• Client
  GlobalCT
• Responsibilities
  Design Concept
• Agency
  OmniStudio
• Project Details
  A design concept for ‘GlobalCT’ a nonpartisan research and policy institute that works to improve internationally coordinated responses to the continually evolving threat of terrorism
• View the Project
  View the design concepts

• Client
  Local Color
• Responsibilities
  Design Concept, XHTML, CSS
• Project Details
  A design concept and initial development for Local Color, a Washington, DC design and print studio
• View the Project
  View the three design concepts

One that I’m incredibly excited about is versioning - basically put anytime you edit a post or page, WordPress now saves a copy of the old one for you to go back to should you realize you made a mistake - it’s just one thing that brings it closer to a true, fully-functioning CMS.

I won’t re-iterate all of the changes in this new version - Matt of Automatic did a great job of that in the WordPress Development Blog 2.6 announcement post - go have a read to learn all about the fantastic new editions and upgrades to your favorite blogging platform.

The announcement post also included a great video for your viewing, and learning, pleasure:

Meanwhile I’m still tackling some issues for this site. Like a working contact form and figuring out why Twitter Tools isn’t working in 2.6, but that will come in time. Now I have paying work to get to.

I keep backups of all my posts and pages, thanks to the WordPress Database Backup plugin and I was able to extract the tables for my pages and posts and lose everything else. After an hour or so uploading files and testing to make sure everything looked ok I’m more or less back to where I was a week or so ago. I never have been big on backing up files, partly because I hate to do it and with the WordPress Database Backup plugin I don’t have to - it runs once a week and emails the SQL file of my database tables. It couldn’t be simpler and I couldn’t be more happy.

There are a few things that need fixed (like the contact form below) but for the most part I’m back up to where I need to be and I like it like that.

• Client
  Enterprise Development Network
• Responsibilities
  Design Concept
• Agency
  OmniStudio
• Project Details
  A design concept for EDN, a group helping businesses work in developing countries
• View the Project
  View the two design concepts

• 404 Notifier
  Can email me when someone gets a 404 error, either by coming across a bad or old link. It also creates an RSS Feed of the 404’s that I’ve subscribed to, instead of getting the emails.
• Akismet
  Comes with WordPress in the default install and is vital to any site uses the blog feature of WordPress.
• cforms
  A very nice AJAX contact form that I’m using in the footer. It hides my email address from spammers and creates a record of the submission in WordPress so that even if I lose the email, I can still find out who contacted me.
• Edit Comments XT
  This ones is self-explanatory, it allows users to edit their comments for a limited number of minutes after posting.
• Flickr Widget
  I’m using this widget to display the 4 last photos I uploaded to flickr on my homepage.
• Gravatar
  Adds the globally recognized avatar functionality to my site, so that users can comment with their own avatar
  
• Live Comment Preview
  Again, self-explanatory, lets the user see how his comment will look before he/she posts it. Check it out below.
• No Self Pings
  I’ve never used this one before but WordPress 2.5 will ping itself, creating pingbacks in its own posts. This plugin disables this functionality.
• Search Pages
  Allows WordPress’ default search to also search pages.
• ShareThis
  This plugin adds the ShareThis functionality to all my articles.

• ThickBox 3 Plugin
  Makes it insanely easy to add thickbox functionality to any post - mostly used in the portfolio section
• Twitter Tools
  This plugin is what runs the last twitter update in the footer as well sends a new ‘tweet’ everytime I write a new article.
• WicketPixie Source Manager
  This plugin came with the WicketPixie theme by Matt Brett and Chris Pirillo. The source manager, in combination with other code is what is responsible for the Social Me page.
• Wordpress Automatic Upgrade
  This plugin is so awesome, I wrote a full article about it
• WordPress Database Backup
  Backing up the WP database is important and this plugin handles it for you automatically - emailing you when it’s ran and lets you download the latest backup, should something go wrong
• wp-Table
  Adds some pretty cool table creation functionality to WordPress - something which is sorely needed.
• WP Since Last Visit
  I’m not using the plugin to its full potential at the moment but it lets you tell a user what’s new since they last visited.
• WPtouch iPhone Theme
  This plugin will override an active WP theme if someone is using an iPhone to visit your site, giving them larger buttons and easier navigation to all of your articles.
• WYSIWYG Text Widget
  This doesn’t yet work in 2.5.1, but I’m hoping the author updates it soon as I think this is something WordPress desperately needs - especially for people who need to use widgets but don’t know html

Again if you’re some that I’ve not listed, please leave a comment below, I’m constantly amazed at what the community is able to do to push WordPress to new and better heights.

