I have long been a fan of Chinaco tequila. I even wrote about taking it to our company holiday party back in 2005. But last summer while on a business trip in Santa Barbra I was having lunch at a tequila bar called Left at Albuquerque and found a bottle of Chinaco I had never seen before. I asked the bartender about it and he said it was called Chinaco Negro and was an extra anejo tequila. I didn’t feel comfortable having a shot of tequila just before hopping in to the rental car to drive back to the airport, so I passed up the opportunity to try it out. I have been kicking myself ever since.

On Sunday we had a few friends over to celebrate my birthday. I was extremely excited to open the gift presented by the entire group to find a bottle of Chinaco Negro. We each had a shot and I have to say, this tequila is, without a doubt, the best tequila I’ve ever had. I plan on keeping this around for a while and enjoying it slowly.

I had to do a little research to find out what the differences are between the different types of Chinaco. They all have to do with how long the are aged. The Blanco isn’t aged, Reposado aged 8 months, Anejo aged 3 years and the Negro aged 5 years.

You can read about the Chinaco Negro tequila at tequila.net

Big thanks to Chris, Gloria, Marcia and Charles for this amazingly awesome gift!

Last week I left my office to meet up with Rob for lunch and as I turned the corner, there it was… The first fireworks stand of the season! I smiled and reached for my cell phone. I opened up the text message program (while stopped at a red light, of course) and sent my wife the following message:

It is almost my birthday.

Being the absolutely awesome wife that she is, she responded with:

LOL, did you see a fireworks stand today?

… as if I needed a sign to tell me I picked the right woman!

So, how about you? What triggers your strongest childhood memories?

The first one happened at the WordCamp after party. I was chatting with Joseph Scott from Automattic and my friend Todd and I asked Joseph what projects he’s been working on. He then spends the next few minutes talking about a ridiculously cool feature that is going to make handling videos for your blog easier (i.e. from your dashboard) and without having to give away all your rights to the video by placing it on other services… When he was done, Todd and I agreed that this sounded freakin’ awesome. So I did what any true geek would do when presented with something so cool information, I threw my arms out and said, “Bring it in.” Joseph, being the cool guy that he is, opened his arms and leaned in for a quick hug.

Later that night when we were back at our hotel and grabbing some food in the pub, the thought of hugging Joseph came back to me and I cracked up. Thanks Joseph for being such a good sport!

The second moment requires a little bit of setup. My wife is very much non-technical. Even still, this past weekend was her 3rd WordCamp event thanks to hanging out with me. Though at her first WordCamp she worked the registration desk and at her second she spent much of her time playing games on her iPhone.

While at the Reno-Tahoe WordCamp, we heard Matt Mullenweg talk about a cool WordPress theme called P2. P2 gives you the ability to post directly from the front page (like Twitter’s home page) and then updates automatically when new comments come in. This can be used for groups of developers to discuss a project they are working on collectively and will store all the information for viewing later if needed…

Fast forward to this past Saturday. We were sitting in the Q&A session hosted by Matt. Somebody in the audience stood up and started asking a question. As he was describing it, in my head I already know that Matt is going to tell him he needs to check out the P2 theme as the answer to his need. Just then, still before the guy has finished his question, my wife leans over to me and says, “He needs P2, doesn’t he?” I can’t tell you how proud I was at that moment!

This final moment I’m going to tell you about also needs a little back story. Last Halloween Todd and I set up a photo booth at the party we were at. As the evening went on, people had more and more to drink. This made the photos later in the evening just that much sillier. One of the photos is of my wife holding up her fingers as if she’s holding a couple six-shooters, and though you can’t hear it, she’s saying “Pyew Pyew” as she’s shooting them. And, for the record, “Pyew Pyew” has stuck around and is still something we laugh about.

On Friday, Todd, Chris and I decided to visit Alcatraz. As we went through the line waiting to get on the boat, there was a photographer there taking photos of couples and groups that they would then sell you upon your return for $22 for two 5×7s. I was certain there was no way we were going to purchase these photos, so I told Todd to go ahead and join Chris and I in our shot. Right before he snaps the shot, I hold up my hands and make the pyew-pyew noise. This makes the photographer laugh and in turn Chris and Todd, too. So I make Chris and Todd join me and we all throw our six-shooters in the air. When we got back, the photo was just too good to pass up.

You can find the original photo on this page for comparison.

