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.
This has got to be the best review/article on the age old debate of Linux vs. Mac. The article is extensive but the conclusions on the topic mimic my sentiments exactly.
In the following pages, they lead a guided tour of the two OSes, paying particular attention to eight important areas: Installation & Migration; Hardware Support & Power Management; Networking, Web & Wireless; Productivity; Entertainment; Security; Working With Windows (because we couldn’t completely ignore Microsoft); and Stability, Backup & Disaster Recovery.
Which is the better OS? Only you can decide –but you’ll make a more informed decision after you’ve taken this tour, and you’ll discover you have some companions on your journey.
I will admit I have not completed the entire article, I have skimmed and read the beginning and end but it is something I want to go back and finish. I also don’t think anyone can conclude that either writer is biased because from what I’ve read the entire article plainly exposes the downsides of each platform in almost every major factor of any OS. It’s really apparent within the conclusions which they make the reader decide what’s best for them.
The conclusion of the review that mimics my take exactly (spoiler alert):
Conclusions: Linux
Linux gives you freedom on many levels: the freedom to tinker, the freedom to work without arbitrary constraints on your system setup, and the freedom to make decisions about nearly every aspect of your system.That freedom does come at a cost, though — the cost of a certain degree of effort. I haven’t yet dealt with a single Linux install that didn’t require me to edit some configuration file somewhere. That said, the amount of effort required to get the Linux system you want (or need) has gone down enormously with time.
If the freedom to use your PC in as unhindered a way as possible is important to you, that’s what Linux delivers — although keep in mind it comes with a learning curve, one that is still flattening out rather slowly.
– Serdar Yegulalp
Conclusions: Mac
If you believe that open source is a moral choice — and many people do — then buying Apple is making a deal with the devil. Apple is arguably the most proprietary hardware / software company in the industry, despite Mac OS X’s origins in BSD Unix, and the products’ compliance with many industry standards.You think Microsoft locks users in? At least with Microsoft you can buy a PC from a huge number of big and small vendors, or build your own from components. With the Mac, you buy your PC from Apple, you buy your operating system from Apple, and you’re also encouraged to buy your mouse, keyboard, display, audio device, and smartphone from Apple, all at an Apple Store where you can get Apple service.
But if you’re willing to live with lock-in, Apple is a great choice for computing. Installation isn’t a problem — Apple does it for you. Networking is easy. Productivity is a dream. The Mac offers a broad variety of entertainment options. It’s a secure platform. It interoperates well with Windows. It’s highly stable, and offers solid backup choices for the data losses that are inevitable on any computing platform.
Right now, Apple is smokin’, and its customers are happy. But if the Apple gets rotten and starts coming out with inferior products — as it did in the ’90s — its customers will have the choice of suffering, or making the painful switch to another platform.
Until then, I’m sticking with the Mac. It’s a great computer.
– Mitch Wagner
Well said…most of you know where I stand but no platform is perfect and it’s up to the user to decide what they value the most.
I’m purging my online identity to just a few locations that I actually use since it was getting out of control. The major account escape that led to the purge was myspace, as you might have noticed if I’m a friend of yours. The others include:
On the chopping block
The ones I’ll keep:
There are more but as you can tell there are way to many listed already.
All we need is better integration for GMail and Notebook like adding e-mail functionality to your Notebook and my personal GTD process will be complete through the help of this article. An online notebook is something I really lack, even though I’ve tried many times with basecamp and the old Notebook; my current process of sorting bookmarks in my toolbar with no notes is easy but not effeciant. Especially since I do not have any archiving for past reference.
Maybe I’ll just try again and instead use the firefox extension to add emails to Notebook. I’ll still hav ethe problem of personal vs. work though.
I stopped using firefox extension until The Hyperwords Project. Actually, I’m still using Google Browser Sync. … Read More »
January 16
With it being so stable, it having some really cool features and it just being extremely fast it still isn’t as good as firefox. Not being able to add the few extensions I use really bugs. Maybe camino supports them somehow.
The extensions I need:
Google Notebook plugin
Google Browser sync
Google toolbar
Bugmenot
The ones I like but don’t care too much about:
gbrain
and all the other web dev plugins including the smaller colorzilla
The best productive app I have. I’ve even dropped backpack for it. It just has so much more to offer then backpack, originally I thought they were two different things but when I started looking at how I use backpack I couldn’t figure a reason not to make the switch. With the firefox extension it makes it so much easier to collect notes and links for my current projects something backpack makes a pain out of doing. The one thing I do miss is the tasks feature within the projects/notebooks but supposedly Google Calendar is going to have tasks soon so it makes more sense to have my tasks associated with my calendar. I would suggest notebook to all especially if you use firefox.
Foxmarks finally resolves my bookmarking woes. It works with Mac and PC and does a great job syncing everything. It actually seperates the differences in a mild way of using seperaters. Definitly one of my favorite extensions. … Read More »
January 31
I really don’t think the Digg model is scalable for millions of users instead of the thousands it has now. Because of the simple fact that the more users you have the more submits you have. Making most of the better stories go unnoticed because it’s buried with all the mediocre submits that are found on the diggall page.
More users only creates more of a Slashdot scenario because the diggs that are on the homepage will inevitably be from more popular users like the tech tv crew, pacino and a few others. Because people eventually won’t/can’t shuffle through the mess that is already taking place in the diggall bin instead they will turn to the “trusted” submitters making those few the publishers of digg.com.
Solution (can’t bring up a problem without a solution now can you?), a digg extension for browsers so you can digg pages no matter where you are. Might sound absurd since I stated the problem with digg is too many submits and this “solution” most likely will result in a dramatic increase of Digg submits, eventually digging the entire web. But the author/publisher is gone and the ranking of pages truly begins creating an “attention trust” for search.
Ranking, something that Digg has is something that search needs desperately. If Yahoo or Google could capitalize this, buying digg in the process, it would revamp search to the point it needs to be.
