AJ Morris

Did you know I’m one of three most important people in WordPress?

AJ Morris — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:41:16 +0000

Remember that whole Thesis vs. WordPress debate that lasted a few minutes some time ago? Matt tweeted something about getting a T-shirt if you contacted him via his blog. Well I started my morning out with a trip to the PO box to see if anything was there (really I was hoping a check from a client was there so I could get paid).

What I found though was a package from Automattic containing all sorts of WordPress goodies. The thing I found the coolest however was the certificate that Matt and the gang included. If you don’t get the “joke” behind it, I encourage you to read up on the debate and watch this video over on Mixergy. There’s a part in there where Chris says,

I’ve done great things with WordPress since 2006. I have been arguably one of the top three most important figures in the history of WordPress. You, Mark Jaquith, and myself, are the three people that I am talking about.

It’s pretty interesting to listen to if you haven’t heard it already. Either way a big thanks goes out to Matt and the team at Automattic for sending a bunch of these out to people. I’m sure like myself they are grateful for their leadership in developing a quality project.

In the package you’ll notice that it contained a T-Shirt (it’s long-sleeved). Unfortunately the shirt that I got was a Large and I need an XL. So I’m going to give it away here completely FREE! It’s a little tricky though because you can only apply if you need a large shirt. What you need to do is this, comment on this post about what your favorite feature is in WordPress 3.0. You can include a link to a screencast (you can use Jing!), or a story. The more creative the better chance you have at winning. You will have until the Tuesday Sept. 7th at Noon EST to get in the running. I’ll then choose a winner and contact them directly to get their address to send it to them. Good luck!

Great Looking Headway Designed Sites

AJ Morris — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:51:44 +0000

In continuing my discussion from my previous post about Headway Designers, a comment by MommyGeek, made me think it was time to highlight Designers that went above and beyond and made really great examples of what you can do with this awesome theme. So I took a look through Ownen Greaves post about Headway themed sites and picked the ones I thought showed great design. It wasn’t easy to pick through as there were a lot of great designs. So below are the top 10 I want to highlight here. I provided the site URL and the version of Headway so that you can see what else these great sites are doing.

Gareth Chidgey

Website: http://www.chidgey.me Version: 1.5b (Beta?)

Antz In Your Pantz

Website: http://www.antzinyourpantz.co.uk Version: 1.66

Location Independent

Website: http://locationindependent.com Version: 1.7b5

three4one design

Website: http://341design.com.au Version: 1.66

Local Joints TV

Website: http://localjoints.tv Version: 1.66

Socially Responsible Media

Website: http://srmgroup.ca Version: 1.66

Smart Shine Detailing

Website: http://smartshinedetailing.com Version: 1.62

Blue Door Photography

Website: http://savannahweddingphotography.com Version: Unavailable

clarkgriffiths

Website: http://clarkgriffiths.com Version: 1.62

Silent Hill

Website: http://www.konami.com/shsm/blog Version: 1.01

Hopefully these have given you an example of some sites that have been created with Headway. Here’s the link to the flickr set so you see these and the other designs I was looking at. In total there were 27. I’d like to see how many of these were created for a client and how many were created for personal use. Leave them in the comments.

Are there any that I missed? If you think I missed one, please include a link in the comments and let’s put your site to the test.

My Issue with Headway “Designers”

AJ Morris — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 19:19:26 +0000

Headway theme is a great WordPress theme for the DIYer’s and the developer. If you’re looking to create a blog or a 1.0 site for your business. It’s a theme that allows you to create a site without having to code. You don’t need to know CSS or PHP or even a lot about WordPress. So fits really well with WordPress and the DIYer.

Headway has this awesome feature called a Visual Editor. It allows you to click on the area you would like to change some CSS properties of and change them very easily. Like I said, it’s great for the DIYer. There are a lot of other awesome features that Headway has but I won’t touch of them in this post. I want to touch on an issue that has been bothering me for the past few weeks.

There are people in the Headway community that do not understand CSS, PHP, or even how WordPress works. They people who started off as a DIYer to create their own site, but they’ve started taking it one step further. They are starting to charge clients to build sites on WordPress and Headway. These sites are all ordinary, cookie cutter sites that their clients could do themselves with the use of the Visual Editor.

Let’s take a moment so everyone understands what I just said. People that charge clients for sites designed with just the Visual Editor is wrong. They are NOT designers. They don’t understand basic web standards, how the site is going to look in various browsers, or how code works. What gets me is the fact that they charge almost just as much as real designers.

Where does the problem lie? Well it could start with the developers of Headway. Ultimately they are in the business of making money and so they are going to create a quality product that meets the need of their customers. But why do you want to display the same cookie cutter sites as quality examples of sites designed with the Headway theme? Is this because real designers haven’t used Headway to design sites? Is this because you aren’t going after the designers but you’re going after the DIY crowd?

Update: After thinking about this in greater detail I decided to rewrite the above part. We as in the Headway community should be highlighting what can be done with Headway and educating other Headway developers so that Headway sites are not cookie cutter sites. I would think as a Headway developer you would want to try new things with the theme. Clients are going to ask for things that the Visual Editor just can’t do and those developers are going to need to understand that it can still be achieved with CSS and PHP.

How can we fix it? There’s good news though. We can fix this. Instead of highlighting the cookie cutter sites, let’s highlight the great works that people have created. Let’s show the WordPress and Headway communities what can be created with Headway if you go above and beyond just using the Visual Editor.

Calling All Freelancers…

AJ Morris — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:25:09 +0000

Do you like freelancing as much as I do? Well I’m looking for any freelancer anyone that’s used a freelance website before. More specifically I’m looking for what the URL is and why or why didn’t you like it. I’m exploring some now, and figured I could get a better idea if I just asked all of you! Leave them in the comments below.

No related posts.

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!