Blogging can be an escape from the humdrum of working, and that is exactly what this post is! Follow me on a wild romp through the fields of the web, hand holding and skipping to my lou optional.
Disclaimer: This is a nonsensical post of random links, time wasters, random news, updates, and really really important stuff, it is meant to be funny and light hearted. Also the surgeon general warns this post is hazardous to your health.
On with the adventure!
First up in this escape to fun and excitement: Rubiqube just re-designed, with eye scorching whiteness. Seriously I don’t know what white that is but it is much brighter than #FFF! He’s also posting again, which is good, cause I like his blog.
Need a slick lightbox that can display all sorts of things? Continue Reading
Today I have a quick tip for all the WordPress theme developers. I’m actually working on a theme right now and thought I would share a tip that will make your themes much more user friendly.
Often when developing themes for one reason or another you want the end user to give you the ID for a category. This could be so you could call certain categories, or exclude them, or create custom menus etc. In previous WordPress versions Continue Reading
When setting up themes I like to give people options, lots of options, some say too many options. Those options usually come in the form of widget ready areas for WordPress themes. There are widgets for just about everything now, and more being developed everyday. You could even make your own widget. With so many types of widgets an easy way to make your theme customizable is to “widgetize” areas.
My Checkmate theme has 10 widget areas! With that many places to stuff widgets things can start to get confusing. I’ve adopted an easy way of not only clueing in end users of where the widget area is but also keeping the code easy to read.
Continue Reading
And Me. I’ve recently noticed a disturbing trend, kids barely in their teens as web designers and developers. And they are better at it than 20 somethings. I started when I was 15 and quickly grasped HTML(that was HUGE back in the day). I thought I was a pro and would laugh at my older counterparts fumbling around with their BBS boards. Now I’m the fool fumbling around with the web while barely teens are already better skilled than I.
When I was twelve I was too busy playing police quest, giving a presentation on anything was out of the question. Not for Dimitri though! He has a far better grasp on javascript and jQuery at the age of twelve than I will when I’m fifty. Check out the jQuery presentation he did for Google….yes Google.
When I was 13 hacking to me meant taking over someones AOL AIM account and messaging their friends with “I’m a stupid head”. I didn’t know what SQL was(if it was around then), and I surely didn’t know how to hack(the happy hacker website wasn’t around yet). Hayes Potter doesn’t have that problem. At 13 he can hack your website, then tell you how to fix it, and pay his tuition to M.I.T. before he can drive. Read his tutorial on SQL Injections at his blog, WordPress theme developers should pay close attention to this. He also has a surfer and Converse All Stars in his header which makes him extra cool with me.
With kids(what do you call them when they are smarter than you?) like these around, the future of the net is very secure and will be an exciting place. Sometimes older web designers get jaded on technology, these kids remind me that the net is ever changing and moving forward and I for one have no problem learning from them. So keep up guys, you don’t want to be that grumpy old bearded guy working in a dirty office with 10 year old monitors and a huge rats nest of cat5 cables in the corner do you? Actually that dude is pretty cool, he probably is really good at Word of Warcraft too.
Kyle over at Hack WordPress has compiled a list of resources for WordPress. I gotta say it is a great list(and not just because I’m on it), if you are at all involved with WordPress check out the list. I found a few new sites I didn’t know about.
On a side note, if you develop WordPress themes Hack WordPress is a great place for tips and tricks. You’ll find all those little useful things that the pros hardly talk about.
Designing a website is sort of like planning a large event, after a trip down the California coast to two large events I picked up on a few things. Mostly I wanted to complain, but these same complaints can be made of websites, and a few of my designs are guilty of them too.
Plan It Out
Bimmerfest, ah how I love thee. Tons of nice BMWs and even more traffic, a lot more traffic. Bimmerfest has been going on a few years now, and there is always a traffic jam. I can excuse the traffic outside the event but it is inside the event that gets my panties in a bunch. Whats this got to do with web design? Continue Reading