Anyway, on to the good stuff.

My wife and I made our way to San Francisco a few days early to do some sightseeing prior to spending all day at WordCamp on Saturday. This is 3rd time this year I’ve traveled to attend a WordCamp but the first time I saw something other than the inside of a conference hall. I gotta tell ya, it’s the way to do it! We had a blast being tourists on Thursday and Friday!

Oh, right, this is a post about WordCamp. OK, I’m back on track now.

After the morning welcome by Matt Mullenweg, we headed downstairs to check out Andy Peatling’s talk about BuddyPress. Andy is the lead developer on the BP project and his passion for the project shows through. He gave a bit of an overview on how you can integrate BuddyPress in to a site to let people contribute and interact, but stressed the fact that BP doesn’t automatically turn your website in to a social network type site. He provided some links to resources that will help designers and developers customize their BP installs. I’m definitely looking forward to researching this further.

Here are the resources if you are interested:
- List of BuddyPress loops
- BuddyPress hooks
- The Skeleton Component
- Vote for new BuddyPress features
- BuddyPress dev community

We stayed in our seats downstairs after Andy wrapped up and got ready for the next presenter. Dave Moyer who was going to give an intro to Podcasting. At the ripe old age of 16, Dave is a “been there, done that” guy in the podcast community. He’s been podcasting since 2004. He passed on some info about the tools he uses (Skype and Audacity), places to find free/inexpensive tunes for your podcasts (penmachine, freeplaymusic, soundsnap) and an easy way to make your podcast ready for iTunes (hint: publish via feedburner). Again, this is something that I’ll be researching more over the coming weeks as it’s a topic that I’ve been interested in for ages and just haven’t dove in to yet. Soon, though!

Next was the State of the Word. This is when Matt Mullenweg gives a past, present and future view of WordPress. One of the big announcements was that WordPress and WordPress MU (multi-user) are going to merge. Undoubtedly this means that a site admin would have the ability to turn on/off the ability to add multiple blogs to a single install of WordPress right from the dashboard. No real time-table given on when that would be happening, though. He also spoke about the P2 theme. A very cool theme that turns your blog in to a twitter-like site. This would be a great tool for a team working on a project. New posts and comments are shown in real time and the page doesn’t need to be refreshed to show new content. I’m interested in getting my company to use this for development groups.

In a stroke of genius, rather than having a Q&A session immediately following the State of the Word, instead we broke for an awesome BBQ lunch and then headed back for an hour-long Q&A. I say it’s brilliant because I wouldn’t have wanted to miss any part of either, but not sure sitting for nearly 2 hours straight would have been all that much fun.

Next we checked out Tara Hunt’s “Makin’ Whuffie” presentation. Tara gave some great information on using social media to build your business. She talked about how it’s ridiculous for companies to say “We need a twitter campaign” when what they really need to do is find out why their customers use/like twitter and how they should become part of the community.

We headed downstairs again to check out Ann Oyama giving an intro on WordPress Themes and Plugins. For those of you who read my blog on a regular basis, you know that plugin development is something I’ve been in to lately. As I’ve said before, it’s impossible to teach an entire subject like building custom themes or plugins in a 40 minute presentation, but Ann gave a nice overview and people should have plenty to follow up with once they get back home.

Steve Souders was up next. For me, this was the highlight of the day. Steve is a performance guru who works at Google (after many years of working at Yahoo) and he gave a VERY informative talk on how to speed up your website. Some of the stuff sounds incredibly advanced and may intimidate you at first, but, with some info from Steve and a couple hours of time, you could drastically improve the performance of your website and it could make all the difference in the world to your visitors.

I wouldn’t even begin to do justice to Steve’s presentation. Instead, I’ll tell you to download his powerpoint presentation and as soon as the video is available on wordpress.tv, watch it.

We wrapped up our day by listening to Scott Porad from Pet Holdings (the geniuses behind FailBlog, LolCats, etc…) as he spoke about user-generated content. It was interesting to hear how they do everything they can to make it super simple for people to create and submit content. Then, rather than having people from their company being the judge of what does or doesn’t make it to the website, they leave it up to the community. If enough people say it’s funny, it makes the site. If not, well, sorry.

