Now, as I’m writing this, 10 of the 11 WordPress sites that I manage are running with a beautiful WooTheme, and I couldn’t be happier.

As a professional software engineer by trade, and a long-time web enthusiast, I’ve never been much of a graphic designer. Mind you, much of the code I write has been referred to as “gorgeous”, but you’re not visiting my sites to look at code, now are you?

So that fact that I can pay for a single subscription with a group of talented designers like WooThemes and have so many options to choose from for nearly all of my projects, it’s a no-brainer.

Add to that a common framework for theme options and configuration, and a consistent strategy for custom post types and other components, and you take an otherwise daunting task of managing nearly a dozen WordPress installations and make it about as pleasant as possible.

Get To The Websites

Okay, so you don’t want to hear me talk about all of this, you likely just want to see the actually websites themselves.

Especially when I say there’s 10 different sites with 10 different themes.

Well, here they are…

WooTheme: Biznizz – webnelly.com

Website: http://www.webnelly.com

WooTheme: Biznizz

webnelly.com is my primary web development portfolio site, and features just about everything I’ve done on the web and with technology in the last few years.

At least the stuff worth mentioning, anyway.

WooTheme: Fresh News – Ka’anapali Dreamin’

Website: http://www.kaanapalidreamin.com

WooTheme: Fresh News

Ka’anapali Dreamin’ was my first Maui website, and based on content, is still my largest.

It chronicles my families annual trips to Maui, and was the multi-purpose Maui blog I was running before the Maui projects really branching out into lives of their own.

WooTheme: Beveled – Kris & Cindy

Website: http://www.krisandcindy.com

WooTheme: Beveled

This started as the personal site and blog of my wife Cindy and I. That is until our son was born at the end of 2010, and he’s been center stage ever since.

Using the Portfolio system in this theme to feature photo galleries of our family over the last 2.5 years has been great, and something I see us using for many more years to come.

WooTheme: Function – Kris Nelson Photography

Website: http://www.krisnelsonphoto.com

WooTheme: Function

One of my other, often times neglected passions when not at a keyboard is photography. Taking away the same Portfolio system found in the Beveled theme for the Kris & Cindy site, my collection of images from individual photo sessions are treated well and easy to manage here, too.

WooTheme: Object – Maui by Photo

Website: http://www.mauibyphoto.com

WooTheme: Object

The Maui by Photo concept was to feature individual photo sets from different parts on the island, and invite readers to share their own stories.

While this site is next on the list as far as a full content revamp (copy and photos), the Object theme fit in nicely, and is probably the biggest layout deviation from the rest of the sites you see on this page.

WooTheme: Simplicity – Maui by Poster

Website: http://www.mauibyposter.com

WooTheme: Simplicity

The Maui by Poster site started as just a home to host support and download pages for my free Maui eBook series, but quickly turned into a full site and blog.

WooTheme: Postcard – Maui by Postcard

Website: http://www.mauibypostcard.com

WooTheme: Postcard

This was the first site to get the WooThemes treatment after friend Erik Blair recommended it after I launched the first version of my Maui Postcards App.

Thanks again, Erik, someone at WooThemes owes you a beer!

WooTheme: Statua – Maui Wall Candy

Website: http://www.mauiwallcandy.com

WooTheme: Statua

Maui Wall Candy is the home for ordering prints of my best Maui imagery for your home or office.

After being on hiatus for a number of years, it was thanks to WooThemes that I was able to get this site launched again so quickly. Otherwise, it would have been another cumbersome effort with trying to hack and customize the SmugMug Pro interface again to make it look and feel like a full site.

WooTheme: Kaboodle – Maui by Kris

Website: http://mauiby.me

WooTheme: Kaboodle

The Maui by Kris site is essentially a Maui-centered portfolio of all my projects involving our favorite island.

The Kaboodle theme worked out well as a way to organize all of my different projects and also put together a News feed using the Blog template to share excerpts and links to updates from all my other Maui sites.

WooTheme: Sealight – Food Trucks on Maui

Website: http://www.foodtrucksonmaui.com

WooTheme: Sealight

The Food Trucks on Maui site is hosted for a friend and fellow Maui blogger, Liza from A Maui Blog.

She invited me to work with her on creating the Maui Food Trucks App, and in the process, I offered to convert her then Blogger version of this site to a hosted WordPress install, and give it the WooTheme treatment as well.

