Launch Your Website and Learn WordPress Along the Way
December 6th , 2010
Over the past year, I’ve had some great experiences working with friends who were messing around with WordPress, but just needed me to help them get everything configured and customized. These weren’t folks who needed a highly customized website solution, but folks who needed their sites to fool people into thinking that they cost a fortune to build.
The How
Since these were people who were open to getting their hands dirty with a little simple technology, we had a great time working together either via Skype or in person updating the site together, changing a color here, adding an image there, adding a page here, changing the text there, etc. Since WordPress makes it so easy to get a website live, we could just play around and have fun with it until we ended up with what my friends wanted to see, all the while cracking silly jokes about all sorts of sundry (but family-friendly, of course) topics.
Category : Blog & News and Updates & Personal Gossip & WordPress
Yet Another Solution to the IE6 “Peekaboo” Bug
October 13th , 2010
IE6, much like the cockroach, is an ugly pest won’t seem to die off, no matter how hard one may try. Chances are, if you have spent a decent part of your UI development career being responsible for this nasty browser, then you have probably come across this stubborn issue which has come to be known as the “Peekaboo” bug.
The Peekaboo Bug
You may notice that while viewing certain pages on IE6, the page background may disappear as you either point your mouse over that section of the page, or when a JavaScript effect such as a Suckerfish drop-down menu is triggered.
Category : Blog & UI Development
jQuery Rotating Page Background
September 28th , 2010
I’ve seen several tutorials on how to create a rotating page background using jQuery, but to my surprise pretty much all of them had some major flaws. Here is a technique that I was able to implement very easily with 100% W3 validation.
Getting jQuery on your Page
Since we’ll be using jQuery to handle the background image animation, then we need to get jQuery into our page by adding the following code:
1 | <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> |
Using the Google-hosted jQuery library will make for a faster load time for your page since there’s almost no chance that you’ll be able to serve this code up faster than Google’s servers.
Category : Blog & UI Development
Beginner’s Guide: Creating a WordPress Plugin
September 21st , 2010
The ability to create WordPress plugins is a highly coveted skill which only a relatively small proportion of developers out there are actually capable of. Here’s a quick guide geared towards the absolute beginner to get you started on adding this highly valued asset to your skillset.
Create a Home for your Plugin
- Go to your wp-content/plugins folder, and create a new directory with the name of your plugin. For our purposes, let’s call the plugin as well as the directory it lives in “Hello Hello.”
- Inside this new directory, create a single PHP file which will contain the code for your plugin. For our purposes, we’ll call it “Hello-Hello.php.”
Quick Tips & Tidbits from WordCamp LA 2010
September 13th , 2010
To quote from the WordCamp LA web site:
WordCamp is a conference type of event that focuses squarely on everything WordPress. Everyone from casual end users all the way up to core developers show up to these events. These events are usually highlighted by speeches or keynotes by various people.
Category : 2-Minute Tips & Blog & Cool Tools & WordPress
Solutions to W3 Total Cache + FaceBook Share Conflict
September 5th , 2010
The setting that needs to be changed in order for both plugins to live in harmony
While working on a client site which used both the W3 Total Cache plugin as well as the Facebook Share plugin, I came across a bug where the Facebook Share icon that was to be placed at the top and bottom of each blog post was disappearing, only to be replaced by a “Share” link that linked to nowhere.
Category : 2-Minute Tips & Blog & WordPress
Easy Page-Specific WordPress Sidebars
August 29th , 2010
In yet another step to make WordPress function more like a CMS than a simple blog, there is a recently updated plugin that I think is worth noting.
By default, the WordPress sidebar remains identical on every single page of your web site. However, sometimes we need to be able to have a specific sidebars for different pages. For example, maybe you have a “Products” page that needs testimonials along the sidebar while your “About Us” page sidebar needs to display a listing of awards.
Category : Blog & Cool Tools & WordPress
Review of Easy E-Commerce Solution, Wazala
August 22nd , 2010
Wazala is a great new e-commerce solution that can work with any web site and is designed to make setting up an online store a simple copy, paste, point, and click operation.
In experimenting with Wazala in conjunction with a WordPress website, sadly, at the time of this blog posting, the WordPress plugin simply did not work for me, and I had to refer to the inaccurate instructions on Wazala’s web site to get the thing working (long story short, you need to paste a bit of code directly before the </head> tage of your site.)
However, once you get the code into your header, then it’s smooth sailing without another lick of code necessary to get your store up and running.
Category : Blog & Cool Tools & Reviews & WordPress
Solution to NextGen Gallery Slideshow CDN Conflict
July 30th , 2010
Here’s a special quick post this week to solve a problem I’ve been seeing around the web, but with no solution.
I was recently working on a high-traffic site that that uses using the W3 Total Cache plugin in conjunction with an Akamai CDN. This is a great way to optimize site performance and stability, but I did run into the unfortunate side effect of the NextGen Gallery plugin’s slideshow ceasing to work as soon as the CDN was integrated.
Thanks to my favorite WordPress hosting guru Willie Jackson, there is now a solution.
Category : 2-Minute Tips & Blog & WordPress
Do You Talk Too Much?
July 18th , 2010
Talking…AND Listening – The 2 Parts of Conversation
We’ve all experienced this person at one time or another. You know, that guy or gal who drones on and on with zero awareness of the interest level of the person that they’re talking to. Lord knows, I’m sure that I’ve been this person at one time or another, and I would venture to guess that almost all of us have been too.
Category : Blog & Good Business & Web Wisdom
