The camera could be used as a fully automatic camera (huge point and shoot?), or in manual mode. Mainly, I used it in auto mode and occasionally tried to use some of the manual inputs. I always said to myself that I would learn more about how to use it but never did, and then came digital.

It was so easy to use a point and shoot digital that I kind of forgot about my Minolta for many years. Recently, I took a photography class. The class took me back to the roots of manual photography. The Minolta I had proved to be too expensive to get the required shutter release cable and 50mm lens for. So I bought a very inexpensive Canon AE-1 that was probably new around the early 1980’s.

Not only did we learn lots about how to use the camera, but we also learned to develop our own film and print our own images. Both are things that I thought I would never be able to learn since the advent of digital cameras.

What does this have to do with Photography Websites?

After a semester of photography, I decided I wanted a website that I could use to showcase some of my best photographs. Additionally, I thought it would be a good opportunity to create something that I have not tried in the past, a photographer’s website. So the research began.

I have looked at about 1.99 billion photographer’s websites. I had an idea of what I wanted to do a couple of times, but haven’t put pixel to screen yet. Below are a few of the best site I found:

Brett Arthur

I love Brett’s clean and minimalist styling. His site is not devoid of color though like some minimalist sites. He uses a nice shade of orange around his name. I can even get past the side scrolling on most of the pages. The only issue I have seen is the sidebar. Having a stationary sidebar works well until the information goes off the screen. I have a 24″ monitor  with the resolution set fairly high. When you click on the contact link, there is information that is located somewhere off screen.

Richard Avedon

Ok, it’s Richard Fricking Avedon. Enough said about the work. The site is extremely nice looking. The load times are almost imperceptible. The main drawback for me is that it is a Flash site. The site has a very modern look, but as most people now know, the modern world includes browsers on smart phones. A good number of those phone will never be able to show this site at all.

Eric Ryan Anderson

Like Richard’s site, Eric’s site is built on Flash. This is the one flaw I see in this site. The layout and usability are both fantastic. The imagery is exceptional. I just wish he had not chosen Flash.

Fredrik Clement

Frerik’s site is outstanding. Very clean and very minimalist. Also, very few words at all. If you are concerned about SEO, I am not sure how that would work out. However, one thing that is in the favor of this site is that, unlike the previous two sites, it is not built on flash. Fredrik makes use of modern techniques by way of using jQuery/Javascript and HTML5. This site will render on a smart phone. Sweet.

Nick Cobbing

Nick’s site is probably one of my favorite photo sites. The images become the work. The text and images are intermingled in a way that I have not seen often. On top of that the typography is spot on. The biggest plus, it is built on my favorite CMS, WordPress. Click around on Nick’s site, you will see some amazing images and design techniques put to use.

Now the struggle is to digest everything I have seen, and come up with my own unique idea. Isn’t that always the case? The work is the hardest part!

Thanks for reading.

Bradley

There are lots of tutorials online about implementing custom post types. Most of the tutorials I found did not cover some aspects I was hoping to incorporate into my new post types. I wanted to include some custom meta boxes, and make use of them and the other elements in non-traditional ways.  The best custom post type tutorial I found that came close was on ThinkVitamin.com.

The tutorial was perfect for what I was looking for! It implemented lots of the features I wanted to make use of. I re-purposed the meta boxes, and made them my own. Otherwise, my portfolio creation dashboard looks very similar to what is featured on Think Vitamin.

Custom Meta Boxes

One thing I wanted to do differently, was to have images of my beautiful websites and graphic creations on each portfolio entry. I needed a way to insert images systematically. I wanted  to have a defined thumbnail image, an enlarged image and title tags on each image. I came up with a workable solution for the time being. I just upload a thumbnail image, an enlarged image, and type in the title tag into the meta boxes. I have made room for up to 5 images per portfolio listing. I would like a way to do this more cleanly. Like an “add more” button, and be able to add as many or as few images as I would like. (In the works!) Beside that one issue, I am happy with my results.

Porting to the Front End

The next dilemma was implementing all these neat features on the front end. I mean, now I have all this great content, I want to show it off! I wanted the text content to all be shown in the sidebar of the portfolio pages. I called each meta box in where I wanted, and used the main content in the sidebar as well. The main part of the screen just shows the portfolio images.  To call information from the meta boxes, I made use of the WordPress function get_post_custom();.

