I, Shane › Shane Adams’ personal weblog

So, I’ve been on WordPress since January of 2006. I previously used Blogger, which was nice for a hosted solution (but I wouldn’t pick it today…I’d use WordPress.com) and then when I moved to my own domain, I used WordPress.

Last weekend, I upgraded my WordPress installation to the newly-released 2.5, which represented a complete overhaul of the administrative interface, designed by the fine folks at Happy Cog. There have been a ton of reviews. I’m not going to recount all of them, I’ll just share my experience.

The actual upgrade was easy (as usual).

WordPress is notorious for their 5-minute install or upgrade. I thought there might be a more extensive upgrade process than in the past since 2.5 actually changed some of the MySQL database tables, but it was extremely easy.

The admin interface is clean (but everything is really big).

I’m not sure about how Happy Cog chose to align the grid. I love the new comment bubbles, but getting used to a whole new admin interface is a little weird. I wish there were some tutorials on customizing the interface (there are, but I’m too lazy to look extensively for them), but one thing I’ve always disliked is the Dashboard. I like that I can customize it now with the feeds that I want to see.

I like the fullscreen writing feature, but the default fonts are a little big for my tastes. I’m tempted to go into the CSS for the admin, but I’m scared of it. I don’t want to mess with Stan’s code. I do like that the default font is now Lucida Grande…that I like. Much better typography.

My custom theme held up pretty well.

I’m very happy that my custom theme didn’t break, although one of the plugins I’ve used since the beginning doesn’t work in the sidebar anymore. (If you’re wondering, it was the plugin that showed the recently added comments.) It’s not surprising that it broke the plugin because it was originally written back at the tail end of 2006. For now, that little feature has gone away. I’m not nearly smart enough to write that plugin. Would love for someone to fix it though.

So far, it’s kind of slow.

There seems to be a bit of a lag with publishing posts and loading admin pages. Are any readers out there having speed issues? Maybe it’s just on the admin side…

Anyway, that’s my review. I really like the look of the interface, but it will take some getting used to. I realize that much of what I’m referring to has nothing to do with the readers, but for those that run WordPress, you’ll know what I’m talking about if you decide to upgrade. I know that The D has been experimenting with it and I haven’t seen any profanity-laced WordPress posts from him, so that’s always good.

I’m looking forward to installing the newest version of the best blogging software in the world. One huge area that I’m looking forward to seeing is the new Happy Cog-redesigned administrative view. The preliminary screenshots I’ve seen look great and I’ve always felt that this was a place that Wordpress could really improve.

I imagine that upgrading could potentially break my theme, so I’ll wait until I have some time to troubleshoot, but it will be fun to play around with. What may end up happening is if I have enough fun with it, I’ll end up rocking another re-design of this blog. But work will have to calm down, both 8-5 and 7-11.

You’ll just have to wait and see…

There’s an outside chance I’m going to redesign the old blog again this summer. The darkness is good and good for the environment and all, but I’m thinking we might need to be a little sunnier.

I am now taking suggestions on colors, but they must be given in HEX value.

I’ve been having some Wordpress/GoDaddy issues on the administration side of this site. If you’ve submitted a comment previously and it has been slow to be approved, I have now remedied the situation. I was not receiving notifications of comments (for some weird reason that I still don’t understand). As far as I can tell, it boiled down to the php_mailer function in Wordpress not being supported by GoDaddy hosting, at least in this release.

I found a fantastic plugin that sends notification e-mails using SMTP instead of PHPMail.

Sweet.

Don’t forget about my pledge to not eat red meat. Help me buy a cow from Heifer International.

While most of you read my blog through the tasty RSS feed, there are still a few out there that prefer it in all its beauty in a browser. Those of you who go to the site are in for a treat.

I’ve been wanting to create my own Wordpress theme for a long time, but I’ve always been terrified of breaking the three years of blogging backlog I’ve got, so I never tackled it. Then Travis recently took a crack at it and he said it was easy. Now, granted, he is a genius. However, I was intrigued and I’ve been wanting to customize my site ever since. I am, after all, a web designer by trade.

So I mocked up what I liked in Photoshop and coded the XHTML. Then, I used an existing theme to try and figure out the nuances of Wordpress and PHP. I managed to figure most of it out and for the last 6 or 8 hours have been working diligently to get it up and running.

There’s no doubt that it’s buggy and I’ve missed plenty of stuff, but for now…it works.

As for the pink - you’ll notice that the design is rather dark…the only color coming from splashes of pink. I’ve decided that to raise awareness for Breast Cancer Awareness month. In addition, the darkness of the site is actually BETTER for the environment because monitors do not have to work as hard to display black. So in “going pink”, I’m also “going green”.

I’m planning on putting in a CSS switcher that will allow you to customize your colors to an extent, but that’s down the road. For now, I must say I’m pretty proud of myself for not breaking it. Sure there will be growing pains, but the fact that I managed to create a widget-ready theme in a night…well, that just makes my header all the more true.

Textpattern Solutions: PHP-Based Content Management Made Easy
by Kevin Potts, Robert Sable, Nathan Smith, Cody Lindley, and Mary Fredborg

OK, so I’ve totally already blogged about this, but it is definitely worth mentioning again, especially considering that now I’ve actually read the book. (Now, maybe Kevin will send me a copy of his new one…)

I imagine that most of my readers know this, but for those of you that don’t - I am a web designer. My actual title at my real job is Marketing Specialist, but I have a pretty heavy interactive background and have been working for the last few years to really improve my XHTML and CSS ninja-ry.