There You Have It

10 sites with 10 WooThemes as promised.

I can take great pride in sharing this list of my websites with you because of how well designed and elegant they are (full design credit to WooThemes, of course).

If I think of the alternative of trying to design this many custom themes myself, or having to hunt for different themes across other designers, paying each separately and having to learn different theme customization menus and custom post types, well, you can imagine how much of a hassle that would be.

Thanks again for stopping by and thanks to WooThemes for putting out such great themes!

– Kris

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With that said, I’m listing out my current goals for the next version of the App and targeting a mid-summer release for the following updates and new feature:

• Improved support for the iPhone 5 screen size,
• Upgraded support for native Facebook integration (iOS 6+ only),
• Ability to mark images as favorites to view later,
• Support for opening photos in the App directly from Twitter Cards,
• Performance improvements for photo downloads and data updates,
• Integration support with my other Maui Apps.

I’d say that’s a pretty healthy list for a minor feature release, and it builds off of a lot of what I’ve learned while working on my last two Apps since August.

Comments, Mabye

One thing I’ve wanted to do for awhile now, but might not make it into this release, is the ability to post and read comments about each photo.

Currently on the website, I have a Facebook Comments widget that isn’t getting as much Aloha as it used to.

One option I might be looking at is how to incorporate those Comment boxes from within my App as well – that or linking to the comment threads on the posts that are syndicated to the Facebook page as well.

It never did sit well with me that there are essentially two sets of threads, one on my website and one on Facebook (despite both being powered by Facebook).

I’m sure Facebook has a reason why they must be separate, but I never bothered to look deeper.

Alternative to Facebook Comments

One other Maui App idea I’ve been tinkering would potentially use WordPress posts as source for comments, utilizing an API wrapper around the WordPress XML-RPC support.

It still needs to be proofed out, but it’s technically feasible. And it eliminates the Facebook requirement, wouldn’t require a login, and would hopefully be able to take advantage of the WordPress Akismet spam filtering, too.

More on that in a future post, I suppose

Oh, And New Photos…Finally

I probably should have put this at the top of the post.

Right now, there are about 425 photos in the Daily Maui Photo rotation. Given that the site has been up for about 4 years now, and the App for 2, there are folks that have been around long enough to repeat photos.

With all the other projects I’ve been working on, I’m starting to finally get through more and more photos from our previous trips, and getting things better organized to dive in and adding/replacing photos in the Daily Maui Photo rotation.

Hopefully that helps keep people interested longer, but if you’re in the same boat as me, any image of Maui sparks your own personal memories and then you’re mentally back on the sand before you know it.

Stay Tuned

As usual, stay tuned here for updates, and if you’re looking for a single source of all my Maui related work, check out the News page at my Maui Portfolio site.

Thanks,
– Kris

No related posts.

With photos from Instagram, for example, I’d have to tap on the link (on my iPad) and the Instagram web page would open in the in-App browser window.

Now, that’s not terrible, but with the photos uploaded directly to Twitter, or for other content like Vine, the photo opens right in the App, and closes just as fast when I move on.

As a user, I prefer the in-App approach for viewing content, although I can also relate to why Instagram wants you to see their site.

Twitter Cards for Daily Maui Photo

So, aiming for the better user experience, I decided to give the Twitter Cards support (aka Expanded Tweets) a shot with my Daily Maui Photo feed.

The great news is, following these instructions from the Twitter Developers site and the current code structure of my Daily Maui Photo website, the changes were really easy to do.

In fact, it took me all of 15 minutes to update my code. Sweet!

The Results

There were a few catches, but more on those in a second. Let’s see how they look, shall we?

First, here’s the expanded view from the Twitter feed at the twitter.com website:

And next, here’s the look from a tweet in the Twitter App for iPad:

As you can see, viewing these photos in full display without leaving your Twitter stream is much better for the user.

Now, Those Catches (or are they?)

Support for HTTPS Required?

The first catch outlined in the Twitter documentation, all assets should be provided via HTTPS as to not cause mixed content warnings when viewing at twitter.com. I later realized (after the fact) that this was a restriction for Player Cards, and I was using Photo Cards instead, so I was probably okay.

