AJ Morris

Screencasts Anyone?

AJ Morris — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:32:17 +0000

I wanted to take a moment to give you an update as to why I haven’t been posting here lately. First, things got super busy at my day job, trying to get a new release out the door, which should hopefully be pretty soon. Second, I’ve gotten quite a few new new clients I’ve had to start work with and I have been trying to get my business site up and running.

My questions to my readers is this, would you like to see more screencasts or just post topics about WordPress? I’m struggling with what I want this blog to be exactly, whether it’s going to just be random thoughts, more like a tumblog or if I’m going to make sure I keep up a number of posts a week and have them be either a screencast or a informational post. Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Twenty Ten: A Walkthrough

AJ Morris — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:10:45 +0000

Continuing on our WordPress 3.0 journey, today we’re taking a look at the new default theme, Twenty Ten. It’s replacing Kubrick, a theme that has been installed with WordPress since 2005. I didn’t go in as deep of depth as I would have like, for instance, I didn’t mention in the screencast that it is coded in HTML5. I also didn’t mention that the navigation has drop-downs already builtin. Either way, the screencast does talk about some pretty good features of Twenty Ten and I think you’ll find it enjoyable.

Please stay tuned for next week when we take a look at creating a child theme. And don’t forget, if there’s something you’d like to know more about, please comment below.

Using Permalinks in Development

AJ Morris — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:00:32 +0000

Today’s screencast is #2 of my series about WordPress 3.0 and a local development environment. It’s all about getting Permalinks working on your local system. Of course this only applies to people using Mac OS X, but the same methods should apply. Watch the video below, or watch it in HD!

Code

Below is code from the screencast.

.htaccess file

User’s Conf file

New WordPress Development Series

AJ Morris — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:44:48 +0000

I’m sponsoring a new WordPress screencast series about setting up your local development and some of the new 3.0 features. Over the next couple weeks, we’ll be taking a look at things like, setting up your development machine, using permalinks locally, TwentyTen and child themes, menu management, and much more. I encourage you to check out the series, pass it on to your friends. If you’re new to WordPress (Yes there are still some! ) let me know if you are having issues following along, and I’ll see what I can do to help. Any feedback on what I’m covering (or not covering) would be appreciated as well. If I’m missing something and enough people would like me to cover it, I’ll look at doing it.

And without further ado, here is the first video of the series.

WordPress 3.0 has been Released!

AJ Morris — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:14:20 +0000

A big congratulations goes to every developer out there that has coded, documented, screencasted, and so much more for the release of WordPress 3.0! I was planning on doing an overview video of some of the features I covered in a previous article, but I took a look at the one that Automattic did and have to say it’s so good, that I couldn’t have done better. Check out the intro video for WordPress 3.0 below.

Now if you haven’t already went and updated your WordPress install, you should go do it now!

Covering WordPress 3.0 Features

AJ Morris — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:30:52 +0000

In my last post I had a brief overview of some features from WordPress 3.0. I’m currently working on about 5 to 6 screencasts to cover them, but unfortunately I do not have one done today. Instead I thought I’d ask you if you’ve played with WordPress 3.0 (It went into RC3 last Friday, June 11th) and what features you were looking forward to. Is there any specific feature you’d like me to cover in greater detail? I’m planning on covering Menus, Custom Post Types, Author Templates, WP and WPMu code merge (and how to setup a local dev environment). If there’s something else you’d like to see me cover, let me know now so I can start planning it out.

What’s next? Well after I finish this series on WordPress 3.0, I’ve got a few ideas, but would love to hear from you. Do you want me to continue on WordPress for awhile or move onto something else? Let me know in the comments below!

WordPress 3.0

AJ Morris — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:00:36 +0000

WordPress 3.0 should be released any day now as it’s currently on an RC 2. I thought it fitting that I would devote a post to the software that I love so much.

Version 2.9, also known as Carmen McRae, was released on December 18, 2009. Starting in January, development for WordPress 3.0 started. Since then there has been a few times where development has slipped, but for the better. The developers have been working hard to get the release out the door and into the hands of everyone. I’m very pleased with the feature set and the quality of the product they are shipping (Been using v3.0 since Beta 1). I want to publicly thank the developers for all of their hard work, the testers that have been testing the software, and everyone else that’s had a hand in the development cycle for bringing such a powerful platform to us. I started using WordPress around 1.5 and am amazed at all the changes that have been made.

Let’s take a look at the big features (I’m sure there’s already been posts like this but who cares.) and over the next few days I’ll go into greater detail of the features I’m covering in this post. Perhaps I’ll get out Camtasia:Mac and dust off my mic and make the rest of these screencasts.

1. Menu Management

This is by far the feature I’ve been looking for! There’s been tons of plugins that have tried to accomplish this, but I think with the combination of WooThemes and WordPress developers they have done this right.

2. Custom Post Types

WordPress currently has two types of content, Pages and Posts. Version 3.0 allows you to define any additional types you want! For example, if you’re running a WordPress site for a real estate company, you might have a post type for houses, another for condos, and even one for rentals.