Like the portfolio custom post type from the Think Vitamin article, I used the custom taxonomy (aka… Custom Categories) to list the skills used to create each portfolio piece. I wanted to have this listed on my portfolio page. However, I did not want the list items link to a category page, which is default if you use echo get_the_term_list( $id, $taxonomy, $before, $sep, $after );.  I did use the function to get the listing of custom taxonomy. However, to output the list, I used echo strip_tags(); to strip away all the markup except for the “li” tags. I know this was a little anal, but when you have something in mind, you try to make it happen. Right?

I hope that gives a brief insight into how I made my new portfolio come to life. It was hard work, but fun all the same. Next time, I hope to cover how I made the team members come to life on the about page.

Stay Tuned!

As always, thanks for reading!

Bradley

I learned a lot in the time I spent building the site. Many of the things I learned from reading more and more indepth in the WordPress Codex. Other things were learned from blogs that I regularly read and some I stumbled across. I even happened to learn a good bit, or at least put some things into perspective, from a recent WordCamp i attended.

Lessons Learned:

• Create new post types in WordPress and incorporate them into the theme
• Add meta boxes to new post pages/custom post pages on the back end
• Port information from the new meta boxes to the theme’s front end

And I am sure there are several things I am forgetting!

Things Left Todo:

• Move the functions for the custom post types from the functions file to the plugin directory
• Get the home page nailed down to be 100% the way I have envisioned it
• Work on adding content to the blog sidebar
• Now that I have Google+, add a G+ button to the footer
• Get photos added to the About page (this is priority #1)
• There are a handful of places I have extra mark up. I am planning to comb through the HTML elements as well as the style sheet and minimize as much as possible.
• I tried to incorporate several HTML5 and CSS3 elements. There is fall back for older browsers too. I would like to expand the use of new technology, and maybe even incorporate something like Modernizr for the older browsers.
• On the backend, the way I am handling the meta box input for the portfolio images needs some more work. It works ok, but I would like for it to work better/differently.

What makes me most happy?

• I love the way my new logo turned out. A combination of my old logo, and some new elements. For the most part, I am extremely happy with all the graphic elements. One or two changes, but 97% is right on the money.
• The contact page looks fantastic. I am very happy with it. Maybe more than some of the other pages. Of course, I put a ton of work into it.
• The portfolio custom post type is integrated superbly. I like the way almost all the elements of it turned out, particularly on the front end.

I am planning a series of posts to explain and delve further into how I developed the new site. Stay tuned!

As always, thanks for reading.

Bradley

I have been a resident of South Carolina most of my life. Except for a few years 2000-2003, when I lived in Atlanta, GA, I have lived in South Carolina. I love lots of things about this state. One of my favorite things is the state flag. It is one of the most destinctive flags in the country, and maybe the world. For those who aren’t familiar with the flag, it is a simple white palmetto tree and crescent moon on a field of navy.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_South_Carolina.svg

As much as I like the flag, I have been disappointed by the state’s license plates since birth! The first plate I remember is the bicentennial plate (used from 1976-1980). After that there were several good attempts to incorporate the palmetto tree and crescent moon or other South Carolina imagery into the design. The worst I think was the discolored wren. Styles from over the years can be seen at SC Plates.

Our current plate is also disappointing. It does feature the palmetto tree and crescent moon. However the sunset is very distracting, and in my opinion, unnecessary.

I would love to see the DMV generate a contest between artists and graphic designers for a new plate.  In fact, I am going to throw out a few takes on what I would love to see. If anyone at the DMV is listening and like what I have to offer, shoot me an email. Here they are:

I have a Facebook page for my company, but up until earlier this week, I didn’t have enough fans (or whatever they are calling it this week!) to get a vanity url for the page. This wasn’t a huge deal since I haven’t been doing too much with the Facebook page, but it was something that I wanted.

When I first setup the page, I sent out a message on Twitter. A somewhat generic message. Asking for people to like my page with a link back to it. At the same time I put up a similar message on my personal Facebook Wall, and sent out a couple of Facebook messages to close family and friends. I got about 20 likes (or fans) then. Which I didn’t think was too bad considering the nature of the message and the “hope and a prayer” type of process that went into it. Plus I didn’t really offer anything for being a Facebook Fan. So not bad all-in-all.

Fast forward to earlier this week…

I had some free time on my hands, and I decided that I wanted to change tactics and try to get the 25 likes necessary for the vanity url. On Monday, I tweeted this message:

I posted the same message on my personal Facebook Wall as well.

