Recently a client requested that they wanted to put an expiry date on a blog post, so the post would be removed from the index and category pages after the offer expired. For SEO purposes, the post would still exist at it’s original URL and be able to be accessed through an archives page.

It’s a really good idea, as many affiliates offering discount codes and offers would find this added function very useful.

A few plugins exists that will “expire” a post, but unfortunately they either delete the post, or move it to a draught version that can only be seen in Wordpres admin. This is bad for SEO. Old links expired or not, can still bring in traffic to a website and if a customer missed the offer the first time, they still know they should bookmark the site for the next time around.

SNIPPLR have written a modified version of the Wordpress Loop which will remove posts after a date that can be specified in the Custom Fields section of the WP text editor. The code compares an expiry date given with the date from the host server and if the date has passed, the wordpress loop will omit that post from being shown.

The code doesn’t show the posts in the archives however and only expires posts by date when our client needed a to expire a post at a specific time. We modified SNIPPLR’s code so it would do both and also added the ability to adjust the server time, which is handy if your website is hosted in a different timezone to the one you need to use.

All you need to do when writing the post, is enter a custom field with the key “expiration” and set the value in the format: “2010/01/01 18:20:00″ – this would expire the post at 6.20pm on the 1st January 2010.

NRBet is an affiliate site that offers completely risk free bets from various online bookmakers, built with a relatively simple Wordpress theme that has a few nifty additions.

We updated Mark’s logo, designed and built this theme with a dropdown jQuery menu as a slick addition to a simple layout. One feature that was required was an ability to put an expiry date on posts and there was no plugins available to do this in a satisfactory manner.

The idea was to have individual posts that would only stay present on the homepage as long as they were in date; after this date they would disappear from the homepage, but still show in the archives, and still be accessible at their original URL for SEO purposes.

We created a bespoke code for this that we will shortly be adding to our tutorial section.

www.nrbet.com

Great Baby Things is a well thought out blog that attempts to add some real journalism and advice to an affiliate niche with so many automated product websites. Inspired by blogs such as Gizmodo and Uncrate, a lot of modifications have been made to increase the accessibility and functionality of this blog.

We provided a clean uncluttered design and then added features such as an “alternate view” – which allows users to choose to view the website as a grid of images, a magazine style list of posts – or as a standard blog with the full posts scrolling down the page.

Many usefull plugins have also been integrated to give users, numerous ways to access each post. and jquery has been used to create a dynamic dropdown menu. There have also been a number of modifications to simplify the use of the site for the owner.

Hopefully if time permits we’ll be introducing a series of tutorials to show how we created some of the features on this blog.

www.greatbabythings.com

ISIOTB is a cool site which picks the best products that have appeared on TV recently and provides a guide to where you can buy them. The products listed range from Gadgets to Home Insurance and always provide an interesting read. The site had been using a free template for a while, which did not provide the functionality that our client required.

Mike from ISIOTB loved the functional and “2.0” design of UKOffer.com and so our design was created on this basis, tweaking the design to incorporate a TV based theme. First draughts went along the lines of old TV test cards, but the result was too garish so then later toned down to only a suggestion of test card colours within the navigation.

Isawitonthebox.com

Cheap Perfume is a well performing affiliate site that was in need of a cosmetic overhaul. Our client liked the design of affiliatestuff.co.uk and had asked for a design with a similar look that would appeal to a female target audience. They offer great deals on perfume too, and the site was designed to compliment the large pictures of elegantly designed perfume bottles.

Cheap-Perfume.co.uk

Flybe Destinations was designed for a super affiliate who is an official partner of Flybe airlines. The site was designed to keep the colour scheme and style of Flybe in mind without copying their actual design.

The blog part of the wordpress theme has taken a back seat in this design to emphasise the important part of the site, providing information about all airports and destinations used by Flybe. The design demonstrates that wordpress on its own can be used to build full websites, and not just blogs. This means the whole site is fully updatable without rebuilding html web pages.

Quite a bit bespoke code was written for this, as the theme has been designed to display different external and internal links depending on the page being viewed. A user can click on an airport, read a full page of information and be provided links to only the destinations that are available for that particular airport. It’s this kind of information packed website that will prove to be successful for affiliates as google cracks down on single landing page websites that only exist to redirect traffic.

http://www.flybe-destinations.com/

After some fantastic publicity from Affiliate Stuff and UK Offer, we have been so busy with new projects, we have not had much time to update our blog! Our team has now expanded though, so we may still available to design your site. Please contact us to find out more.

Jules.tv is a blog we have designed for a top TV director and producer, who works with many channels including BBC, SKY One and MTV on programs such as Pimp my Ride. The blog’s purpose is to offer advice on the latest camera and TV productions techniques, reviews of equipment and news in the media industry.

Currently there are 6 repeating images across the top which are placeholders for jules.tv to add 6 top equipment picks which will link to individual equipment reviews. After a number of experiments, we did not make this section dynamic, as the link to an old post may need to stay on top for a while. We’ve used the WPAds plugin for this section so images and links can be altered easily by the blogger.

The homepage has been given a “magazine” style where a title, image and user defined “excerpt” is displayed  instead of the full post to allow for more content to be displayed. A TinyMCE plugin was used to upgrade the functionality of the wordpress admin’s excerpt editor, and bespoke code added to automatically link any image within the excerpt to link to the full post.

