Back in August I started what I called the “Theme Experiment“, 5 months later and I can honestly say it was a bust. My intent was good – finally re-design the site and force myself to blog the “how-tos”.
The major factor for the experiment’s failure was time. Not only was it because of how busy I have been but how I was forcing myself to spend my time developing and designing. Since my intent was to design and develop in increments, then post about them, I wasn’t able to spend an all nighter or even a few hours implementing an idea. Now that I tried my best to work that way I’ve learned a lesson- I don’t work that way.
I tend to start a project and get into a groove. This time I had a simple design idea and I ended up spending Friday afternoon designing off that idea, then it compounded into an obsession that took my weekend. Of course, I love building off an idea, especially if it’s my own 
.
And that’s it, the end of the experiment; throughout the weekend I thought about the possibility of posting some tips and I could say that’s what I’ll be doing that over the next couple weeks, instead I’ll say “it’s very unlikely” you’ll see any how-tos about this theme anytime soon.
At least I have some fresh tires on this thing that I can take for a spin.
Here’s a simple trick I’ve been using to include an ad after the second post, … Read More »
January 18
Here’s my list of new years resolutions. It’s late but I have a good reason (#3).
This morning I needed to use the the_category tag but I needed to exclude a … Read More »
December 15
The WordPress Codex only covers circumstances when you need a category description from an ID … Read More »
December 02
I’m so glad that I’ve found Wordpress; not only for my hobby of blogging but it really has been such an educational experience over the last few years for my development.
As far as personal web development; I’m not even close to what I want to know about web development or web programming, I’ll probably never get there, but developing for Wordpress or around Wordpress has led my progression of web development. Only 5 years ago I was using using Dreamweaver for everything, now it’s TextMate. That’s not a measurement of know-how, to me it shows that I’m comfortable.
For project development it’s what I use to development almost any site. It’s just too good of a platform not to develop around. The plugin system allows for such great extensibility and the community of great developers gives you almost everything you’ll need a a project or allow for you to extend another’s work.
The 2-3 plugins I use for the majority of freelance projects are to manage what the client sees on the backend or what s/he can do. I advise anyone using Wordpress to develop websites for clients for it hide the fact Wordpress was built initially for blogging. There are ways to get around with some of the terminology with plugins or localization, never ever edit the core system unless you don’t care about upgrades and eventually security. My favorite plugins and strategy will have to wait for another post, maybe part 2.
Current development: A few weeks ago I took took the task of getting Ventura DUI site online with the goal of it being at the top of Google for the search term “Ventura DUI” or “Ventura DUI Lawyer“. The development was easy, the design took a while and is still not complete but easy to implement because of Wordpress themes system. As expected getting the site to the top of Google will be tough but with plugins like WPSEO and WPsitemaps made/make the standard SEO tasks easy. It’s now just a waiting game for Google to rank the site above the others who have PRs of 0.
My other projects waiting in the wings will also get the Wordpress makeover and I can’t see myself ever using anything else for a client, even basic splash pages.
[Updated 10/5]
Version 2.0 was just released.
Version 2.0 – multiple mobile browsers supported
After a week and a half of hard work Jared and I committed Version 1.0.2 to Wordpress Extend. we lapsed and forgot to test the plugin on the 2.2 branch and now we’ll need to pull it back for a later release when we get everything straightened out for the majority of users.
Mobile Admin started it’s development shortly after Matt requested on the [wp-hackers] mailing for the community to create an iPhone Admin theme in response to the MovableType iPhone beta theme released just a days prior.
Jared did the majority of hard core coding and I centered around the interface and CSS. Since I was the one with the iPhone I was the lucky one to exhaustingly check in and test new CSS changes for testing on the phone, since there aren’t any good development tools for iPhone devs; iPhoney is phony before anyone suggests it.
Here’s the current trac project home for bugs and management.
Here’s the support and suggestion forums. If you have an iPhone we really need your suggestions so please throw them out to us there.
Or if you have any contributions or changes you’d like to make directly just contact us.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Details:
iPhone / Mobile Admin UI for WordPress?
The plugin home page is on WordPress Extend.
Contributors
Jared Bangs and Dan Cameron
Gives a mobile-friendly admin UI to browsers by User Agent. The iPhone is the primary supported device for the first release.
Description
Mobile Admin adapts the WordPress? admin UI to be more friendly to mobile devices, specifically phones. The iPhone is the primary target (and only supported device) for version 1, with more to come in the future.
Most common WordPress admin features are supported:
… with more to come in later revisions.
Other resources
Please submit all usage questions to the support forums
The Trac server can be used for viewing changes and submitting tickets
SPECIAL NOTE – Testing and bug reporting is especially encouraged, as only one of us currently owns an iPhone.