Even though this wasn’t the last session of the day, it was for us. We headed back to the hotel, grabbed some dinner and made our way to the after party. You just can not pass up the opportunity to have this kind of access to the staff from Automattic and the passionate WordPress community. Guys like Joseph Scott and Jake Spurlock make the entire trip worth it. Where else are you going to be able to bend their ear for 30 minutes and get the inside scoop on what projects they are working on. Plus, it’s a great way to drop a feature request directly in the laps of people that can make ‘em show up without having to code them myself.

There are two very unfortunate things about my experience at WordCamp San Francisco;
- As much as I love the idea of having multiple tracks, I’m really bummed that I wasn’t able to see all the presentations. Yes, I know I can watch the presentations online at WordPress.TV in a few days/weeks, but it’s not the same as being there.
- A second day got added to the event that was more geared towards WordPress developers. This was hosted at the Automattic offices and I’m sure would have been exceedingly cool to attend. Unfortunately it wasn’t announced until well after we had booked our flights and I didn’t hear about it until it was too late to make other arrangements. This was definitely a sad trombone moment for me.

Kudos to all the presenters and everybody who had a part in putting together WordCamp SF. I had a great time and I’m already looking forward to attending again next year!

I was recently asked by somebody who is planning on attending their first WordCamp, what they should do to prepare for the event. Since they asked me via Twitter, I tried for 5 minutes to figure out how to answer in 140 characters. I finally replied, “I’ll have to turn this in to a blog post.”

Where it’s at

Not everybody lives within shouting distance of a city that is going to host a WordCamp event. If you visit WordCamp.org, you can find the schedule for upcoming events and hopefully find one that’s not too far away. If that’s not the case, I strongly suggest planning to go to a WordCamp event in a city that you’d like to visit. Plan on going a few days early and do some sightseeing and then attend the event before heading home. Be sure to leave enough time to take part in any after parties that may be planned following the event as these are excellent networking opportunities.

It’s too far, I gotta fly

If you need to travel to attend your first WordCamp event, do yourself a huge favor and plan ahead. Flights and hotel reservations are usually less expensive if you book well in advance. If you aren’t real picky about the exact hotel you stay in, use Priceline.com to find accommodations in the area surrounding the event.

I know when and where, now what?

Once you’ve decided on the event you are going to, the first thing you should do is register for the event. Register as early as you can. Waiting for the last minute is a bad idea for a couple reasons. Each event will have a different capacity based on where it’s being held, so it’s possible the place may sell out earl. Also, by registering early, you are helping the organizers get a head start on ordering supplies for the event.

Who’s speaking at the event?

Each WordCamp is different and will have a unique set of speakers and topics. When you visit the WordCamp.org website, you’ll find a link to site dedicated to your specific event. The site will typically have a list of speakers scheduled to appear with links to their websites. Take some time to read up on the speakers. I have found some excellent blogs this way that I have added to my RSS reader and continue to follow. Most speakers will have a Twitter account that you can follow as well. This is another great way to get familiar with who is going to be there.

What will I learn at WordCamp?

As I mentioned, each event is going to cover a unique combination of topics. Take some time to review the schedule for the event to figure out which topics you are most interested in. Many of the events recently have had multiple tracks running during the day. They usually have one track dedicated to the technical aspects with the other track dealing with more of the front-end user elements. If the event you are going to has multiple tracks, before the day of the event you should print out a schedule and highlight the presentations that you want to attend. This can save some confusion and stress on the day of the event.

WordCamp is a great place to pick up ideas for things you want to research further once you get home. It’s hard for any presenter to teach you an entire subject inside a 30-60 minute presentation. That’s not really the point of any presentation. But, assuming you pay attention and take some notes, you can use each presentation as a jumping off point for when you return back home. Even though I’ve been using WordPress for more than 5 years, I’ve still come away with new ideas and concepts from each WordCamp I’ve attended this year.

Preparing for the day of the event

I can’t stress this enough… DRESS COMFORTABLY!! The event itself will last 8 – 10 hours and there will probably be some sort of after party to attend. Yes, you’ll likely be sitting for much of the day, but also be prepared to walk/stand for quite a while as well. After WordCamp in Denver we ended up in a bar chatting with people for more than 3 hours. Most of that time we spent standing. Do not fear that you are going to be under dressed wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

Most WordCamp events try to provide wireless internet access. But, from what I’ve experienced so far, do not rely on having wireless access. With 100+ people all trying to get their laptops and cell phones to connect to a single router, access is going to be spotting and slow.