In either case, I already had an SSL cert for dailymauiphoto.com because it’s required for embedded Facebook content (like this, but a story for another day).

Cross Domain Content?

Next, reading some of the support threads related to Twitter Card support, there were some posting about their submissions being rejected because they were using images from sites other than what they were hosting their content on.

In my case, my photos were hosted on Flickr, so I wasn’t sure if that would cause my submission to be rejected.

To protect against that possibility, I added a few lines of code to download the Flickr image on demand and save it to my own folder structure at dailymauiphoto.com.

Later, I found this line again in the Twitter documentation:

All images will be fetched and proxied by Twitter to ensure a high quality of service and SSL security for users.

So now, I was wondering if the need for both HTTPS support and saving photos from Flickr to dailymauiphoto.com was really necessary if Twitter was just going to save and cache them anyway. Oh well.

The Twitter Card Approval Process

As mentioned in the Twitter documentation, the submission process is just a simple form with a test URL, but you need to allow a few weeks for review and approval.

A few weeks? And I thought the App Store review process was too long.

But in reality, and to my surprise, my submission was actually approved the next day. Sweet.

Testing, Testing, Is This Thing On?

Lastly, and probably most annoyingly, the Twitter test page for Twitter Cards (Twitter login required) wasn’t working at the time I needed to test.

It’s not that it was down, or inaccessible, it just didn’t work.

I didn’t save a screenshot, but no matter what test parameters I used (even working examples from other sites) I received a generic error message that something went wrong.

Luckily, I was confident enough in the code changes I made and my testing via View Source in Chrome, so I went ahead and submitted it to Twitter anyway.

Clicks, What about the Clicks?

Back to the Instagram decision to pull Twitter Card support, they wanted users from Twitter to go to the newly launched Instagram.com interface to allow users to interact with their photos.

In my case, I’m opting to forego the users from Twitter coming directly to my website in lieu of the better user experience, at least for now.

The only user interaction I have on the website – aside from viewing other photos from the week – is a Facebook comments box. For users coming from Twitter, there is still a good change they have a Facebook account (and are logged in) but I’m will risk it.

If anything, I’ll keep an eye on my referral stats in Google Analytics to see just how far traffic from Twitter might be dropping off, or if users still decide to click to the full site anyway.

Adding More Sites Next?

That’s an open question, at this point.

All of the other sites I have that would be candidates for Twitter Card support are running WordPress and would likely use the Summary Card format instead of the Photo Card format like Daily Maui Photo.

There are a few possible exceptions, however, for things like the portfolio items in the Maui Wall Candy gallery, for example.

In either case, the WordPress difference here is that I’d have to find (or build) a plugin to make the addition of Twitter Cards seamless to blogging itself.

I haven’t searched for any plugins yet, but I imagine there out there. If anything, should I want to enable these for custom post types, I’d have to tweak or make something myself.

But again, that’s for another day.

No related posts.

In just the few days since launch, the new App has already been downloaded over a 100 times, which is pretty exciting.

No doubt, a good portion of that interest and traffic to the App Store was attributed to fellow Maui fans and bloggers spreading the word.

While I don’t take it for granted, it never ceases to amaze me the support and the fellowship of the Hawaii and Maui social media communities, even after all these years.

It seemed like it had a lot going for it back in 2007 when I first started blogging and tweeting, yet even six years later, many of those pioneers are still going strong and now they’re surrounded by even more great folks and new channels like Instagram, Tumblr, and Vine.

Back to the App

All the good details on the App are available at the Launch Announcement link above, as well as in the Apps section here at the site.

The short recap is the Maui Wall Candy App features some of my favorite Maui images available as free and for-purchase downloads, custom sized to fit all versions of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch that can run iOS 5+.

This is my first App using In-App Purchases, and the benefit of doing so is that when a user buys an image on one device, they can automatically restore that same image on any of their other iOS devices that use the same Apple ID.

The App itself is built to be device aware, so that if you buy an image on an iPhone 5, you’ll get the custom sized 16:9 image (or rather, 9:16 in portrait mode). When you then restore that same purchase on your iPad, you get a 4:3 version of the image that looks great both in portrait and landscape orientations.

Feel free to give it a shot – the App is free and you can select one of the free images to download right away if you don’t feel like purchasing anything right away.

Just head over to AppStore.com/MauiWallCandy.