The sidebar was fully customised with bespoke graphics, but the client required the ability to add further “widgets” to the sidebar in the future. For this we added code so widgets can be placed underneath the customised sidebar.

www.jules.tv

Kirsty McCubbin is travelling the world and working from her laptop on the strength of her affiliate marketing expertise, and like many good affiliates she likes to share her wealth of knowledge in the industry with the rest of us.

Kirsty asked us to redesign her popular Affiliate Stuff Blog, to reflect her glamorous globe trotting lifestyle, her blog had previously used a slightly modified free theme that was used just to set the blog up – but due to some sage and informative posting, the blog has become very popular.

Kirsty is very happy with our design, and has give us much kudos on her blog, we’ve had some very positive feedback from her readers too!

http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/

Preview my PPC was built for UKOffer director Kieron Donoghue’s affiliate blog to help fellow affiliates who feel the need to visualise ideas for PPC ads quickly.

Using custom javascript the site allows anyone who uses Google Adwords, Microsoft adCenter or Yahoo! Search Marketing to preview how their ads will look, before committing to beginning their Campaign.

It was created to work dynamically so its possible see an ad in the correct html formatting as soon as you ad is typed in, and you can switch between the three styles using the navigation tabs.

http://www.previewmyppc.com

Baltic Blog Design exists to promote our blog design service, however we feel it’s definitely worth giving some of the software we use a mention, especially when it’s software we’ve known and loved since its creation and even more so when it’s from an independent software company from the UK.

Xara Xtreme Pro 4 is Xara’s latest addition to its vector illustration software range, and with PDFX support and many other print orientated features, it’s aiming to be a serious contender against the likes of Adobe Illustrator and now discontinued (but faithfully used) Macromedia Freehand.

Pre-Press flight checking is serious and costly (if it’s done wrong), and it would take a miracle to get professional printers to swap with the industry standard software such as Adobe Illustrator and Quark Express. We’re not sure Xara has got quite there yet, as the trouble seems to lie with some “alternative” vector effects, which look great but are not compatible with any other vector software which could lead to trouble when sent to print.

Exporting some vector based effects like shadows and feather to Adobe Flash will convert your vectors to bitmap images and cause problems in programs such as Adobe Illustrator. This has lead us to end up having to redraw bits of images within Flash and Illustrator, costing us time and something you would not necessarily want your printers to redo before they send your artwork to print.

However if these vector effects are not included, Xara EP4 has amazingly for the first time managed to export brilliantly to Adobe Illustrator, and we have sent various printers files exported from Xara EP4 to PDF and had no problems whatsoever with getting our artwork printed.

Why is Xara EP4 even bothering to try and compete with the big league software names in graphic design then? That’s easy. Xara Xtreme Pro is around £120 ($249) where as Adobe Illustrator will set you back £300 ($599).

Not only that, but in the time it takes to open Adobe Illustrator, it’s almost possible to have already set up an initial design idea. Xara EP4, as all previous releases is the fastest vector software illustration tool we have ever seen.

With super fast real time rendering of effects such as gradients, bevels, shadows and colours, alongside one of the simplest and effective user interfaces we have used – Xara has the ability to make our clients stare in amazement as we build a full design concept before their cup of tea has had a chance to cool down!

Design for web is where all Xara Illustration software excels. Many web designers would not think to begin their designs in the environment of an Illustration package, using Fireworks or Photoshop as a complete graphic solution.

However as designers, it’s nice to have a virtual “desk” to chuck images, fonts and illustrations all down onto, giving the feeling of the old cut and paste methods used in the days before computers.

The benefit of this is that it’s easy to swap logo’s, images and text around on a concept design without having to mess around with inflexible layers that are used in popular bitmap editing packages, with the added bonus of being able to resize, rotate and change the colour of objects very quickly.

The gradient, transparency, shadow and bevel features allow anyone to achieve some impressive designs for print and web layout. For illustration it’s so effective that this is the only vector program we have seen anyone attempt – with great success – to recreate oil paintings or draw almost photo realistic technical drawings.

Xara Xtreme Pro has now included some impressive bitmap editing capabilities such as image levels, hue, brightness and contrast which are also updated in real time. This is a vast improvement over previous releases of Xara and for the first time should allow all artwork to be completed within Xara.

At Baltic Design we admittedly use both Adobe Photoshop and Xara Xtreme Pro for the graphic elements of web design, as we feel that as an illustration package can fall down at the levels of pixel perfection needed in good web design. However unless we are dealing with photographs, we only end up using Photoshop to crop, resize and compress images, as Photoshop’s algorithms seem to be better than any other software for this.

We have yet to fully test the bitmap editing capabilities of Xara EP4 though, and for individuals or companies with a low budget for web or graphic design, we cannot recommend any other more Illustration software more highly.

Xara Xtreme Pro is easy to use, Xtremely fast and for its capabilities; the cheapest professional Illustration tool available today at roughly £120 (£249). Not only that, but there is another version of the software available; Xara Xtreme sells for around £45 ($89). This version has almost all of the functionality of Xtreme Pro 4 without the advanced capabilities for professional printing.

At £45 Xara Xtreme is the perfect design tool for anyone who wants to create a slick looking website, poster or presentation. University students, teachers, business professionals and musicians could all do well to use this as a desk top publishing tool instead of all too often attempting to use Microsoft Word. MS Word is for writing letters!

As usual it’s possible to download a free 30 Day trial of Xara Xtreme and Xtreme Pro from their website. Try them for yourself!