I played the COD beta and though it was somewhat enjoyable, I couldn’t justify spending $60 on yet another WWII game. Since I wasn’t a big fan of the original Gears multiplayer the decision was easy.

The demo has been a blast to play, even though it’s only about 20 minutes long, it never gets dull. Now, if all my friends come to the same conclusion I’ll be in good shape this holiday season.

Does anyone else remember that place? It was one of the first lazer tag arenas around (I only think it was in the late 80’s). I remember going with my dad and uncle and how so incredibly awesome it all was. They had lazer lights, fog machines and loud music along with a giant suspended scoreboard with your codename on it… what 80’s born 8 year-old kid wouldn’t go ape crap over that? Here’s the commercial:

EDIT: I believe the one we had was around Clovis and Ashlan

This project was a blast to work on, Paul (our contact at Northpointe) was/is really awesome and easy to work with, and the project went very smoothly (aside from having to wait a good 2 1/2 weeks to get control of the domain name). Going into the project Paul laid out some basic requirements for the site:

• clean-minimal-ish look & feel
• straight forward navigation
• event calendar
• blogs for each of the pastors
• simple content management
• ability to stream and archive sermons

Before:

After:

The site is running on Wordpress and is stuffed full of our custom plugins (you can see our custom backend in the screenshot above). Some of our other plugins that we added or wrote specifically for this project:

• Event calendar * (allows for simple output wigitized calendars)
• Homepage manager * (for easy management of various elements on the homepage)
• Site navigation controls (Page Order, Page Visibility)
• Flash player injection * (uses shortcode API and SWFobject to insert and render flash videos and audio w/o the need to paste in html)
• Ajax contact forms *
• Custom backend skin *
• Custom Admin Manager *

* This plugin was written entirely or in large majority by us

When we started, there were a few smaller ramps where I was able to get a whole whopping 6″ of air. Now, mind you, I’ve only been mountain biking for a little over 4 months, and jumps aren’t something I’ve really had an opportunity to try out or practice. Nonetheless, it got me excited… and maybe a little over confident. The next turn was a steep decline (about 20′ long) ending with a nice little ramp that continued downhill a ways. I remembered it from the hike up, making a mental note to be sure to slow down for it, but ripe with my 6″ flight through air victory, I told myself “F@$# it! Don’t touch the brakes, just see what happens!”…

What I remember

On the way down the slope I chose my launch point and hit it going relatively fast (17-20). While in the air I realized I forgot one key element in this whole adventure… where the hell I was going to land. My front tire caught the top of a rut and slid in, slamming the bike and myself to the ground, smashing the light and computer that were mounted on the handle bars in the process. My knee and elbow hit square with the ground and the force pushed my arm back up into my shoulder, tearing something in my back (where my shoulder blade is attached). I rolled and landed on my side, knocking the wind out of me. When I stood back up I noted my tire marks were about 6 feet from where I hit the ramp. Not too shabby.

Moving On

I wound up with quite a few cuts and bruises (my both my knees and calves were completely bruised) and still can’t sleep on my right side, but honest to God it was absolutely worth it! That was the most exhilarating thing I’ve done in a while and I can’t wait to give it another shot, though this time I’m going to be a bit more prepared. Look what the birthday fairy brought me…

It’s been 2 1/2 weeks since I’ve been able to ride a trail, and I’m seriously going through withdrawals. Saturdays are the only real chance I get to go do them and I’ve been busy (and maybe a little injured) the last two, but this Saturday I get to go again. Not sure what we’re planning on doing, but I don’t care, I just need something.

I wanted Wordpress to output the data in a custom shortcode (ex -[flash http://yoursite.com/wp-content/uploads/movie.flv]). I have a plugin that will take that shortcode and turn it into an embedded flash video automatically. This makes it incredibly easy for a client to add flash movies and mp3’s to their posts.

So what did I do to change the output?

Filters FTW

Searching around the source code of Wordpress I came across the filter media_send_to_editor in /wp-admin/includes/media.php on line 291 (there is also image_send_to_editor on line 63 for those who are interested). Now that I found the filter I just needed to write a basic plugin to modify the output.

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: EWM Modified Media Insert
Description: Modifies the default method for injecting media into posts
Author: Element Web Media
Version: 1.0
Author URI: http://www.elementwebmedia.com/
*/

class ewmInsertMedia {
  //class constructor
  function ewmInsertMedia () {
    add_filter('media_send_to_editor', array($this, modifyMediaInsert) , 10, 3);
  }
  //function that does the modifying
  function modifyMediaInsert($html, $send_id, $attachment) {
    $output = '[flash '.$attachment['url'].']';
    return $output;
  }
}
//instantiate the class
$ewmIM = new ewmInsertMedia();
?>

There are a total of 5 values that are available in the $attachment array:

• url
• menu_order
• post_title*
• post_excerpt*
• post_content*

* It says “post_” but the values are not that of the actual post but the info of the file. I’m not sure why they chose those particular terms to describe the values, it just makes it confusing imho. I remember now that Wordpress stores media entry data in the wp_posts table. That’s why it’s post_title, post_excerpt, etc.

Going beyond

The shortcode API is awesome, if you haven’t messed around with it yet I urge you to take a look at the documentaion. This discovery has inspired me to start working on my own flash plugin, one that’s seamlessly implemented and without all the extra bloat (unnecessary header requests, etc). Maybe I’ll post it here when I’m done, we’ll see :).

