Chrisdigital's Blog

SASS + Codekit + WordPress Theming

Chrisdigital — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 21:53:38 +0000

Recently I decided to revisit my interest in using SASS as a component of my WordPress theme development skillset. I began this process by looking around at my WordPress starter theme options that utilized a CSS preprocessor as part of its workflow. I briefly considered using "Bones" before eventually settling on "Reverie" (which is actually a Framework not a starter theme.) I have a specific use case in mind for the themes I'm building and I concluded Reverie stood out for its simplicity and would play nice with Gravity Forms and mobile templates after some rudimentary testing...

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Customizing the WordPress Admin : WPNYC Meetup Recap

Chrisdigital — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 22:53:08 +0000

Last Tuesday, on a drizzly February night, several scores of intrepid WordPress fans came out to the latest WordPress NYC meetup, “Customizing the WordPress Admin” hosted at New Work City. I have been rather busy in recent months and I found this latest subject rather serendipitous. Why you ask?… well, you may recall that last Summer’s WordCamp New York Meetup was jam-packed with good information and as an attendee, I couldn’t experience all of it. Needless to say, choosing which seminars to attend seemed like a series of terrible sacrifices. But, I was happy to learn that Helen Hou-Sandí (Director of User Interface Engineering at 10up) was doing a reprise of her talk that I missed last June...

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My WordCamp NYC 2012 Recap : 800 WordPress fans assemble

Chrisdigital — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 15:51:02 +0000

Well, it was that time of year again. The time when people's thoughts turn to warmer weather, cool drinks, blockbuster summer movies, and ofcourse how to improve their WordPress skills. Maybe that last one is just me... or not. Recently, (during WordCamp New York City : June 9th - 10th) WordPress themers, pro bloggers, development rockstars, and newbies thirsty for knowledge got a chance to assemble from all over the world much like Marvel's Avengers to rub elbows with Wordpress core developers (and more importantly each other) in the spirit of learning.

Since I had such a positive experience in 2010, and due to the fact New York took a collective hiatus in 2011, I was looking forward to another wonderful event this time around after all the anticipation...

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The Importance of Social Media and Your Online Persona

Chrisdigital — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 16:39:47 +0000

This month of June got quite the kick off, as my friend Robin Miles asked me to head down to the Jacob Javitz Convention Center to participate in a speaking panel. This panel was a feature for a crowd of audiobook narrators as part of the annual Audio Publishers Association/Book Expo America event titled "The State of Audio Book Narration." As she elaborated on the details, she felt the discussion needed an added "interactive" twist. That's where I came in. The panel already had a noted list of industry professionals booked (listed in full post) and since she had particular concerns about social media, mainly that her members could benefit from some of the "geekery" floating around in my head relating to Social Media...

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Responsive Design: WordPress NYC Meetup Recap

Chrisdigital — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:56:01 +0000

To say "responsive design" is a hot topic right now is an understatement. As proof, just google it, and you'll find great resources and articles about it online. In addition, as it relates to this specific meetup (agenda listed on that page) - I was one of 60+ people that were on a waiting list for this CBS Local venue that holds 120 and I was lucky to get in. The WPNYC community definitely wanted to hear what the speakers had to say. Sonja Liex (link to slides provided), and Jack Reichert (link to slides provided) were game and I thought they gave a great overview of the issues developers face with the explosive growth of web-enabled devices...

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NYC Tech Startup Tour Meetup Recap: ideeli and Skillshare

Chrisdigital — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 21:38:19 +0000

A little luck shined on me a while back on February 16th, when I was contacted by the organizer of the "NYC Tech Startup Tour Meetup: For Curious Developers" via a Linkedin message. It seems she was just starting up the group and was trying to gather the founding membership for the fledgling idea and offered me an invitation. I read over her concept and joined up thinking it was a great idea. The prospect of meeting some new people in the context of learning how they run their businesses was intriguing, and I was very curious what they would present to a room full of visitors...

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Intro to WordPress Plugin Development : NYC Meetup Recap

Chrisdigital — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:03:02 +0000

After missing a few Wordpress meetups I really wanted to attend, I made time this week to head out to the Wordpress Meetup NYC at it's new location hosted at NYU Poly, and I made sure I RSVP’ed to get a slot. Especially, since in this edition the topic was a hot one, Brad Williams of WebDevStudios presented Intro to WordPress Plugin Development. Brad coincidentally runs the Philly Wordpress meetup and if this presentation was any indication it’s also definitely worth attending on a regular basis as well. Read my recap and check out the bullet points I walked away with...

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Mobile computing is full of action, rapid change, opportunity

Chrisdigital — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:40:27 +0000

Developers these days are finding themselves trying to reach a growing mobile computing audience and it may be their greatest challenge to date. Today's Web browser is a pretty well known commodity on the Internet, but "traditional" Web browsing is no longer the primary game in town, and hasn't been for a while. Taking a peek at any Website's traffic logs will quickly outline new masses of users seeking out text, video and multimedia content using new and different tools such as the iPhone. Devices such as mobile smart phones, laptops, netbooks and the growing popularity of tablet computers (like the iPad) in the consumer market are forcing today's developers to widen their project scope. More and more questions are asked like,"How will my site look on a mobile phone?" or "How will my application behave when accessed by a handheld device?"...

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Looking behind the curtain of WordPress 3.0

Chrisdigital — Wed, 19 May 2010 17:49:55 +0000

I went to my first Wordpress NYC Meetup yesterday, and I was pretty excited about it. It was serendipity that my work load started to ease up when this meetup was scheduled, and I wanted to hear directly from others what they were up to with Wordpress. Since I've had my head down the last few months fine tuning this blog, I also wanted to know about issues I might run into down the line with the pending release of Wordpress 3.0 coming later this year. At the time of this writing it's currently in its second beta and a lot is still in flux. This topic was a hot one and it was reported 94 souls braved the rain and schlepped it to mid-town NYC to get some insight into what's coming next for Wordpress fans....

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Free SEO tools to fine tune your Website

Chrisdigital — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:36:06 +0000

Now that I've launched the Digital Designer blog, I've been looking for guidance on what my intrepid visitors are up to when they get here. In addition, I wanted to make sure I was keyword optimizing my pages to attract the right type of visitors from Google and other search engines. There I was, with a lot of questions and in need of serious feedback on my SEO - hoping my visitors are getting good use out of my content. Off I went, venturing out on the Interwebs to find some free SEO tools to help me answer my questions and improve my search engine rankings.

If you're in a similar situation, hopefully you were smart enough to use a SEO optimized theme for your CMS or blog. If you didn't, you should switch to one...

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