Bring something for taking notes. I personally have horrible handwriting, so I bring my laptop to type notes and save them for easy reviewing when I get home. If I were to bring pen and paper, it would be like trying to decipher the Dead-Sea Scrolls. Do what works best for you.

Bring a snack. There will most likely be a break for lunch, but still you may want to consider packing a Snickers bar or something for either the mid-morning or mid-afternoon. You don’t want to be falling asleep during a presentation due to lake of sustenance.

Plan to arrive early and stay late. There is great value in all the presentations, but I believe there is equal if not greater value in the networking opportunities that happen on breaks and after the event has concluded for the day. If there is an after party, make sure to go! I have made some excellent contacts at these gatherings that would have never had happened if I skipped out early.

What do I do when I get back home?

This is probably the most important part. When you get back home it’s important that you take your notes and review them. Then, for everything that you took notes on, do some additional research. Get involved with the information that you found interesting at the event. If you liked the hearing about building templates, hit up Google and search for “Building a WordPress template from scratch”. Did you like the info about plugins? Search for “Building a WordPress plugin”.

You should also connect with the presenters that you found most interesting. Send them an email and let them know what you thought of their presentation. Many of the presenters will make their slides or even video of their presentations available a short time after the event has concluded. This is another great way to review the information to listen for things you may have missed.

Resources

Here are some handy resources that you can check out to help enhance your WordCamp experience

• wordcamp.org – See when the next WordCamp is going to be in your area
• wordcamp.tv – Check out presentations from WordCamps all over the world
• wordpress.org/support – Forum where you can find answers to most any WordPress question

Oh, and don’t forget to have fun. The WordPress community is filled with some amazingly cool and incredibly knowledgeable people. They are one of the most helpful bunches of people I’ve found on the Internet. Interact with them and you’ll see what I mean.

Did I miss anything?

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. I’m happy to help.

We all met at the Spring Preserve Sunday morning and before it got too hot in the Las Vegas sun we spent time taking shots in all sorts of settings. Later this summer Geoff and Erin will be heading back to the same place to seal the deal.

This was a really interesting way to take photos. I tried to insert myself in to the shoot as few times as possible letting Jeff run the show and set up the shots he wanted. It’s fun being a fly-on-the-wall and just shooting with a long lens from yards away when nobody is paying attention to the fact that you are there. Such a good time!

Here are some of the shots I took:

Geoff and Erin were a fun couple and I was happy to take part in their special occasion. Best wishes for a happy and lengthy marriage.
 

30SECONDREVIEWS.COM
ARTICLEHAWK.COM
BACONFAN.COM
BANGPHOTOS.COM
BESTGOLDSTAR.COM
BLOGGITUDE.COM
BUSTABLE.COM
BUSTCUPS.COM
BUYSELLLAPTOPS.COM
CHERRYMILFS.COM
CLICKYOURSELF.COM
CURVABLE.COM
CURVEABLE.COM
DESERTCARLOANS.COM
DINNER365.COM
EASYBLOGTHEMES.COM
ETC5.COM
FLATPROFIT.COM
FREEMILFCLIP.COM
F**KINBRAZIL.COM
F**KINGFORUMS.COM
F**KPEACH.COM
FUNKHOLES.COM
GADGETDORKS.COM
HANDLEDOMAINS.COM
HOTSTUPIDGIRLS.COM
JCPORN.COM
LUSTPAGES.COM
MRAFFILIATEPROGRAMS.COM
MRPACKAGER.COM
MUSCLERELAXER.BIZ
NASTYSEXDOWNLOADS.COM
POKERCRASHCOURSE.COM
PORNRALLY.COM
PSSW.ORG
QUEENOFCOUPONS.COM
ROCKSEXPARTY.COM
SHOOTVIDEONOW.COM
SSJOY.COM
STUMBLENETWORK.COM
SUBPRIMECRISISMANAGEMENT.COM
TEAMDONK.COM
THEBJ.COM
THEGAMEPLAYER.COM
TRIPTOTHESTORE.COM
TWITTERROCKSTAR.COM
VASTPORN.COM
WEBMASTERPORNO.COM
WELLWTF.COM

If you are interested in developing any of these domains as a joint effort, I’m open for that as well.

“Don’t get comfortable.” she says.

