December 30th, 2010

WordPress Security Update

As you may or may not know – WordPress released a critical security update yesterday. It’s important to run this upgrade as soon as possible. If you’re not sure what you need to do to upgrade, the best way to do it (and this goes for anytime you upgrade your WordPress install) is to first download a backup of your files (theme files, plugins, etc.), make a backup of your database (I personally like using the “wp-db-backup” plugin which allows you to do this right from within the WordPress admin) – then use the “one-click” upgrade WordPress offers.

If you’re worried about doing this yourself, get in touch with me.

December 22nd, 2010

Freebie Plugin Released: Download Post Comments

I’ve recently released a very simple WordPress plugin that will allow you to download all comments on a particular post as a CSV. The purpose of this plugin was to help bloggers who run contests on their blogs and use the comments section to collect entries into the contest. If you get a large number of comments/entries, and you’re using something like “random.org” to pick the winning comment “number” – it can be hard to determine which comment that number represents. By downloading all the comments as a CSV, you can then open it with Microsoft Excel, and see very clearly (via row number) which comment is the winner. The plugin is being hosted on the WordPress.org plugin repository, and if you’d like to use it on your site, you can download it here: Download Post Comments.

December 15th, 2010

Happy Holidays

We’ve been “between homes” for nearly two months now and we’re finally on the home stretch. Literally. One more week and we get our new home, and I will finally have a permanent address to give out. That will be a wonderful holiday gift for my whole family! We’re even hosting a New Years Eve party with my extended family that live nearby. (They all understand, thankfully, that the house will still not be unpacked. Maybe I should include “unpacking boxes” as one of the “party activities.”) 😉

There’s been a few projects I’ve done recently that have been really enjoyable for me, and I can’t wait until they finally launch. What I’ve most appreciated with one in particular, is the fact that we were able to use some of WordPress’ newer features in really unique ways. I’m using custom post types, with some home-grown custom plugins to manage membership and paypal interaction. It’s going to be a great site.

Have a wonderful holiday! See you in 2011!

October 10th, 2010

California Here We Come!

So much has happened in the last month and a half, it literally makes me dizzy. My family and I have decided to move to California to be closer to family. We were expecting a long wait to sell our house, but instead, we ended up selling it in two days. As well, our buyers need to move in ASAP, so we are packing like crazy to get out of town.

I do have a temporary address for where we’ll be staying if you need to snail-mail me anything. Please contact me using the form on this website if you need it. If you already have my email address, that will not be changing, of course. As well, we’re doing everything on the “off hours” so business will still continue as usual.

We’re all very excited about this and looking forward to our move! See you on the sunny side!

August 28th, 2010

WordCamp Utah 2010 Presentation

Just finished up my presentation at WordCamp Utah about an hour ago, and as promised here are the slides from my presentation. (I apologize for the size – 11MB – shrinking it down really hurt the resolution of my screenshots so I’m leaving it as is) If you attended, please fill out the contact form. I’d love your feedback (good and bad!) and I’d love for you to introduce yourself as well.

Updated to add: Looks like you can view the slides via Google Docs here.

July 30th, 2010

WordCamp Utah 2010

I’m proud to announce that I’ll be speaking at WordCamp Utah 2010. My session will be about using WordPress as a CMS – I’ll be referencing various projects where I have done so and explain how and what I did. Registration is now open, so I hope you’ll be attending too. I’m still putting my presentation together and would love to know what questions you have on this topic that you hope would be answered.

June 21st, 2010

All WordPress Sites Are Not The Same

I had a meeting with a client the other day about a new site I would be developing for her using WordPress. One of the concerns she expressed to me was that she wanted to make sure it was “not going to look like a WordPress site.” I’ve heard many clients express a similar concern before I start working on the project. If you haven’t ever had a custom template designed and coded for you, and your only knowledge of WordPress comes from looking at blogs, then you are probably not aware how much WordPress can be customized.
Read the rest of this entry »