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Posts Tagged ‘wordpress’

Things are mellow at work, so I’m working on my WordPress skills by adding a searchable database of all my dvds to my site. Once all the info is in, I’ll create a template for viewing them, and add them to the nav.

It’s a small thing, and it’s mostly for my own use, but I’m looking forward to being able to search my disks by actor, director, writer, and/or year of release!

I am totally obsessed with WordPress right now. We recently launched this website at work, which was built by a vendor instead of in-house, and yo, it’s amazing. They built it in WordPress, and it does stuff I had no idea WordPress could do, and it’s inspired me to LEARN ALL THE WORDPRESS THINGS. I’ve been reading Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog (Smashing Magazine Book Series), and WP tutorials and articles on Smashing Magazine; outlining plans for possible projects; and browsing through plugins for ideas. I fixed a couple of lingering problems on the blog at work yesterday, which was AWESOME.

Problem is, I need more blogs to experiment on. I had some cool ideas for one of my sites, but the stakeholder doesn’t want me making any changes right now because she doesn’t have time to review and approve for awhile, which makes me sad. I’m considering building a bug/ticket tracker for projects at work. There’s no guarantee I could get everyone to actually use it, but it’d be a fun and educational experience, and if I could figure out how to build it as a customizable theme to release to the public, that’d be even better.

Seriously, WordPress excites me like nothing work-related has for a long time. It feels good.

ETA: For some reason this link isn’t working above, so here it is again:
Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog (Smashing Magazine Book Series)

Last week I was in Houston for a conference, where I taught a workshop/tutorial on how to create a WordPress blog, and presented at another workshop on how to attract an audience to your blog.

The first one was a piece of cake–I could create a dozen WordPress blogs in an hour, and be watching TV while I’m doing it. Part of me felt like a big fake for the second one, though–I have few if any followers on any of my blogs. I’m ok with that, since it’s not my job to get readers (I just like to ‘talk’), but if I needed to, I know how it’s done. I’ve been swimming in the social media pool since before it was ever called social media. I know what attracts readers, and what keeps them, because I’ve been sucked into blogs, websites and posting boards….and I’ve left them. I’ve been anonymous, and I’ve had followers–I’ve even given an autograph or two in my lifetime.

I didn’t say any of that at the workshop, I just let them all assume I knew what I was talking about, because in actuality, I do. I’ve just never put it to the test.

Also in Houston, I saw bats. A quarter million of them. It was pretty awesome.

I’ve been working on a new project at work, and it’s making me crazy. I’m working with a team (of two) to create a Flash application using the Google Map API for a multitouch table. Not many people seem to be developing for this specific platform, and I can’t find much help online in the various Flash forums, so I created a new blog (http://flashtouch.wordpress.com) where I can document what I’m doing and the issues that I’m having, with the hope that maybe someone else is out there having similar issues, or better yet, someone who has already solved my issues.

If you’re interested in Flash AS3, Google maps, and multi-touch gesture events, drop on by! I could use all the help I can get!

I decided I didn’t like that last change and took it out. ‘Course, I was stupid and didn’t do it the smart way, i.e. I didn’t copy the files before I went making changes to them, so there are some other changes that ended up in there by accident when I found I couldn’t remember how to undo what I’d done before. And if you followed that, you’re a smarter person than I.

Sadly, I’m having a ‘dumb programmer’ day all around. I’ve been working on a Drupal site for a friend/client. I generally don’t do freelance because I’m afraid of being unable to deliver what they want, and surprise surprise, here I am today totally stuck on how to create and format the drop down menu the client wants. I can do it in CSS and I can do it in Javascript (or rather, I know where to find programs that can do that), but I have no idea how to merge them with Drupal so that the menu items are controlled by the CMS, without hardcoding them in. It’s making my head hurt, and honestly, when I get frustrated I can’t focus. Brilliant programmer, that’s me!

My brain is mush for today, which sucks ’cause I only have one more day to make real progress that I can show to the client, and if I mush out again tomorrow, I’m toast. Biting off more than one can chew might be a good way to learn things, but it’s got that nasty ‘nervous breakdown’ side effect. Boo! Hiss!

And since all posts are boring without a pretty picture, check out this reflective shadow that was cast from my glass dining table to the ceiling earlier today. That’ll wake a person up for sure!