“The doctor told us to stay home until you can’t stand the pain any more. Let me get a little sleep and then we’ll see how you are doing.” I tell her.

I dive in to bed and fall asleep hoping to steal 4 or 5 hours. But it’s no use.

12 days had passed since her due-date came and went. After 9 months and 12 days, and roughly 6 weeks before I’ll be able to legally purchase a beer, we are headed to the hospital. This is it. The big day.

I’m scared shitless.

After a relatively uneventful labor, sometime around 5pm, my wife gave birth to our first child. Our Son. Paxton.

That was 18 years ago today.

18 years. Wow. It still sounds incredible to say. My Son is 18. How is that possible? How did that happen? Where the hell did the time go?

It would take weeks to write about all the fun, exciting, terrifying, frustrating and proud moments I’ve experienced over the years. Instead, here’s just a few that jump out.

The first day
That day was filled with a bunch of firsts. I remember vividly how amazing it was to watch the doctor hand my wife our newborn baby. A few minutes later I filled out some paper work and wrote a word that had taken on an entirely different level of meaning; Father.

Chris and I hadn’t confirmed the gender of our baby with the doctors ahead of time. Though we both strongly felt we would be having a boy. Even still, we hadn’t purchased any gender specific items prior to the birth. Even though I was running on almost zero sleep, after the Paxton was born and the doctors ran through their litany of tests, while Chris took the opportunity to get some much needed rest, I ducked out of the hospital with a friend and went to the mall. I returned a short time later with a pair of infant sized Air Jordans.

Eye surgery… yikes!
When Paxton was 6 he needed to have surgery to fix a “lazy eye”. This is one of those times in a parents life where they would give anything to switch places with their kid. No parent EVER wants to see their child having surgery. And of course, because of this, the whole process leading up to the event is absolutely terrifying to Chris and I. But, as parents, we need to explain to our Son what is going to happen. And, like the honest and forthcoming parents that we are, we sat Paxton down and told him the following; “Here’s what’s going to happen. The doctor is going to give you something to drink that will make you go to sleep. While you are sleeping he’s going to pull out your eye and pop it in his mouth and swirl it around to clean it all up. He’ll then pop it back in place and you’ll be all done.” There was a whole visual that went along with this where the doctor at one point drops the eyeball and it rolls around like a marble which he picks up, dusts off on the sleeve of his jacket and pops back in his mouth for further cleaning.

Remember: Honesty is the best policy!

Kids say the darndest things
I used to play in an ice hockey league which always had games late in the evening. Chris hated to stay home alone, so many times she would drag the kids along and sit in the stands to watch the games. As you can only imagine, as a little kid Paxton didn’t really enjoy going. He’d play some games, have some snacks and mostly be fairly civil. But that wasn’t always the case.

One night at a game on the other side of town, Paxton did his best to give Chris a hard time the ENTIRE game. By the time the game is over and I’ve had a chance to change in to street clothes, Chris had had all she could take. We got in the car and headed home. I was driving and Paxton was in the seat directly behind me. Paxton was not ready yet to give up on driving Chris crazy that night. While Chris temper increased, mine shot through the roof. After having had quite enough of his antics, (while driving on the freeway, mind you), I reached behind me to give him a smack on the leg to let him know I meant business. Unfortunately, the angle was horrible and I couldn’t reach him while driving without putting all our lives at risk. So instead of a smack, it was much more like a tap.

With the timing of seasoned comedian, Paxton says, “You hit like a girl.”

Houston, we have lift off.

I pulled the car over to the side of the freeway. I’m pretty sure Chris thought she was about to watch her son lose an arm or leg. Chris pulled out the perfect mechanism to defuse the situation… she started crying. We sat on the side of the road for a minute, collected ourselves and then got back on the road. The rest of the ride home was fairly silent. When we got home and put the kids to bed, Chris tells me that she had to start crying just to keep from laughing her head off. We must have spent the next 45 minutes cracking up about the whole scene.

To this day, “You hit like a girl” never fails to make me laugh.

Kids say the darndest things, part 2
Mom does all the laundry in the house. Which is a good thing or else we’d all walk around either naked or wearing some seriously stinky clothes. As kids get older, the size of their clothes start to get closer and closer to those of the adults in the house. So it’s really only a matter of time before somebody ends up with a stray item of clothes in their drawer that doesn’t belong to them.