Sara, Avery and I will be heading up to Hume lake tomorrow for the next 5 days. I’m hoping it will be a fun trip and I’m looking forward to the disconnect from work and this virtual world. I will be taking my computer for the off chance the forest will be transmitting free WiFi and I’ll have my iPhone for the rare occasion I must “clean” out my inbox. When I get back I’ll tackle my growing tada list of things to do and two major development projects I have lined up.
We’ve had the Tivo HD for a few weeks now and this post has waited just as long. I initially wanted to post about the unpacking, setup and all it’s features; like a real review. Instead I’m going to make this short since the Tivo HD has been exhaustively reviewed around the web already.
Setup:
In order to get HD you’ll either need an OTA HD tuner or HD cable cards from your cable provider. I called our cable provider shortly after the online order and they stated all I needed to do was pick the two cards up from the local store, and as expected that was completely wrong. TW requires that someone to come out and spend about 1.5 hours sitting there waiting for the cards to activate after spending the first five minutes inserting the cards into the TivoHD and calling “home base”.
The experience of the cable card install wasn’t the best through Time Warner, especially since I had to call twice for them to reset the cards which resolved one card from not picking up our premium channels but we then had to have another tech come out in between sunrise and sunset to do nothing but call and get the second card to reset so the channels would show.
It also turns out that the techs for TW in our area do not work for TW directly, they’re just on contract with the company. I found this out because initially they said they don’t install cable cards on anything but TV sets. The guys were nice so they went ahead but I could see this being a huge problem since TW is required to provide cable cards but the contracted companies have policies of their own.
Luckily our cards are not Scientific America cable cards since a lot of people are having issues with artifacts and blocking. Time Warner gave us motorolla cards.
Use:
It’s a Tivo and that’s why I bought it. It’s very easy to use and very responsive. The only thing I wish they would add is PIP for the Tivo menu, that’s something I miss on the old TW moxi box and it’s just annoying to leave a show in order to get a season pass setup. With that aside it’s wonderful, did I mention it’s easy to use. The ease of use can be contributed not only by it’s navigation or season passes but it’s other features, e.g. suggestions.
I’m very surprised with the capacity the 160GB drive can hold, we have 98 suggested shows that Tivo has recorded for us and another 4 hours of HD content. It’s not like we’ll ever watch that much but the wonderful thing is if we sat down to watch TV and we had nothing pre-recorded the chances are we’re going to find something we like. Even a show we’ve never heard of could be suggested and it would turn out great.
Tivo Tranfers:
One of the best features, that we’re using a lot of since we have our Apple TV, is the ability to transfer the recordings to a computer and then export them for “archival” or playback on other devices, like an iPod. We use this a lot for Avery’s shows, this way she’s able to watch he show while I’m on the computer with her. It works on the mac BTW.
Conclusion:
If you want a PVR and you have HD I would strongly recommend a Tivo HD. The cable boxes I’ve dealt with in the past are slow and very clunky. The cost is of the box is $299 msrp but just a few days after the release I was able to purchase mine through Circuit city at $260 so I’m sure they’ll be lower this holiday. The one thing you need to expect is the subscription cost, it’s about the price of the HD box rental from your cable company (about $13). For us since we already have a Tivo the second is discounted to $7 a month (our first was already specially discounted so we’re not paying more then $15 a month).
Tivo is also actively developing new features through it’s beta programs, which I may or may not be a part of.
After finally setting up Trac and SVN on my new server I’ve moved all my projects off Google Code hosting. But instead of checking in all of the code to the new repositories I updated all of the theme and plugin pages. So the problem, you’ll not be able to download anything until tonight when I get around to updating the repositories. Unless you just want to head over to GCode (link above) where all the latest versions are, plugins don’t count.
Currently I’m planning to keep all of my plugins on extend but if it’s a major plugin like Search Everything I’m making a trac project to make it easier to manage. I’ll be able to do betas there too. Linking plugins to wordpress.org’s extend is almost a requirement now if you want any kind of good exposure or you want to be involved with automatic plugin updates whenever wordpress roles that feature out.
All of my themes will have it’s very own trac project, e.g. iScattered. I had thought Google Code was going to work best but after all the work of getting trac and svn installed and thinking about manageability of two project homes I deleted had to break off of GC.
This whole week I wanted to post about each theme; describing what changed or didn’t change, a showcase almost while updating their project homes and pages at the same time but it didn’t work out since I had to migrate servers Tuesday. I’m going to push it off, hopefully next week will work out but either way the code will be up soon and if you can’t wait just go here.