Within a matter of 30-40 minutes, my Twitter followers and some of their followers had racked me up to over 25 likes. Since then, I am up to over 30. Not sure how much farther the likes will go based off of that one tweet alone, but it got me enough for my vanity url.

Lessons Learned

1. Twitter can be a useful tool even with few followers. I have less than 400 as of this writing. If just over 6% had liked my Facebook page, I would have gotten my 25 likes even if I were starting from zero. Coupling that with the people I am friends with on Facebook, it wasn’t too hard to get the 25. I just had to put some effort into it.
2. Humor works. The first time I asked for likes, it was just a straight-up ask. No frills, no thrills. This time, I used a little tongue-in-cheek humor. “Help a guy out!” And they did.
3. Be nice. That is my philosophy when using social media in general. No body wants a hassle on there. They want to escape from the hassles! The people who liked and/or retweeted my message were personally thanked. They went out of their way to help me out. Plus, the people who I wasn’t already following that retweeted, I went ahead and followed them as well.

Have you used Twitter or Facebook (or any other social media service) to get results for your company? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading!

Bradley

P.S. If you haven’t already liked my Facebook page, now would be a great time!

P.P.S. Thanks to @JohnMHoyt, @tubblog, and @RatesInMotion for the retweets and Facebook likes!

Back again with more great links!

If you missed the post earlier this week, I did a recap of my trip to WordCamp Raleigh. I had a great time, and met lots of fun people. I can’t wait until I can make it to another camp.

Now on with the show…

WordPress Custom Post Type Generator

I learned about this at the WordCamp. Creating custom post types can be confusing and a little tedious. This new tool helps you form the code with several steps. I played around with it a bit, and it looks pretty cool.

Google Wants to Kill The URL Bar

Are you ready for a browser with no URL bar? Google thinks you are (or might be). In Chrome version 13, Google will give the user the ability to hide the URL bar.

It will be interesting to see how it works. I have definitely liked the fact that Chrome doesn’t clutter up the screen with too much at the top of the browser.

WordPress for iPhone

Found this thing. Not sure where though. Looks like you can add/edit posts via your iPhone now. I am not sure how helpful this will be. It is hard to type anything lengthy on my iPhone. Maybe with an iPad it might be better? Anyone willing to donate an iPad to research, contact me through the contact form!

That is going to be it this week. I have spent most of my free time this week working on some custom post types for my site redesign. I am planning a series of articles to talk about that once the new site is launched. Hopefully really soon!

Thanks for reading.

Bradley

It is done! I have now been to my first WordCamp.

My wife and I drove up on Friday afternoon. Raleigh, even though it is a neighboring state is a frickin’ long way from Greenville! It took us a little over four hours to make the drive.

Emily, my wife, grew up near Raleigh, went to high school in Durham, worked at Duke Hospital for a while, and spent a lot of time in the area in general. So we took some time out to drive around Durham on our way into town. I have never seen Durham or Duke University. Duke has some beautiful buildings on campus. I will say that in general, Duke, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh are beautiful towns. Lots of mature trees just about everywhere you look.

After touring Durham, we made our way to Raleigh to find our hotel. We stayed at a Red Roof Inn. It has to be one of the nicer ones I have seen. The hotel was located near the interstate and within a five minute drive to the Sheraton where the camp was being held. Nice!

Saturday

Emily dropped me off early on Saturday morning to start the madness! It was pretty packed. I got checked in and scoped out the layout. The organizers gave everyone a nice swag bag. Complete with a custom polo shirt for the event. Between the knowledge I gained, the connections I made, and the swag the $45 ticket price more than paid for itself.

I sat through presentations from about 9.30 until about 4.30. It was a long day! Here is a listing of the presentations I listened to:

1. Doug Cone – Plugin Power: Best Practices for Plugin Development
2. Ryan Duff – Extending CPT: Custom Meta Boxes and Admin Dashboard Widgets
3. John Ford – Security: Be A Superhero
4. Aaron Jorbin – All Your Bugs Are Belong To Us: Debugging and Filing Bug Reports for WordPress
5. Brad Williams – Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse using Custom Post Types and Taxonomies

They were all great, but I think I enjoyed John Ford’s presentation best. It was informative and funny. John talked about keeping your website secure from S.A.C.’s (Smoking Asthmatic Clowns)! And he presented it as if you would transform into a superhero by keeping your and your client’s sites safe. In a lot of ways, I think he is right on the money!