One day Chris took the kids to Chuck-e-Cheese. After getting home Paxton goes to change in to his pajamas. When he comes out he says to Chris, “Mom, why did you buy me these freakishly huge underwear?”

Realizing that Paxton had been wearing my underwear the entire time they were out, Chris doubled over in laughter.

And now, here we are less than a month away from his high school graduation. Chris and I are pretty much in a state of shock. At any given moment one of us is always on the verge of vomiting. But really, we feel like the luckiest parents in the world. Paxton has always been a great, great kid. He’s never once been in trouble at school, he’s nearly a straight A student, we constantly get complements on his manners when we’re out… now, if we could just get him to clean his room.

Yesterday afternoon he hopped on a chartered bus with his classmates and headed to Disneyland for Grad-night. He got to spend the first few hours of his 18th birthday at the Happiest Place on Earth. Sounds like a pretty good birthday to me.

Happy Birthday, Paxton.

Now, get a job.

On Monday morning I headed out to the truck to take the kids to school and head to work. As I got in I noticed that the glove compartment was open. My son had already got in on that side of the truck so I asked, “Was that open when you got in?” He confirmed that it was. As I said, “That’s odd”, my eyes locked on the spot where my Sirius satellite radio used to be sitting. My mind does the quick 2+2 math and comes up with the correct result. Somebody broke in to my truck. I did a quick bit of inventory and found that they took nothing out of the glove box, but took my Sirius Satellite radio, a watch (relatively inexpensive, but will be tough to replace) and my sun glasses. What they missed was the $200 tripod sitting under the seat in the back and a paycheck stub that had all my personal information on it. Neither of which I normally keep in my truck, but happy as hell to see them both sitting there after the incident. No windows broken and no forced entry means only one thing, when I got home Sunday evening, I failed to lock the door. Thankfully they didn’t do any damage to the truck. I’ll chalk this up to my own stupidity. Though, I’ll likely get an alarm installed this weekend just in case.

When I got to work I made a call to Sirius to tell them to pause my account because my radio had been stolen and I didn’t want the thieves getting the satisfaction of using it. But, since I had purchased a lifetime subscription a few years back, they are unable to do so. But, they were nice enough to waive the $75 transfer fee once I get a new unit to transfer it to. So, at lunchtime I grabbed Todd and we headed out to Fry’s. I knew exactly where to go inside Fry’s because I had just purchased my now missing radio from them a few short weeks ago when I got the truck. When I got to the aisle, it seemed that the universe was actually smiling down on me for just a minute. The display sign holding the radios I was buying said “$20 mail-in rebate”. Sweet! I grab one and head to the checkout counter.

The nice lady rings up my sale and I hand her my card. She says, “Debit or Credit?” “Debit”, I say. 30 seconds later she says, “I’m sorry, it appears my debit system is down. Is Credit OK?” Not that it’s any big deal to me how they charge it, it still pointed to the fact that things are not going my way. She completes the transaction, I sign the receipt and she says, “Have a nice day.” I reply, “Thanks. Can I have my rebate form?” She says, “One didn’t print out. Let me check on it.” She returns a minute later to explain that there is no rebate on the item I purchased. I tell them their sign says there is. They, in turn, send somebody to take the sign down. I see no point in arguing at this point. I grab my purchase and head for the door realizing that the universe had to be laughing after setting me up and pulling the rug out from under me so swiftly.

Monday evening I tried accessing my website and it took 45 seconds for the front page to load. After a long slow decline in customer (that’s me) satisfaction, I decided it was time to leave my current hosting company. I had already set up an account with MediaTemple a few months back, so now it’s time to move the rest of my sites over. This is a big chore. There are a lot of moving parts and a lot of things can go wrong. I moved two sites over fairly easily and got them up and running within an hour. After the great success, I decided it was safe to move over this site. Sure enough, I got the site moved over in about 30 minutes. Everything was working smoothly so I went ahead and updated the DNS to point to the new server. This can take anywhere from an hour to 48 hours to propagate. During that time, it’s not uncommon for some email to go to the new server and some to go to the old server. The following day the amount of mail going to the old server had been drastically reduced as expected. But there was one problem… no email was going to the new server. I check with MediaTemple and find out that they had an entire grid of servers go belly up causing mass outages. They were in the process of fixing things, but some people were still experiencing issues with email. Great timing for moving my site, huh?

