In order for a referral program to work you really need to make the incentives worth it for your customers. My referral system uses a tiered system to reward for new clients. For example:

If the customer they sent me has a project under 400$ they get 50$, if they send one from 400-700 they get 75$, 701-1000$ gets 100$ and anything over that gets 150$. It insures that I am still making a good profit while rewarding my clients with a pretty good payday for just mentioning my name.

Another thing you need to make sure of is that you are paying your referrers in a timely manner. Nobody wants to have to wait months on months for there money. If you pay fast you are insured that they are going to use your service again and again.

The last step is to make sure that all your clients or customers know about the program, weather that be including it on your newsletter, telling them in person, emailing them individually about it or posting it on your web site. The program won’t do you any good at all if your customers don’t know about it. You also need to keep reminding them. Its a known fact that people these days are very forgetful. So don’t be afraid to mention it every month in your newsletter, Facebook and Twitter.

If you want to see any example of my referral program you can see it at: http://jibdesigns.com/referralworks .

and here’s my new design..

Its pretty easy to make your own. I will attach my custom Template. It is the exact size that you need and has the space shown where your actual profile picture is so you can have some fun with that.  I am going to be posting some of the best in a post. So add them to here and lets see them!

If you are interested in having a custom design done email me at jake at jibdesigns.com. My rate is 150$ for a completely custom design.

Get the template here: www.megaupload.com/?d=VPBENDQB

Creating The Static Site Using Only XHTML and CSS

I begin coding all of my themes by designing the basic site in XHTML and CSS. This is the step where I create all my graphics and repeating backgrounds I will need and the basic layout. I also perfect my CSS and my XHTML to make sure that when I start coding my loop and all my other WP functions the site will be easy to create. I also comment out the end of my header, my container, any sidebars and the beginning of my footer.

Filling in WordPress Loops. Adding to .PHP files. Creating Custom WordPress Theme

After coding the basic layout in XHTML and CSS, I start plugging in the basic info in a blank WordPress theme that I have. I start by copying my header parts from the basic XHTML file into header.php and the container into my index.php and footer into footer.php and everything else in its designated php file. Once everything is in its php files I start replacing images so that they use the proper in the image link. Once all that’s done I start working on the loops. I have already commented into my html where the loops are and the default css,xhtml foundation is already set so I just start plugging things in. The most important parts are getting the foundation set so that when it loops it will display correctly. Once you get everything working right in the XHTML file its all easy sailing from there. What I suggest doing is making sure you know the different tags and formatting that WordPress uses. Also make sure to use the query_posts to your advantage, that’s a really easy way to make specialized post areas by utilizing the category id.

So its just plug and play. This is just one way out of a million ways to code a custom WordPress theme. How do you go about it? Do you start from the top and not even mess with the XHTML file or do you use more planning? Let me know in the below comments. This is just a real small portion of what goes into making a custom wordpress theme, I didn’t cover magicfields, custom fields, custom page themes, any commenting themes, widget/plugins etc. If you want to see some more info on those subjects let me know and I’ll write some more posts. Until then, Jake

Meta Tags Used By Mobile Safari

To make your app full screen when it is added to the iPhone /iPad home screen using the + button on the browser, the below meta tag will remove all buttons and the url bar and will give it the “native” app look that we are going after. To use any of the meta tags below just add them somewhere in your head tag.

<meta name=”apple-mobile-web-app-capable” content=”yes” />

Now when you pinch on the app it will still zoom and scale. Now, native apps will not zoom or scale, so when need to do something to stop that. Luckily Apple has designed a Meta tag to do that also..

<meta name=”viewport” content=”user-scalable=no, width=device-width” />

The last thing that you may notice is when you tug the app up or down it kinda zooms down and you can see the “background” of the browser. Apple has also designed a meta tag to get rid of that. However, you do need to add a tag to your body tag also. Below is an example…

<script type=”text/javascript”>// <![CDATA[ function BlockMove(event) { event.preventDefault() ; } // ]]></script>

Home Page Icons

Now to make a home page icon for your app, open your favorite image editor and start a new document sized 72×72. Then design your icon and save it as apple-touch-icon.png and save it to the same folder that your index.html file is located. Now take the below code and paste it in your head tag somewhere.

<link rel=”apple-touch-icon” href=”./apple-touch-icon.png />

Making Links Open Fullscreen and Not In Safari

Now this was one of the most frustrating problems I had with making my web app in the beginning. If you use…

<a href=”link.html”>Your Link/a>

that tag will take you straight out of your fullscreen app and right into the normal safari, we don’t want that. So the solution to get past this is to use a little bit of Javascript. Now, how we would do this using the Javascript is below…

<a ontouchstart=”window.location=yourlink.html’ “>Your Link</a>

Now some of you familiar with Javascript will see that we are using the ontouchstart instead of onclick. This is a iPhone/iPad only event trigger that will only work on iOS devices. Its a lot smoother on iOS devices but will not work on computers. You can use that event trigger anywhere in your web app. Since onclick takes about one extra second for the device to read, ontouch start is a great asset to have on our side.

Dragging and Dropping Elements

Now what if your user wants to take a certain element and drag it around with there finger? How are we going to do this? Well the technique that I am using is called Drag Drop Library. Its very simple to use, go to this website http://www.gotproject.com/blog/post2.htmll , download there JS Library using the green button. Then link to that JavaScript file on any page where you would want to use drag and drop. Now, the syntax for getting an element to be able to be dragged is below…

So what you are going to do is give an element that you want to be able to be dragged a unique ID using css. Then take that css and input it into the above code that reads ‘id_of_element’. So that sample code would find and html element that has a id=”id_of_element” and make it be able to be dragged around by the users finger. It’s fairly simple and creates an awesome “WOW” affect with your apps.

iPhone and iPad web apps are slowly becoming more wide spread around the world. Especially now that Apple is finally giving us Web Designers and Developers the required tools. Now every iOS developer doesn’t have to be an Obj C wizard and have a mac, any person with a little HTML know how can create easy, good looking apps.

Update 2/17/11:

Getting iPad Web App to Work Offline Using Localhost, not Cache-Manifest

I spent so much time looking around trying to figure out how I was going to get my web app to work offline. My client will be using the app at large conferences to showcase there product and give a presentation. Wifi is very very unstable at large conferences so it is necessary to make it work offline. What I finally decided to do was to Jailbreak each iPad, and install a server on the localhost of the iPad. To do that I used a program on Cydia called PHPod. This creates a server on that iPad and gives me access to files stored directly on the iPad. What I did next was SSH into the iPad and copy my entire Web App into the WWW directory. Next, I went to localhost on safari on the iPad, clicked my web app and boom there it is right on the iPad. It runs fast, my JQuery still works, all my forms work, its perfect. Now I am looking to make my own Cydia repo where I can host the web app so that the clients wont have to ssh into the iPad every time there is a change. It will just update the package and the site will be updated by the Repo. Yes there is the option to use Cache Manifest and all that but it doesn’t really work all the time and there’s a limit so I couldn’t cache all my videos and larger files etc.