What’s Next

In the short term, my next project to near completion is the release of my upcoming 3rd Maui eBook in the Maui by Poster series.

The target release at the moment is next weekend, with the final testing on various devices and file sizes taking place this week.

The current version of this new eBook features over 60+ styled images from along the road to Hana, and many of those images will be available as prints, as wall as added to the Maui Wall Candy and the Maui Postcards Apps, too.

Be sure to stay tuned for those updates, and check out the News page at http://mauiby.me/news for all the latest Maui updates from all of the projects mentioned above.

Mahalo (thanks),
– Kris

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With the recent relaunch of the Maui Wall Candy website and upcoming App, getting everything in order meant a little housekeeping for updates going back to November of last year.

Maui Portfolio Updates

Since I launched my Maui Portfolio site back in November, I haven’t done much to update it until this weekend, when I add the following:

• Added a News section (aka blog) to share all the posts from my different Maui blogs in one location.
• Added portfolio items for the Maui Food Trucks and Maui Wall Candy Apps.
• Added portfolio item for the relaunched Maui Wall Candy site in the Prints section.

Other Portfolio Updates

In addition to the Maui Portfolio updates, those same items were also added to my full development portfolio (the one you’re reading from now), plus the following update:

• Updated the Kris Nelson Photography details with the newest website redesign this past winter.

New WooTheme Totals

As I had shared in posts last summer, the migration of my websites running on the WordPress platform over to using themes from WooThemes has been an exciting and rewarding endeavor.

With the migration of the Kris Nelson Photography site to yet another WooTheme, and the relaunch of Maui Wall Candy new with WordPress and a WooTheme, that brings the total number of my websites running WordPress to 10 (out of 12), and of those 10 WordPress sites, 9 of them are sporting a different WooTheme.

I will say this, as if managing content on 10 different WordPress sites isn’t time-consuming already, having 9 of those 10 sites using a consistent theme setup and administration options, while still maintaining distinctive designs, is a huge advantage.

If you haven’t looked into these guys yet, I strongly recommend it.

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And, as you would expect from a redesign that’s taken this long, it’s coming back bigger and better than ever.

What is Maui Wall Candy?

Although it sounds like a dessert for tourists (although, I suppose it could be), Maui Wall Candy is my online storefront for selling prints of all my favorite Maui imagery from our previous trips to the Valley Isle.

Over the years, most, if not all, of my work online featuring a Maui theme has been centered around sharing my images digitally. Whether it’s been on websites, via social media, eBooks, or in my mobile Apps, you need a screen of some sort to take in the Aloha.

With Maui Wall Candy, however, the tagline of “Aloha for your Walls” make it pretty clear that the goal is to offer a more traditional approach of enjoying the beauty of Maui in your home or at work.

What’s New this Time?

With this relaunch, the Maui Wall Candy experience will consist of three major elements:

• A full website and blog to showcase individual images and specials,
• The online storefront for ordering prints and other items – powered by SmugMug,
• And a soon to be released iPhone and iPad App that offers free and for-purchase wallpaper and other digital images for your digital life.

The New Website

The latest version of the Maui Wall Candy website still has a few things to tidy up, but it’s by no means hiding from search engines at this point.

Sticking with the WooThemes approach to my other website redesigns, the new website features many of those same elements and give it a consistent feel with my other Maui websites.

As I fill out the Gallery section with more images and links to the online storefront, the promotion and blog posts will start to follow suit.

The Online Storefront

As before, the online ordering process is all managed through my SmugMug Pro account, but this time it’s consolidated under my Kris Nelson Photography moniker.

There are still a few customizations to be made, as well as a full fresh of all the images offered, but that will be where my time is spent over the next few days.

The New App

The upcoming Maui Wall Candy App for iOS is where the majority of my recent development time has gone to the last few weeks.

I’m excited because it continues in the path of my other Maui Apps, but also raises my personal bar just a bit by offering a more elegant interface than what I’ve done before (geek speak for “it’s pretty”).

It’s also the first App I’ve created using Apple’s In-App Purchases functionality, which was a good learning experience, too.

But all you need to know is that there will soon be a super easy way to add some Aloha to your iPhone or iPad that will make you dream of Maui every time you turn it on.

At the time of this post, the App itself is current awaiting review for the App Store, but you can check out all the details in this App preview post.