I was most looking forward to Ryan’s presentation. It was good, but left me wanting more. I have been trying to get some custom post types incorporated into my site redesign. It is coming along, but I was hoping he would shed some more light on things I was missing. Especially in terms of custom meta boxes. Fortunately, I took good notes because he did point out some resources worth checking out for further learning. As of today, I have some custom meta boxes up and working on my development site. One word of advice I would give to Ryan, if he asked, is to slow down a little. I felt like the presentation was a little rushed, and we had plenty of time left at the end.

I stumbled into Aaron’s presentation by happenstance. I really wanted to check out Andy Stratton’s presentation that was happening at the same time. However, it was less than standing room only for it! There were actually people standing out in the hallway trying to hear what he was saying. I can’t wait for the video to be posted. From what I heard it was fantastic. Aaron talked about submitting bugs and the process for which to do that. Along with some other things to help resolve or get issued resolved.

Brad Williams gave more of a user’s perspective on Custom Post Types and pointed out some plugins and similar resources for getting custom post types set up. Great information. He used Zombie types as his example. It helped to inject some humor into the presentation. I really left feeling like Brad’s presentation should have preceded Ryan’s presentation though. So that you went from the basics to the more advanced.

I met several people the first day. Ironically, most of them are from Greenville. At lunch I sat with Doug Cone (who gave the first presentation of day), Kevin Dees, and Stephen Harvey. Everyone I met was super nice. I can’t wait to see some of the Greenville folks at some local events.

Afternoon

By the end of Brad William’s presentation I was about to have brain overload. So my wife swung by to pick me up, and we headed out on our own adventures. Apparently, they were having some kind of tractor and livestock show at the fairgrounds. It was free to get in, a price I always like. So we drove over to check it out. Let me just say that summer has come to the south!

There were about 1,000 vintage tractors at the event. The people who own them have taken lots of pains to get them restored and in impeccable condition. I took a handful of photos of some of the more interesting ones.

After walking around in the heat and blaring sun for a while, we decided that we needed some shade. Luckily, they were also having a tractor pull using vintage tractors. The stands were shaded, so we decided to check it out. Neither of us have ever been to a tractor pull. It was pretty entertaining for a while. Gave us some time to cool off at least! The announcer was funny too. All-in-all a fun afternoon.

Sunday

I got there probably too early Sunday morning. I showed up around 9 expecting it to be crowded since the first presentation started at 9.30. It wasn’t! It was nice though. I got to spend a little bit of time talking to Kevin before the presentations started. There were really only two followed by the keynote. The two I attended were:

1. Chris Jean – Standardized Loop API: The Next Big Thing
2. Andrew Nacin – How Not to Write a Plugin

Chris had the presentation of the event! He introduced something that was just sitting right there. He proposed coming up with a standardized way to call the WordPress Loop similar to the way you call the Dynamic Sidebar function. I hope he succeeds in getting some attention for it. I think it would make life easier for lots of people. Me included!

Andrew kind of expanded on Doug’s talk from Saturday. However, I think he should have extended the title of the presentation to include something about ways to get involved with the WordPress community. He talked about helping contribute in lots of different ways including submitting bug fixes and helping to write documentation.

Keynote

The Keynote address was given by Andrew Nacin and Jane Wells. Andrew works for the Audrey Capital and is a core committer for WordPress. Jane is a UI designer who works for Automattic. It wasn’t really an address in the sense that they stood up to give a speech or presentation. It was a town hall type of setup and the answered questions from the audience. Lots of good Q&A.

The Long Ride

After the Keynote, we started our long trek home. We stopped for a couple of extended periods and pushed the 4 hour drive out to about 6 hours. Luckily for me, Emily loves to drive, but doesn’t like to ride. So I got a chauffeured ride both ways! It was good to get home though.

Can’t wait for the next WordCamp that is close enough to attend. Congrats to the folks who orchestrated the Raleigh event!

As always, thanks for reading!

Bradley

This week, my wife and I are headed to a WordCamp in Raleigh. In fact, this post is slated to be posted the morning we are leaving. So by the time you read this… we will be gone.

In honor of going to WordCamp, this is going to be WordPress week for discoveries!

New WordPress Power Tips for Template Developers and Consultants

This link comes from Smashing Magazine. They invariably have some of the greatest tips about all kinds of things related to web design/development from around the web.

This post gets into some techie ways to modify and enhance WordPress for your clients.