Luckily for me, WordPres 2.5 started letting you automatically upgrade most (I’m not 100% it works on all plugins) installed plugins. Just click the link, it goes out to find the new version, installs it and reactivates it all while you sit and watch. A lot of people will argue with me, but I think it might just be the best feature in WordPress 2.5.

Now that I’ve been working in 2.5 for a few months I’ve started wonder why the developers didn’t implement that same type of experience for upgrading WordPress itself. I think having a link you can click to upgrade the WordPress install - instead of forcing me to go out to the site and grab the file - is a much better solution. Clearly they thought about it when it came to the plugins, but not the system. If only someone would create a plugin that did this very thing!

Someone has

This is the thing that I love about WordPress, the community keeps coming up with ways to push the system, add functionality and create something better than any teams of developers could on their own. The plugin, the appropriately titled “Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Plugin” was created by Techie Buzz years ago. Apparently, I just have a hard time keeping up. I just used it to upgrade from 2.5 to 2.5.1 and it was painless - it even backs up my database and installation files and lets me download them before making any changes, which is just genius.

We all have a favourite plugins, but this one just made it to the top of my list.

• Client
  Rosemary Feit Covey
• Responsibilities
  Photography Choice, Design, Layout
• Project Details
  A 48-page printed catalog for the Arlington, VA show of the 0 Project at the Arlington Arts Center. The book featured photos of the event, essays from the artist and curator as well as quotes from attendees and other info re: the project.
• View the Project
  Download a 10-page preview of the catalog

I relaunched this site earlier this year mainly to have a place to show my work of the past three years, but also in the hopes that it would trigger me to write more. Partially because the format I chose was very restricting and while it wasn’t obvious to begin with it became apparent to me the more stuff I added to it. That frustrated me and that frustration led to me not wanting to do anything with it. In the months that followed it languished and eventually I stopped posting anything there - including new work.

A Return to Form

So I’ve spent the past week or so putting together this new WordPress theme which is a return to the grid based layouts of my websites past. To keep things simple I made it a pretty basic grid with 8 columns plus a little more for padding on the sides - it’s probably not a true grid, but it’s close enough for me that I’m ok with the minute differences. This gives me room to play with the layout on different pages (see the Portfolio section vs. a Portfolio entry) and it also gives me room to grow as I add more things to the site.

Not only is this theme a return to previous design forms, but with copious amounts of help from Chris Pirillo and Matt Brett, in the form of the Social Me functionality, it’s also a return to sharing social media. I’ve been using del.icio.us, flickr, digg and last.fm for what seems like forever and with ‘new’ services like twitter, jaiku, plurk, brightkite and others I’ve got a lot of stuff to share that I just haven’t been. So this theme takes full advantage of Social Me and allows me to put any feed from any service anywhere I want so no matter what page you’re on you’ll see what I’m up to and if you want to follow/friend me, there are links to all of my services in the footer and if you don’t want to follow me then just periodically check out my Social Me page where you can see everything that I’m doing on the web, in one handy place.

With this theme, everything you see is a post within the WordPress system so if you subscribe to this site’s RSS feed you can see when I post a new article or new portfolio project which means that if you see an article or a portfolio project that you really like/hate, you can leave a comment and tell me what you think. It also means that it’s super easy to update, which is important because I know myself - if it’s not easy to update and make it work then I’ll push it off and it’ll never happen.

I also paid extra attention to the homepage - one area that I feel was lacking with the old site. You’ll also notice that it features the last portfolio project I added, plus my four most recent flickr photos, links to my last articles, tweets and delicious links so even from there it’s easy to see what’s going on and the most important social stuff is always in the footer, so no matter where you go on the site, you can see what’s going on.

Bugs and Business

There are still some bugs I still need to squash around here so if you notice anything out of place, don’t worry I’ll find them, kill them and their children. Anyway, that’s the end of this quick little tour, if you’d like to leave a comment, I love hearing from people so please, comment away!

• Client
  Catholics for Choice
• Responsibilities
  CSS, XHTML, Adobe Contribute Integration
• Agency
  OmniStudio
• Project Details
  A website for the non-profit organization who serves as a voice for Catholics who believe that the Catholic tradition supports a woman’s moral and legal right to follow her conscience in matters of sexuality and reproductive health
• Launch the Project
  catholicsforchoice.org