For a while now, my clients have been able to view and pay their invoices online. I have used the fantastic invoicing service Curdbee for that.

I create the invoice and an email with a link to the invoice gets emailed to the client. The client reviews the invoice and can choose to pay right from the invoice.

They have the option to pay using their PayPal or Google Wallet accounts. Since not everyone has a PayPal or Google Wallet account, they can also pay by credit card via the PayPal and Google Wallet websites.

It’s a system that works and I’ve heard no complaints.

However, I decided that the current invoices needed to be easier to use. What prompted the change?

A Good, Not Great Solution

I never really considered the way my invoices worked as a great solution for 3 main reasons.

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BigCommerce is my hosted shopping cart of choice and I recommend it to most of my clients.

Recently, BigCommerce announced that they are phasing out FTP support in favor of WebDAV.

This mostly won’t affect store owners, but it will have an impact on those to manage a BigCommerce store — web designers and developers who need access to the store’s template files.

The instructions BigCommerce currently have on their website for setting up WebDAV are geared toward those running Windows and Mac OSX. Unfortunately, there’s a sizable percentage of developers who work on Linux. For those using WebDAV on Linux, the details currently on the BC site will not work.

If you use Ubuntu (or any other distribution that uses Gnome, I assume), getting setup with WebDAV is pretty simple.

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I work with CMS’s every day, and have for several years. But today Statamic CMS launched to the public and I’m giddy not unlike a school girl.

So why am I so excited about Statamic? Why should you consider it for your next client project?

What Is Statamic?

At its most basic, Statamic is a flat-file CMS. This means there’s no database, unlike 99% of the CMS’s out there.

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Pagination navigation is a set of links that allow users to navigate through paged content.

Pagination navigation is common on blogs and forums. It’s usually in the form of numbered page links that appear at the bottom of each page, and may also include previous/back and next/forward links, as well as links to the 1st and last pages.

Let’s look at why pagination is needed, things that make pagination difficult to use, and how to fix them (best practices).

The Reasons For Pagination

Most blogging and forum software enable pagination navigation by default for posts or topics that go beyond what a single page could reasonably contain.

The value of pagination (breaking content into pages) is understandable. A blog or forum topic could have many (even hundreds) of pages worth of posts or discussions. Trying to load all of this into a single page would cause excessive strain on servers, excessive load times in browsers, and would likely crash browsers, servers, and the user’s system.

So pagination of some sort is often needed.

WordPress’ Plugins and Themes directories make good use of pagination. It’s easy to use and setup in a way that’s easy to understand.

However, there are some problems with how pagination is currently handled on a majority of blogs and forums.

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Updated: 08/03/2011 – Added a live example of blocked non-ad images.

Note: This post is not condoning tricking users by trying to slip advertisements past ad-blocking plugins. The purpose of this article to to help keep actual content from incorrectly being labeled as advertisements, and thus hidden from visitors.

As someone viewing websites on the web, ad-blockers filter out adverts for “enhancements”, and a bunch of flashing, ugly advertisements. Not only this, but ad-blockers can help protect you from potentially sneaky and malicious code.

This is why one of the most popular downloads for Firefox and Google Chrome is ad-blocking extensions.

However, have you thought about the reverse? What is the effect of ad blockers on your website or the sites you design for clients?

Is my coding style or design choices limiting what’s viewable to visitors because it’s being incorrectly identified as advertising content by ad-blockers?

Choose Your Class and ID Names Carefully

You may reason, “I don’t have to worry about ad-blockers because I don’t have any advertisements on my website”.

While you may not have a single ad on your site, the names you give your classes and ID’s matter.

Classes and ID’s containing keywords like banner, ban, ad, advertisement, etc may get flagged incorrectly by a visitor’s ad-blocking plugin.

Important sections of information may never show on the screen because of this.

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