Creating a Custom Functions Plugin for End Users

How to Create Your Own WordPress Functionality Plugin

Both these articles touch on the same subject. The first one is by Justin Tadlock and the second was featured on WPCandy.

Both articles make a strong case for including regularly used functions, that would otherwise be put in your functions.php file, in their own plugin. The argument is that this makes it easier to port the functionality between themes or theme changes.  The Tadlock article gets more indepth with creating the plugin than the WPCandy article does, but both are worth a read.

Deploy Your WordPress Blog to the Cloud

This is a tutorial on Nettuts+. The author describes how to setup a blog using Amazon’s Web Services. It is pretty much the same as using a VPS. You have to build the services yourself. Which could be rather daunting if you are uninitiated. Not sure I am ready to try it on my own yet!

Interview: Why Matt Mullenweg Created & Love WordCamps

This link comes from a blog I have mentioned before wpbeginner. As mentioned in my post earlier this week, I am attending my first WordCamp this weekend. In that post I cover briefly what a WordCamp is. In this super-short interview, Matt tells us how the first WordCamp came about and why he loves them.

That wraps another week of discoveries up. Hope you found some gems in there.

Thanks for reading.

Bradley

Keeping updated on the latest news and know-how for the tools that I use is a must. I think it is a must for any web designer/developer who wants to stay relevant in their field. I try to attend as many conferences and workshops as possible.

What is a WordCamp?

WordCamp is a great way to learn more about using and developing for WordPress. WordCamps help you to stay in-the-know about things related to WordPress. Typically, some of the best people in the WordPress industry speak about a variety of topics. And hopefully, I will be able to do a little networking with other WordPress Professionals as well.

Previous Learning Experiences

Regular readers of the blog may recall that I went to a Drupal Camp last year in Asheville, NC. I have been trying to find a local WordCamp that fit with my schedule for a while now. Finally, I found the WordCamp in Raleigh, scheduled for May 21 & 22,  and the time frame worked for me.

Speakers

One of the speakers at this year’s event is from Greenville, SC, Doug Cone. I am looking forward to attending his session, as well as several others. I didn’t think I would be interested in attending many of the session in the developer’s track, but reviewing the the list of speakers and topics, I may be “camped out” in that particular track most of the time.

Some of the other sessions I am most looking forward to are:

• Ryan Duff – Extending CPT: Custom Meta Boxes and Admin Dashboard Widgets
• John Ford – Security: Be a Super Hero
• Chris Jean – Standardized Loop API: The Next Big Thing

It is going to be extra nice because my wife went to school near Raleigh. She is looking forward to seeing some old friends and checking out the surrounding areas while I am at the camp.

Look for a follow-up once I get back. Hopefully, I will have good things to report.

Thanks for reading,

Bradley

The latest installment of my discoveries of the week. Last week was a study in creativity and inspiration. This week is more all over the map. Hope you enjoy!

The Photoshop Manifesto for Web Designers

Useful ways to organize and enhance your Photoshop files so that they are more useful to developers and end users in general. I think this is meant a little tongue-in-cheek, but surely so sage advice can be had.

Easy Content Types Plugin for WordPress

I have been creating some content types for my latest layout of this site. This plugin seems useful to people who don’t want to mess with the code at all. Might be worth checking out for future projects. The link is to a write up about the plugin on a very useful site for WordPress news and information, WP Candy. It is worth adding to your RSS reader.

Google Products You Probably Don’t Know

This is a post on a blog called 1stWebDesigner.com. I don’t read this blog often, but once in a while one of my Twitter followers will post a link from there that looks interesting. I am a huge fan of Google and their products. I use lots of them! I found a few in here I had not heard about, and was reminded of a few I did know about. The four most interesting looking ones:

1. Related Links
2. Browser Size
3. Page Speed
4. Google Sketch Up

How Do You Convince the Average Web User to Switch to a Non-IE Browser

This post comes from a site like the one above, I only read it when something interesting shows up on Twitter. It is Web Design Depot. I find good articles on there from time to time.

As a web professional, this is a question you ask yourself often. Internet Explorer seems to have the most flaws and be the least standards compliant of all the major browsers. This can be a huge stumbling block to user experience and coding so that it isn’t. Truthfully, I don’t think there is any convincing to be done, but the article goes into ways the author tried to do it. It also touches on the subject that most people aren’t 100% sure what a browser is in the first place. I think this has been further muddled by introducing web apps (although I love some of them!).

That is it for this week. Stay tuned for next week’s post.

Thanks for reading.

Bradley