This change and many of the other visual elements are being made to favor widescreen monitors. I’m glad they finally realized that the top style nav didn’t lend itself well to being extensible, with each plugin usually adding at least one nav link. Anyone who uses more than a few plugins knows what I’m talking about.

Add/Edit Post page (The Write-panel)

The write-panel received it’s fair share of “improvements”. Fans of the old school drag and drop elements will be happy to know that they’ve made a return. You can now drag and drop any of the element boxes between the right hand column and the column under the content box. They’ve gone a step further and added the ability to hide element boxes that you don’t want to see. Though, my thought is that these settings should be available through the settings menu rather than on the write-panel.

Plugin Repository

The change I’m most excited about is the ability to search the Wordpress plugin repository, select and install plugins, all from the backend of Wordpress! It’s all automated and very slick, no more having to download plugins, unzip them and then upload them manually. The only thing lacking about this addition is that the search flat out sucks. You’ll know this if you’ve ever tried to look for any plugins from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/, you get too many irrelevant plugins and typically the one you are looking for is buried at least a couple pages in.

Other notable additions

• ability to make posts “sticky”
• inline editing of posts from the front end
• comments XMLRPC API
• automated Wordpress updates
• new HTTP request API (looking forward to that one)
• built-in threaded comments (woo-hoo)
• ability to reply to comments from the backend
• added global settings for images (an addition size “Large”)
• “Inbox” (this feature is not complete so I’m not sure exactly what it is going to be officially, however I’m guessing they are adding in some sort of built-in contact form… which would make a whole lot of sense)
• QuickPress - a widget on the dashboard for quickly creating a post. (Honestly, kind of pointless, who doesn’t have time to click a link to get to the post page (there are 2 links on the page already)
• media buttons consolidated to single “Add Media” button, this may only be for development and will probably go back to the 4 original buttons)

Not ready for primetime

Right now 2.7 isn’t ready for use on a production blog, some of the features are broken or completely disabled. However, if you want to get your hands dirty and try out the software you can get the latest nightly build here (scroll to the bottom and click the “Zip Archive” link). Have fun.

I’m in the process of moving my gear over to my new bike, one big downer is that I lost a mounting point for an extra water bottle and/or air pump. The air pump I had to get has a horrible mount, we’ll see if it manages to hold on to the frame very long. As a bonus I now have a bike to loan out to anyone who would like to tag along on the trail some weekend.

Examples

• www.ebay.com
• www.google.com
• www.justingable.com

Purpose

In the simplest explanation possible; a domain name represents a specific place (directory) somewhere in the vast network of computer servers, what we web professionals like to call the “internet”, with an easily memorable name. If we didn’t have them we’d have to remember web addresses such as http://74.125.19.147/ if we ever wanted to visit Google.

Dot Whatever

Those little letters that appear at the end of a domain after the “.” (com, net, org) are called Top-Level Domains (TLD). Each one has it’s own reason for existance; the 3 most common are:

• com: (Commercial) officially intended to designate commercial entities
• org: (Organization) mostly associated with churches, charities and other non-profits
• net: (Network) intended to be used only for the computers of network providers

Of course anyone can buy a domain name with either of these extensions, and these “rules” I listed are generally not followed. When buying your own domain, however, get a .com if at all possible, it’s the one that most people will assume is your TLD when entering in your address.

What’s in a name?

• it must contain 3 to 63 characters
• it can contain the letters a-z as well as numbers 0-9
• it can contain a hyphen (-) but it cannot start or end with one
• it cannot contain spaces or any other special characters

Where to buy

There are many places that will sell you domain names, some will try and entice you with $1 domains or even free… DO NOT FALL FOR THIS! Usually they want you to sign up for their hosting service before they “give you” the domain name of your choice. But wait there’s more! That domain you were just “given”, you don’t own it, the people you bought it through do. So, when you go to change hosts for whatever reason, they will most likely not give you the domain name back.

It is best to buy through a 3^rd party and there are two that I recommend, GoDaddy (you know, the ones that run all the ads during the Super Bowl with the skanky women) and NetworkSolutions. Both offer nice controls to manage all your domain names and have excellent customer service. GoDaddy is who I use and they’re the ones I’m going to walk you through buying your own domain name.

The Walk-thru

 
Buying a domain name on Godaddy.com from Justin Gable

Wrapping up and looking ahead

Hopefully I’ve helped clear the air around getting your own domain name. However, if there is something you feel I left out or something I went over needs some more elaboration, leave me a comment.

In the next tutorial I’m going to show you how to purchase your own hosting and setup your domain name to point to your shiny new server space.

The office is on the 3rd floor of a historical downtown building, the Hotel Virginia (built in 1920), that has recently been completely renovated and turned into loft style office spaces. Exposed brick walls, polished concrete floors and views over the city - the space exudes creativity.

Since we just signed the lease, the drywall and final pieces haven’t been put in, but we’re supposed to be able to move in at the beginning of September. We have to send over paint samples to the developer within the next couple days as well as marking off where we want our power/phone/data outlets. We also have a trip to IKEA planned for later this month.

Our one year anniversary of being in business is coming up next month (September 3rd) and getting an office by this time was one of our original goals when we started out. Thankfully this feels more like a natural progression that isn’t being forced. Element really has been doing well and I can’t wait to see where we are next year.