It's the little things, I've noticed, that really make a website design pop. The layout may be good, the content may be worth reading, but it's small, minor details that take a good design and turn it into a great one. With the advent of CSS3 and HTML5, those details become even easier to bring in. No longer do designers and coders have to…
From time to time I like to surf through the repository and try out new plugins. It keeps me in the know and I'm able to share those plugins with you. So, here's what I found as I was surfing this fine Wednesday: Custom Classes Justin Tadlock is a man synonymous with great plugins, and his latest one is fantastic, as always. Two boxes show up…
If you've come to this site by way of Twitter or Facebook, you may have noticed that the short link for all of these posts isn't your typical URL. I recently purchased snv.me to shorten all of the links to my blog posts and site, and (after some extensive research) found a way to hook it into my site using bit.ly's pro service (now…
Every post on this blog has a "featured image" - the last few have been screenshots of my blog for the various tutorials I've been writing or a photo of the BlogWorld banner to talk about my speaking acceptance, but the one thing that always bothered me was that any time you used a featured image it wouldn't show up (by default) in your…
I got the fantastic news today: I'll be speaking at BlogWorldNY later this year (June 5-7). Topic: Responsive Web Design: One Website to Rule Them All... I'll be talking about what responsive web design is, and why it's beneficial to make your site or blog responsive. If you've never been, BlogWorld is, by far, one of the best conferences on either coast. I hope to…
Yesterday we finished our portfolio, built with a custom post type, three taxonomies, and some custom field information that we can use to display lots of data about our pieces. Today is a bonus; we've got all these really cool taxonomies, but no way to really browse the portfolio based on a specific term. Create the Post Type (done yesterday) Create The Taxonomies (Color…
Yesterday we took a look at the beginning parts of building a portfolio using WordPress. It basically boiled down to a few parts: Create the Post Type (done yesterday) Create The Taxonomies (Color Scheme [tag based], Work Done, WordPress Functionality Used) (done yesterday) Create Archive / Single pages for post type Create Meta Box Assign Meta Box Data to Single Page Assign Taxonomy Data…
Once that's done, you should see your new entry below "posts" on the left menu, with your three taxonomies underneath. The first step is complete. I'll go more into detail on the specific templates used, as well as sidebar content that changes whether you're in the portfolio or not, and even between single portfolio entries and their archive pages. Our WordPress portfolio is well…
When I created the new version of this site, one of the main areas I wanted to focus on was the portfolio. I'd had a really... underwhelming one that was powered by ShrinkTheWeb who (recently) decided to charge for the services I was needing. I took that as a good sign that I should get my new site up quickly, but thought about the…
After nearly (literally) 6 months of testing, working, and coding (and working around other peoples' work - clients come first!) I am proud to announce that this site is in it's 5th revisionary state. Some things worth mentioning (that you may or may not care about, but it's fun to mention the highlights): New front page design Contact page removed; Hire Us button takes…