Jorge Pedret

Pears: Common patterns of markup & style

Jorge Pedret — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:08:00 +0000

Great WordPress theme for creating a pattern library

How to translate WordPress’ admin to a different language?

Jorge Pedret — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:40:52 +0000

While traveling in Venezuela, I was helping a friend setup his first WordPress site. He loved every single part of it, except that it was all in English and he wanted to see it in Spanish. Que problem-o.

Using a different language for WordPress’ admin, was something I’ve always wanted to learn, so I started looking around and I couldn’t believe how easy it was…

1. Download the language files

Go to this url http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_in_Your_Language and search for the language that you’re looking for:

Find the language that you’re looking for (i.e.: es_ES)
Download the whole WordPress package for that language
Uncompress the downloaded .zip file
All the language files will be under the /wp-content/languages/ directory

2.Move the languages files to your current WordPress installation

Copy the language files from the previously uncompressed package (from /wp-content/languages/) and move them to /wp-content/languages/ in your current WordPress installation.

3. Change the wp-config.php file

Go to the /wp-config.php file in your current WordPress installation and change the WPLANG constant to your language.

This is what mine looks like:

define('WPLANG', 'es_ES');

That’s it!

Reload your admin panel and it should now be translated to your own language (or your clients’).

While researching this stuff, I also found an amazing plugin to manually translate WordPress templates that use the __() and _e() l10n’s functions. If you don’t know what I’m talking about check this out http://codex.wordpress.org/I18n_for_WordPress_Developers. I’ll be writing a post about that soon, so stay close if this is something you’re interested in!

SEO for non-dicks

Jorge Pedret — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 08:42:15 +0000

The key thing to understand is that the rules of SEO aren’t magic or arbitrary. They’re based on the goals of a search engine, which is to find relevant results. Relevance implies genuineness, and genuineness implies trust. So, shockingly, you should try to make your site’s content trustworthy, genuine and relevant. All of the rules have come about due to their utility in detecting those three positive metrics. Good SEO is a by-product of not being a dick on the internet.

Matt Legend Gemmell ~ SEO for Non-dicks

I couldn’t agree more with Matt. I’d add that some of the core SEO rules are also based on how usable and accessible the site is.

Separating Photoshop Layer Styles Into Their Own Layer — A Method & Craft Video

Jorge Pedret — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:39:29 +0000

Check out Luke Holder from Method & Craft on “Layer Style Jailbreaking”. He show us how to make Photoshop Layer Styles separate into their own layer and some reasons why we want to do that.

This is a technique I’ve never seen before, so if you don’t know what I’m talking about, just check out the video.

Here’s a quick step-by-step list:

In Photoshop, select a layer with styles assigned to it.
On the main menu, go to Layer > Layer Style > Create Layer (Click OK on the message prompt).
Now all the styles are layers!

COOQ’s Landing Page

Jorge Pedret — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:39:27 +0000

After a lot of work and tweaking around things, we’ve finally made live the landing page for COOQ (http://cooq.com/). I’d love to hear your feedback!

This was an amazing project to work on, lots of creative ideas put into it and an amazing client to work with.

Looking for beta testers!

If you love food & cooking, we’re recruiting people like you to use COOQ.com on its private beta stage. So just enter your email on the landing page and you’ll be hearing from COOQ soon.

Social Media is not Going to Save Your Business

Jorge Pedret — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 19:02:00 +0000

Wrapping text around images in Photoshop

Jorge Pedret — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 17:15:00 +0000

Learn how to make texts in Photoshop that can be shaped. Wish I knew about this trick earlier, as the author said, is not as obvious as you want it to be.

Great video by Adrian Taylor from Method & Craft. They always have the best tricks that you really didn’t know about.

Here’s a quick example on how to recreate the fancy text wrapping in CSS: http://www.kevinfreitas.net/pro/articles/fancy-text-wrapping/sample01.html. The html is a bit nasty because of all the extra markup it generates, but it gives you the flexibility to modify your text without having to do anything else.

Phil Coffman on Creating Tileable Textures in Photoshop

Jorge Pedret — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:06:42 +0000

I’ve been looking for a while for a tutorial that explains how to do tileable textures in photoshop. Two days ago I stumbled on Phil Coffman‘s great video tutorial (from Method & Craft) explaining exactly what I wanted.

Definitely must check it out!

Branding style for a construction related website

Jorge Pedret — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:17:19 +0000

I created this design really quick to show a client some ideas I had in mind for his construction related iPad app’s website.

This is the original sketch for the character:

As always, any comments are appreciated!

Post of the day: Characters brainstorming

Jorge Pedret — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 09:39:59 +0000

I’m creating a mascot character for a client’s business, and this is part of the brainstorming process: One of my favorite steps of this job .

Here’s one of the characters that I came up with during the brainstorming session:

For generating ideas my favorite thing to do is draw for hours whatever comes into my head, even if I think it’s stupid or it’s not going to work. One of those drawings will spark a great idea!

The biggest idea blocker is being scared of what other people might say about what you’re doing. Just let your mind be free and great inspiration will come to you!

As always, comment if you have something to say

P.S.: I’m going to stop calling this posts, “post of the day“. I’m seriously having a hardtime finding time to do something everyday, but I still post at least twice a week. You can still find my work in progress posts by its tag here http://jorgepedret.com/tag/daily-posts/