This also allows for the ability to make WordPress more like Tumblr. You could have custom post types for Audio, Chat, Link, Photo, Quote, Text, and Video. The possibilities with custom post types with WordPress 3.0 are endless!

3. New Default Theme

Kubrick has been shipped with all versions of WordPress since 1.5, but with the release of 3.0, the new theme will be TwentyTen (What I’m using on my site). It has been a long over due. There’s so many new features in it I’m going to make a screencast post just to talk about how cool it is.

4. Get Short Link

Not a big feature, but one that was released for WordPress.com, is the Get Shortlink button. For those of us that use SEO friendly urls, you can now use the shortlink for each post. No more having to use a url shortener as you can now keep your brand intact.

5. Choose your own username

The days of having “admin” as your username are gone! During a fresh installation, you can now choose your username.

6. Custom Taxonomies

This feature is probably a little too complex for non-developers, but I think this really brings WordPress 3.0 closer to a real CMS. You could add things like Ratings, Photos, Descriptions, etc. Currently, WordPress ships with two, Categories and Tags.

7. WPMu Codebase Merge

WordPress and WPMu have merged their codebases! This makes it much easier to handle large (even multi-user) WP networks. Also this fixes any plugin and theme issues some might have when running WPMu. For the most users, this doesn’t mean much, but there’s definitely some pretty great benefits for the management of large WP networks.

8. Author Templates

We already have custom category templates, but this adds the ability to add specific author templates. Say you have an author with the name of “AJ” it would look for author-aj.php, then author-.php ( being that author’s id), and then finally author.php to decipher which template to display.

Goal of 3 Posts Per Week

AJ Morris — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 15:30:54 +0000

When I decided to relaunch this blog I knew that just a new redesign wasn’t going to bring people back. I needed to do something else. That being said I decided that I was going to give myself a goal of X number of posts per week. The way I am going to accomplish this goal is by scheduling them in advance. It’s one of the few features I’ve only played with in WordPress and not really used for my own blog.

After using it for a few days now, I have to say that I’m really impressed with it. I can get together a schedule of posts I want on here and start working on them and then just schedule a date for when they get published. And it works beautifully!! I can say without a doubt that this feature I’m going to be using a lot! I don’t have to wait around till the night before I want something posted. I can load up a queue of posts and then not have to worry about getting content up here. That my friends is a great thing!

I’ve got some screencasts I’ve been working on and they will be posted next week. In the meantime, if you are into WordPress as much as I am, you might want to check out some of the posts below. They talk about the new features of 3.0. They helped me get this blog started and I think they will help you too.

Summer of WordCamps!

AJ Morris — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:41:25 +0000

I decided to take the summer (and part of the fall) to attend as many WordCamps as I could. I started out by checking out the list here and then started to see which ones I could drive to within a day or so. I then found 6 that I could go to and they are: Columbus,Iowa, Savannah, Baltimore, Detroit, and St. Paul. It’s going to be crazy but I’m excited!!

WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other. WordCamps are open to WordPress.com and WordPress.org users alike. – http://central.wordcamp.org/

I think this is going to be an great summer! I’m really looking forward to meeting other WordPress developers in the community and see what cool projects they are working on. I’m also looking forward to getting a chance to network with other freelance developers and to start spreading the word of my other sites. I’m also going to be submitting talks to a few so hopefully I’ll be speaking a little bit as well.

Are any of you heading to a WordCamp this summer? If you are going to one, perhaps we’ll see each other there. If not, I encourage you to check out the list and see if there’s a WordCamp near you!

Relaunch 2.0 is a Go!

AJ Morris — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 07:00:06 +0000

I’m pleased to be relaunching this site today, especially on my birthday! I decided to hold off another week so that I could get a few more posts done, and a few more little things working right with this blog. I am pretty happy with the results of waiting for a week.

Over the past few months I’ve been working hard to relaunch this site and get a few other ones ready to launch over the next few weeks. This site is just the start! Getting designs finished, doing all the tweaking that needs to get done, let alone get all the content ready.

All these sites will be running on the WordPress platform, and all on one install of WP 3.0. Being able to run them all on a couple of servers and having the same administration login for all should make it easier to manage them. I think one of the best features with WP 3.0 is the fact that they merged WP and WPmu together. It makes it a lot easier for people that have multiple sites to manage them.

Now I’m sure a few of your are thinking, but wait AJ you’re a rails developer…That’s right, I am a Ruby developer. Well the reason I chose WordPress as the platform is that it just works. I don’t have to muck around with security, logins, blogs, taxonomy, pages, etc. All I had to do was some design work (or farm parts of it out. ) and create or use a few plugins. The development time was pretty quick. Also, I believe that you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel just to get something out there when another product out there. Besides there’s lots of Rails/Ruby developers out there that rock WordPress backed blogs!

This theme was designed as a child theme to the new default theme, TwentyTen. I wanted to play around with creating my first child theme as well as test out the new Google Fonts API. We’ll see how long I keep all these Google Fonts! So please take a look around, provide any feedback you have for me in the comments, and I’ll be back soon with more goodies!!