How To Market Your Niche on Social Media - #infographic

Marketing will be largely unsuccessful for most brands if they don’t take the time to plan their social marketing strategies around a specific niche. Every niche has a unique purpose, audience, and triggers that drive action. If you can maximize your social reach within your niche, though, it will be a huge advantage.

For example, if you’re in the real estate rental business, your use of social media to market your brand is paramount. High quality images of the property, Facebook posts detailing the neighborhood, and blog posts about home improvement encourage user engagement, and can all be used to maximize marketing potential.

In contrast, if you’re marketing an online retail business, you’re going to take a different approach. You may use some of the same tools, like high quality images and blog posts, but you’ll need to rely on information related to your niche. Your audience and their needs are different, and if you want to engage them every time, you’ll use different tactics to catch their attention.

If you’re interested in maximizing social media marketing for a specific niche industry, you might find the following suggestions extremely valuable.

by Larry Alton via Digital Information World

Pass the Amazon Web Services Certification Exams with This $19 Bundle

It’s no secret that hiring managers are impressed by developers well-versed in the Amazon Web Services platform. It’s also no secret that SitePoint Shop is home to some of the top certification trainings available—including this one. Get the Amazon Web Services certification bundle for $19. This bundle includes two courses that’ll prep you for the […]

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by SitePoint Offers via SitePoint

ProgressBarWars.js – jQuery Animated Star Wars Progress Bar Plugin

ProgressBarWars.js is a tiny(Star Wars Tribute) jQuery plugin that allows you to display an animated horizontal progress meter.

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MagSafe 2 Power Adapters Are Almost Half Off!

Sorry to break it to you, but MacBook Air chargers don’t live forever. Be prepared for the day your MagSafe 2 “goes to live on a farm” with a backup. Now’s a good time to grab one (or a few)—we’ve got ’em for 49% off and free shipping at SitePoint Shop. Grab a spare MagSafe […]

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by SitePoint Offers via SitePoint

Displaying Errors from the save_post Hook in WordPress

Despite the existence of WP_Error and all the pieces required, there is no single “WordPress Way” to handle and display errors. You can indicate an error occurred in a function or method by returning the WP_Error object (and that’s been my usual MO in my work), but once we do, how do we handle these error objects?

It’s easy on the AJAX side of things: Use wp_send_json_{error/success} and handle the response accordingly. However, a common area where generated errors need to be displayed to the user is on the save_post hook, which is actually slightly more complicated than it looks.

The reason for this is due to the way WordPress handles saves. If you’re on a page like post.php?post=1234 and you make your edits and hit save, WordPress POST’s the information to post.php. After the save_post hook fires, everything that’s done is done, it then redirects back to the post.php?post=1234 editor page.

This makes things difficult because the redirect means the execution thread for loading the editor page isn’t the same as the thread for saving the post, and we no longer have access to the same global variables we did when we were saving. Because of this, we need a way to pass that information from the action to the page we’re being redirected to.

Let’s walk through 3 potential methods of solving this problem. I’ll explain how to implement each one, point out some of their pros and cons, and explain to which contexts they’re best suited.

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by James DiGioia via SitePoint

iOS From Scratch With Swift: Exploring Tab Bar Controller

Has Sketch App Forced Adobe to Improve Photoshop?

When version 3 was released, Sketch App really came to light, and that's when we began comparing it to Photoshop - the biggest design tool in the world. Not many companies had the courage to square up to Adobe like Sketch App did, so it's only natural that we used Photoshop for more than image manipulation.

Sketch has been very influential. Not only have we seen a huge rise in new design tools since its arrival, but it became sensational enough that we began comparing it to Photoshop.

Photoshop was never suitable for web design (hello, it's called Photoshop), but for a long time, there was nothing else. I always found it silly to compare Sketch App to Photoshop, and the conclusion was always the same; "it depends on what you're using it for". But now that's changing. Adobe has become more aware.

Let's take a look at how Adobe is fighting back.

Exporting Assets

As I've said many times before, the Export function is Sketch App's most redeeming feature, so it makes sense that Adobe then went and integrated their own "Generate Assets" feature into Photoshop as their first act of officially declaring that Photoshop could be used as a user interface design tool.

Here's a quick breakdown of how the two features compare:

Sketch

Select a layer and click "Make Exportable" in the bottom-right corner. Optionally, you can define settings such as size, suffix and format, depending on how the images will be used and on what type of device; retina, non-retina, web - and so on.

Sketch remembers each export and this is called a "Slice", and you can access those slices in an interface with command+shift+e to reinitiate one, two, or all of those slices again.

Photoshop

Adobe does it differently. It's up to you to decide which is better, but to my surprise (I'm a die-hard Sketch fan) I actually think Adobe's way is rather spectacular. First, turn on the feature by navigating to File - Generate - Image Assets.

Now create a simple square and save the document. Photoshop automatically exports your assets to a folder depending on how you name the layer, so let's start with square.png - the fact that you've specified a filetype tells Adobe that you want a PNG file, but the rest of the settings can remain default.

You can also specify PNG8/PNG24 (example.png8, example.png24) or even "example.jpg100%", which means JPG with 100% quality instead of 90% quality, which is the default. Now lets crank it up a notch - let's try "200% example-retina.png, example.png".

In english translation, this means: "create your average, run-in-the-mill PNG but also create a retina version for the iPhone." All assets are automatically updated upon save.

Not only do I think that this is a terrific move by Adobe, but their decision to keep this mostly interface-free shows that Adobe is truly listening to their users - one of the biggest concerns from Photoshop users is that Adobe software is very clunky. Hopefully, they will take this approach more often.

Artboards

Artboards are an integral component in Sketch, much like they always have been in Adobe Illustrator, but until a couple of months ago, Photoshop didn't have anything of the sort.

Let's compare.

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by Daniel Schwarz via SitePoint