Stay Tuned

I’ll have an official App announcement once the App goes live in the App Store, and then further news on the Maui Wall Candy updates on my other Maui websites.

Until then, if you’re looking for more of Maui work to-date, be sure to check out my Maui Portfolio site over at http://mauiby.me.

Mahalo!
– Kris

No related posts.

Joining my 3 previous Maui websites, 2 Maui Apps, and my free Maui eBook series, I figured it was time to create a separate Maui Portfolio to help showcase everything in one spot.

Introducing: Maui by Kris

Similar to my full development portfolio site, this one has the specialized focus of all my Maui projects.

The “Maui by” name continues with this portfolio site, which was actually something I had in mind originally when I first launched Maui by Photo back in 2009. While I don’t have any other new “Maui by” projets planned for the near future (maybe one more App next year), I do hope to build out this new portfolio site to have more screenshots and details than it does have now at launch.

For now, why not check out the new site and maybe you’ll find something new that you might not have seen from me yet.

No related posts.

This time, it’s to announce the latest two sites to get the Woo treatment: one planned, and one not originally on the radar.

Ka’anapali Dreamin’

Long overdue, my very first Maui site from ’07 picked up a new redesign using the “Fresh News” theme from WooThemes. By far my largest site based on the number of content pages and also posts/comments on the blog, this site was the first I fully designed by hand in Photoshop and assembled in Dreamweaver CS3.

Five years later, it was way passed it’s age, and although I had previously migrated it from static HTML into hybrid WordPress/static site, now (almost) everything is happily served by the WordPress engine.

Kris & Cindy

Originally not on the Woo list at first, I picked out the “Beveled” theme from WooThemes with the thoughts of making it’s Portfolio section work for me as a photo gallery. I feel it turned out nicely, but see for yourself and let me know what you think.

Previously this site was using a very slightly modified version of the stock WordPress theme, so having it showcase our growing family with a very well designed theme adds a little bit more to the happiness in our lives.

The List So Far

With these two additions, the current number of live sites I have running WooThemes is now up to 5.

To help keep track, I even added the WooTheme name for each site listed in my Portfolio.

On top of these five sites already Woo’d, I have 3 existing sites on the schedule and 2 new sites hoping to go live with it’s own WooTheme soon.

My goal right now would be to have each of these sites – 10 total – running a different WooTheme, which speaks to how large of a Theme catalog these guys have. And all for one subscription price, I have to say it’s been a great investment.

Be sure to stay tuned for the next two sites to go Woo, and a few other related announcements of things I’ve been working on lately.

Thanks,
– Kris

No related posts.

The majority of the changes in this version are behind the scenes improvements and helping with performance and fluidity of the App paging, and there were many takeaways from what I used for the Maui Postcards App that had a lot to do with that.

Next Features

Next on my App development schedule is to finish adding more social integration to the Maui Postcards App, which will in turn borrow much of that sharing code from the Daily Maui Photo App here.

After that – and aside from working on new Apps – the plan is to work on a few other new features for the Daily Maui Photo App. Including:

• Improved Facebook integration – including Likes and possibly comments, as are available on the Daily Maui Photo website today.
• A Favorites option, where you can mark photos as a Favorite and they won’t be deleted when new photos are available. Then you can browse those favorites anytime.
• iCloud support for syncing your favorites between devices (i.e. users with both an iPhone and iPad).
• Improved photo downloading and storage on the device.

The iCloud piece sounds like it would fun to implement from an experience perspective. It would require updates to the downloading and storage workflow that the App uses today, however, and the Favorites option, obviously.

There are also possible hooks into the Maui Postcards App, too, but that’s a little bit bigger change.

Next Update?

Given the list above and some of the other websites and Apps I’m working with, I hope to get at least one new version of the Daily Maui Photo App released this year, if possible.

If I end up missing that goal, but in the process release 2-3 other Apps in it’s place, I’ll still be a happy camper.

Enjoy the update,
– Kris

No related posts.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, I released a minor update to the Maui Postcards App as version v1.0.1 this past week.

You can find all the details and some of the next features in development over in the official release blog post.

If you have a suggestion or question about the App, or even Maui in general, don’t hesitate to let me know.

– Kris

Related posts:

1. Maui Postcards App for iPhone, iPad