Wall
Of
Scribbles

A Nip & a Tuck

May 14, 2009

You may, or may not have noticed some changes around here. That is, if anyone actually reads my blog any more. I’m still working out some of the kinks in my websites design, but all in all it’s coming along quite well. I’ve simplified some things; removing search; displaying one item on the front page; moved the resume and portfolio into the blog (the resume was its own WordPress install, and the portfolio just… didn’t exist); added a real, honest to God contact page. Things are looking up!

I’m still having a couple issues of course, that I’m trying to figure out (mystery htaccess file issues, CSS tweaks, ) but I’m sure I can get these figured out in the next little while. Anyways, on to things that are important to people other than me.

WordPress plugins, I has them

January 12, 2009

The lolcat title reference aside, I have actually started producing WordPress plugins for myself. I’ve always wanted to make them, and so a while back I set aside a day (well two, once I got the hang of it) and learned. Granted I’ve still got a ways to go, but at least I’ve finally got my foot in the door with it all. The trick is to make sure to create things that are actually useful so that people will actually use them.

So as a result of my tooling around with WordPress, I’ve created two plugins for people to use.

Colour Swapper in WordPress

October 9, 2008

Who likes website colour swappers? Anyone?

When I developed the theme I am currently using, I searched high and low for something I could steal take inspiration from. The funny thing is that most people don’t even know where the colour swapper is on my site. So few in fact that I had to add a caption to it to help make it a little more obvious.

In any case I felt that I would share the method I used to create the swapping functionality on my website. I’m aware that most of it can be figured out with a little imagination and some source viewing, but I think that going through it step by step is more helpful.

UPDATE – 10/09/2008 - In record time, a second pair of eyes looking at this has managed to refine the process. Thank you Bart for pointing out that if the CSS files are named the same as the Title attribute of the Anchor, then you can drop the whole If statement. I’ve updated the tutorial accordingly

Getting more with the MORE tag

October 2, 2008

So who out there uses WordPress? I’ve been told it’s somewhat popular.

I myself am a fan despite it’s assault on the CPU and database. It’s fast, it’s simple, and so long as your website isn’t gaining huge traffic (or you’re paying peanuts for CPU usage and storage) than it’s a great selection. It’s fairly customizable, has a huge support and user base, and it’s just damned easy to use. I’ve been slowly getting more and more into customizing and extending what WordPress can do out of the box.There’s more in the code than people think.

Recently I a friend of mine ripped a strip off of me for only using summaries in my RSS feed. He told me that he, along with other net-savvy users, didn’t have time to get teased by RSS summaries.

UPDATE: As of December 3rd, 2008 I’ve turned this baby into a plugin! Check it out.

Of backing up and checking twice

July 21, 2008

How good is your memory? Chances are it’s better than mine. At the very least, your short-term memory has to be better than mine, as mine borders on ‘utterly pathetic.’

As i recently mentioned, I’ve redone my website a tad and I busted my ass to cover as many of the style bugs as possible. Everything was going well until I upgraded to Wordpress 2.6. Now I’m not saying the version of Wordpress busted my website good and proper, but that’s what happened.