While this blog uses Wordpress, I have previously used Google’s Blogger and done hand-coding for various web projects. Content management was always a concept that was kind of foreign to me. I understood the concept, but I really didn’t have a lot of idea of how it would ever be applicable to the projects I worked on - mostly small sites with less than 10 pages of static content.

As I’ve gotten older and wiser, I am becoming more aware of the need for products like Textpattern, an open-source CMS that is much more flexible and powerful than typical blogging platforms like Wordpress and Moveable Type. In fact, I’ve found the perfect project to test my theory.

For several years, I’ve felt that our church’s website has been lacking in functionality. I’ve wanted to re-do it, but I’m not exactly wanting to take all of the responsibility for content creation. So, to me, it seemed like this would be a perfect time to test out Textpattern. As I’ve read through Textpattern Solutions, I’ve found that it is going to do exactly what I want it to do.

The biggest benefit that Textpattern has over other CMS products in my opinion is the ease with which there is customization. Textpattern’s tag system is built on PHP, but you don’t need to know PHP. In fact, it is more similar to XHTML in structure, which makes it really appealing to someone like me who fears PHP somewhat. (It’s all the questions marks…they just seem scary.

Anyway, so I am planning on setting off on the process of building my church a new website this weekend. Textpattern Solutions has been an invaluable resource in my planning and I will lean on it heavily while I work on the site. It will be a long process, but it’s one that I’m not afraid when I have a tool like this - it’s something that I’m looking forward to accomplishing.

And who knows…maybe eventually I will get around to building my own site using Textpattern. We’ll see.

Textpattern Solutions: PHP-Based Content Management Made Easy (Solutions)
by Kevin Potts, Robert Sable, Nathan Smith, Cody Lindley, and Mary Fredborg

I’ve been meaning to announce this book for a while, but never got around to it. (There was that whole thing where I was in France and Italy for a few weeks.)

Anyway, one of my former co-workers (and a great friend), Kevin Potts - purveyor of graphic design genius at graphicPUSH - has published a book on his CMS of choice, Textpattern. Textpattern is “a flexible, elegant and easy-to-use content management system… both free and open source.”

While I haven’t had a chance to read it cover-to-cover yet, you can be assured that it is chock full of useful tips, information and other nuggets for everyone from basic to more advanced users of the internets. As I am considering using a deployment of Textpattern for an upcoming overhaul of my corporate website, I am looking forward to exploring this book in much more detail.

For more information on the book, visit the book’s website.

OK, so I heard something that bummed me out. The current design of this site does not work in IE 7. BLECH.

So, I’m going to be doing some tweaking. Bear with me. I doubt it will be anytime soon before I jump into creating an actual theme like the one in my previous post, but we’ll see.

Did you know that the translation of Beck’s title track from his last album is “What’s up honky?” At least that’s something I heard.

So…save a couple of random posts here and there over the last couple months, I’ve been absent from this here blog. I’ve been anxious to talk about lots of things, but I’m running into a couple problems.

1. I can’t figure out where to start
2. I can’t figure out what to leave out
3. I can’t find the time

As far as #3 goes…I have time this evening. I’ve been playing around on my computer with a new design for my blog…maybe I’ll start there. Check it out and let me know what you think.

OK, so that accomplishes #1 above. After looking at it a little closer, I recognize that it has some similarity to graphicPUSH, a deisgn blog that I admire very much…it wasn’t intentional, but you’ll see the similarity a little, I think.

Once I decide to make the switch, I’ll have to learn how to create a theme in Wordpress. That will be an interesting exercise, I think.

I’m about 2 weeks away from 3 months at my new job and I’m really starting to hit my stride. The other day, my boss complimented me on something I said in a meeting. He said, “I really was impressed by your understanding of the business when you said that.” Maybe not a direct quote, but that was pretty close. Anyway, that made me feel good and like I am contributing…something I certainly didn’t always feel at my last position.

So that is good.

I love my new home office. It is so awesome to have a great space at home to work in. I don’t have any pictures uploaded yet that have it with everything in it, but this should give you some idea:

That is also good.

February has not been the best month for Alli and me health-wise. I went to the hospital last week with chest pains - fortunately it was only Costochondritis, an inflammation of the cartilage that connects the ribs and sternum. That wasn’t fun, but it did impress me how quickly I was attended to by the ER doctors when I mentioned I was having chest pains. The following day, Alli spent another few hours at the ER with her sister and then unsurprisingly, caught what her sister had. She is just now getting over it. Unfortunately, she had to miss the church retreat last weekend where her dad was the guest minister. He did a great job and I know that the congregation was very appreciative.

I’ve been speaking out in the Mission Center quite a bit these day and it is certainly taxing. I’ll be off to Leavenworth this Sunday and next month, I’ll be taking a 2-hour trek to Holton, Kansas. I’ve certainly seen a lot of Kansas since I joined the ranks of traveling speakers, but I like it. Alli is always willing to go with me too, which is great.

I have lots more to say, but for now, I’ll sign off. I know that only, like, 5 people read this…I hope I didn’t lose you.