaging your audience online is increasingly challenging. Today when your brand wishes to create a web property you are automatically competing with expectations. Your audience spends hours a month on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to name a few. It’s imperative that we are competing like crazy for their eyeballs on your website.

You have only three seconds to establish an emotional impression from the instant your page loads to the browser. During that first three seconds your audience will formulate a decision as to whether or not they will invest in the next three seconds.

Within those first three seconds, the user will not begin reading or clicking. They are simply responding to design...

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Some You Own, Some You Rent

Mar 22 2012

Let’s say you are responsible for running communications for a small, medium, or large company. And, you’re in the situation where you are pondering how to get started in this social media thing. How to become part of the conversation and to channel conversations within and around your brand in a new space. You know you need to be there, and you know it’s something that’s right for your brand. Maybe you already have the support from your peers and the executive team...

Detecting the Kindle Fire with PHP

Mar 8 2012
Detecting the Kindle Fire with PHP

There are many reasons to detect the type of platform your user is viewing your website on. There are articles all over the internet about detecting iphones, ipads, android devices, etc. But when it comes to detecting the Kindle Fire, things can get a bit strange. To get the user’s platform, you will want to use the PHP method, $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] (see below).


This will return: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_3; en-us; Silk/1.1.0-80) AppleWebKit/533.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0 Safari/533.16 Silk-Accelerated=true

As you can see, there are mentions of Mozilla, Apple, WebKit, Safari, etc...