We’ll get back to the email saga in a minute… I need to jump backwards to Saturday evening. I think that’s when the actual week of universal crappage started. Somebody sent me a link to a youtube video. When I clicked it, I was able to watch the video, but no sound was coming from my speakers. I messed with it for a few minutes, but had to put it off until Sunday to dig in and find the issue. On Sunday I unhooked all the plugs for the speakers, sub-woofer, etc… Nothing seems wrong, there’s just no sound. To this point, I still haven’t been able to solve it.

Another big load of universal excrement landed on me today at work. It would be too hard to explain the details without turning this in to a novel (too late, I know). But, imagine that you have had a project stop and start several times over a few months. Then, one day after you have completed the project, something changes and you have to put the, now completed, project on hold.

OK, back to the email issues…

When I got home from work on Wednesday and I STILL didn’t have any email in my new account, it was time to contact MediaTemple. I sent them off a support ticket late Wednesday evening and headed to bed. When I woke Thursday morning, there was a response to my ticket. Turns out, my issue had nothing to do with their server outage. As a matter of fact, none of my sites are on any of the services that were affected. My problem was something they like to call “user error.” When I first set up the site on their control panel, it was still pointing to the old server. Because of that, they deactivate email so that if any sites on their servers try to send email to me, they won’t get caught in email limbo. Once I moved my site over, the final step should have been to re-enable email services. I activated the services and 5 short minutes later my email from the week started trickling in.

I will only take partial blame for the email issue. While I understand the reasoning behind the way MediaTemple handles their email services, it wasn’t exactly obvious to the end user (me). Now, it is my fault that I didn’t send them a support ticket on Tuesday and instead waited an extra 24 hours, but, I was actually trying to be nice. They were still in the midst of fixing their server issues and I was trying not to bother them. Sometimes, nice guys do in fact finish last… -sigh-

So, yeah, I’m happy to see this week end. Next week WILL be better.

I was recently contacted by somebody looking to help a third party move their website from it’s current platform (a custom build solution with no admin backend) to WordPress. To do this was going to require a custom template to replicate their existing site’s design as close as possible. As I set out to work on it, I realized a few spots that were outside my area of expertise. The first of these road bumps was my nemises: CSS. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the flexibility of CSS. But, I’ve always felt it’s like putting diapers on an octopus. As soon as you get one leg strapped in, something else is flailing away and causing trouble. After spending more than an hour trying to solve problem #1 through W3Schools, I gave in and contacted my good Friend Jason. 10 minutes later he says to me, “You have the closing div in the wrong place. Move it ‘here’ and you should be set.” Sure enough, I follow his instructions and my problem is solved.

The following day, back on the project CSS acted up again. This time was a bit more frustrating in that my test site was displaying as I wanted it in IE, but not in FireFox. I can’t remember the last time IE got something correct and FireFox was in the wrong. Again, I tried solving it on my own and after spending far too much time testing every possible resolution I could muster, I called on Jason once again. This time the solution wasn’t as quick, which actually made me feel a bit better. I hate asking questions and having somebody spout off the answer in a matter of seconds. It usually means I didn’t do enough research to figure out the problem. Jason came back with the solution a short time later and explained that even though IE appeared to be displaying it correctly, it was actually an accident that it was showing correctly in IE. A quick code change and now both browsers were handling it properly.

As I dove deeper in to the new template, it became obvious to me that I should create a custom plugin for the site’s admin that would allow them to handle some custom features easily. My goal, with every project, is to leave the end user with the easiest possible solution. I want the user’s day-to-day work to be as simple as can be.

As I began work on the plugin, my recent trip to Reno for WordCamp quickly came in to play. While at WordCamp, I sat in on Colin Loretz’s session about creating your first plugin. One of his slides in particular had some invaluable information that would make this custom plugin easy for me to write and would leave the end user with a VERY simple solution to something that they’d like use on every page of their site.

The Reno trip proved to be very enlightening, especially for this project, as I was also able to use some of the excellent information provided by Chelsea Otakan during her session about creating a custom theme to create custom page templates for several sections of this site.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Be pulling information from 3 fantastic sources, I was able to spend the majority of my time on this project working on the parts that I do best and having people who are better in other areas provide some key information to keep me from banging my head against the keyboard for an untold amount of time.

Thanks to Jason, Colin and Chelsea for sharing your knowledge. I hope I can return the favor in the future.