Web Developer for Hire

I’m available for all kinds of commissions and freelance work.
As a consultant, programmer, software architect, scrum master, web developer and designer.
Agile project realization of flash gadgets, custom WordPress plugins and much more.

Area of expertise

• Content management systems / WordPress
• Flash Actionscript 3 / Adobe CS4 / AS2 / AS3
• FLEX 2/3
• PHP 4/5/6 / Zend Framework / TDD / CI
• Iphone Application Development
• Flash Gadgets
• Scrum / Agile / Scrum Master
• Utilizing object oriented practices and principles (fowler booch rumbaugh)
• WordPress Theme Development
• WordPress Plugin Development

Contact me through dligthart@gmail.com

Read more on my profile

It’s because of our brains.

The brain is as a large network of approximately 100 billion interconnected nodes. Information is accessed through physical connections between nerve cells or neurons for short. And every cell can have up to 10,000 connections to other neurons. If you think about it; the amount of possible connections are staggering.

Though the information is non-physical it gets stored between these neurons on a physical level. Just like data on our hard-drives.

The connections between neurons determine the type of information.
Some neurons have stronger connections than other neurons and thus the information is reflected through the paths that are created between them.
Strong connections are accessed more frequently etc.

That said, the information is a network by itself and contains links to other networks of information. Thereby the brain is inherently prismatic. Its networked physicality is reflected through it.

Analogously to the brain; there is “the internet”.  It’s man made and through it’s topology, behavior and usage it can be considered a reflection of the human brain.  The network is a natural phenomenon and innately fractal where the whole contains a reduced size copy of itself.

In theory each individual is able to connect to millions of others individuals but in fact the average connectivity is much and much lower. It’s not only about the amount of connections but also the strength and type of connections we create that are important.

In doing so we gradually shape the internet by our connections.

And it’s all about “connectedness”. Connecting to others and more importantly, others, connecting to you.

So how do we measure connectivity and what can you do to increase it?

Simply stated: just sit on a heap of  “popular” information and have as many people as possible link to it and pass through it and a couple of things to consider below;

1. Establishing an identity through a blog or a website and be discoverable.  Create links from your blog to the online profiles.
   For example a link I created on my blog to my twitter profile: <a href=”http://twitter.com/daveligthart” rel=”me” title=”twitter profile of dave ligthart” target=”_blank”>twitter</a> . Be sure to include the ‘rel=”me”’ attribute. This allows google to automatically create a social graph for you.
2. Enable others to find you through common connections. Be an active participant in the social media platform you engage in.
3. Influence, create awareness for your blog, write articles, engage into community forums, discussion boards, social media platforms, create video’s etc. And think about what you’re doing, how and especially why you do it? And … focus on a singular subject.
4. Backlinks, have people link back to your blog without the rel=”nofollow” attribute, <a href=”” rel=”external” title=”optimization keywords here”></a>.
5. The internet is reciprocal by nature. You can ask people personally to place a link back to you but that’s a grinding effort. Your blog needs to be cultivated and motivate people to link back themselves.
6. Engagement: give visitors the opportunity to engage into conversation with you and let them create unique content for your blog. It can be as simple as adding a comment to an article.
7. Measurement; we want to measure how well we’re doing. I’ve created a WordPress plugin named WP-Stats-Dashboard which displays connectivity from different social media sources; google social graph, feedburner, twitter, linkedin, backtype etc…And stores all these different types of social metrics data and shows these in a trend chart.
8. Even so, optimization takes time dedication and hard work.

I’ve compiled a list that shows 1000 of the best ones available and I also provided links to where you can download the plugins.

My personal unsorted list of plugins I often use in projects.

• WordPress.com Stats : stats tracking by wordpress.
• Widget Logic : control on which page you display your sidebar widgets.
• Fast and Secure Contact Form : easy install contact form.
• Google Analyticator : great google analytics plugin.
• DutchDate : convert date format to dutch locale.
• Flexi Pages Widget : control which pages to show in menu.
• Nextgen Gallery : great image management plugin.
• Audit Trail : keep track of who’s doing what in the admin.
• Breadcrumb NavXt : breadcrumb navigation.
• Google XML Sitemaps : sitemap xml generation for google.
• All in one seo pack : SEO optimizer, easy with defaults already set.
• Wp Choose Thumb : Display and select thumbnails for your post.
• WP Stats Dashboard : Stats in your dashboard and other useful metrics.
• Smart Youtube : just paste the youtube url in your post to embed video.
• WPTouch Iphone Theme : speaks for itself.
• WP Super Cache : caching makes your website load faster. Useful for high traffic.

Today 03/03/2010 we’ve just released Emesa.nl.

Emesa is the online publisher behind some of the most visited websites for searching, comparing and booking a good deal for a holiday.

Emesa has a rich portfolio of websites, including VakantieVeilingen.nl, and LastminuteTop20.be – website of the years 2009 – InpakkenenWegwezen.nl.

Emesa hired me as a Scrum / TDD / Zend Framework and WordPress specialist for the development and implementation of new projects.

Display your blog’s stats graph plus your blog traffic, social engagement and social influence directly in your dashboard. See how you’re ranking on Alexa, check out your Technorati authority, monitor your ranking across multiple sites and much more. Once you install this plugin you’ll wonder how you ever managed to track your social media worth without it.

Download it here: WP-Stats-Dashboard 2.2.0

WP-Stats-Dashboard on Facebook

For feature requests or contributions to the code use the tracker for wp-stats-dashboard on sourceforge.

PHP4, WordPress MU, safe_mode compatible.

Installation

There are two plugins that are required to be installed:

• Unzip and copy the wp-stats-dashboard plugin folder to “/wp-content/plugins/” .
• Install the WordPress.com stats plugin, you can download it here http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/ .
• Follow the instructions it presents, create wordpress.com account, enter key.
• Install the WP-Stats-Dashboard plugin.
• Go to the WP-Stats-Dashboard settings page.
• Enter your wordpress.com username and password.

You’re all set!

WP-Stats-Dashboard at WordPress
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-stats-dashboard/

Mentioned:

By klout.com: http://klout.com/blog/2010/06/blot-stats-from-wp-stats-dashboard/

By piotrkrzyzek.com: http://www.piotrkrzyzek.com/best-wordpress-stats-plugin-update-a-social-metrics-plugin/