AJ MorrisTag: WP | AJ Morris

Twenty Ten: A Walkthrough

AJ Morris — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:10:45 +0000

Continuing on our WordPress 3.0 journey, today we’re taking a look at the new default theme, Twenty Ten. It’s replacing Kubrick, a theme that has been installed with WordPress since 2005. I didn’t go in as deep of depth as I would have like, for instance, I didn’t mention in the screencast that it is coded in HTML5. I also didn’t mention that the navigation has drop-downs already builtin. Either way, the screencast does talk about some pretty good features of Twenty Ten and I think you’ll find it enjoyable.

Please stay tuned for next week when we take a look at creating a child theme. And don’t forget, if there’s something you’d like to know more about, please comment below.

WordPress 3.0 has been Released!

AJ Morris — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:14:20 +0000

A big congratulations goes to every developer out there that has coded, documented, screencasted, and so much more for the release of WordPress 3.0! I was planning on doing an overview video of some of the features I covered in a previous article, but I took a look at the one that Automattic did and have to say it’s so good, that I couldn’t have done better. Check out the intro video for WordPress 3.0 below.

[wpvideo BQtfIEY1]

Now if you haven’t already went and updated your WordPress install, you should go do it now!

Covering WordPress 3.0 Features

AJ Morris — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:30:52 +0000

In my last post I had a brief overview of some features from WordPress 3.0. I’m currently working on about 5 to 6 screencasts to cover them, but unfortunately I do not have one done today. Instead I thought I’d ask you if you’ve played with WordPress 3.0 (It went into RC3 last Friday, June 11th) and what features you were looking forward to. Is there any specific feature you’d like me to cover in greater detail? I’m planning on covering Menus, Custom Post Types, Author Templates, WP and WPMu code merge (and how to setup a local dev environment). If there’s something else you’d like to see me cover, let me know now so I can start planning it out.

What’s next? Well after I finish this series on WordPress 3.0, I’ve got a few ideas, but would love to hear from you. Do you want me to continue on WordPress for awhile or move onto something else? Let me know in the comments below!

Goal of 3 Posts Per Week

AJ Morris — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 15:30:54 +0000

When I decided to relaunch this blog I knew that just a new redesign wasn’t going to bring people back. I needed to do something else. That being said I decided that I was going to give myself a goal of X number of posts per week. The way I am going to accomplish this goal is by scheduling them in advance. It’s one of the few features I’ve only played with in WordPress and not really used for my own blog.

After using it for a few days now, I have to say that I’m really impressed with it. I can get together a schedule of posts I want on here and start working on them and then just schedule a date for when they get published. And it works beautifully!! I can say without a doubt that this feature I’m going to be using a lot! I don’t have to wait around till the night before I want something posted. I can load up a queue of posts and then not have to worry about getting content up here. That my friends is a great thing!

I’ve got some screencasts I’ve been working on and they will be posted next week. In the meantime, if you are into WordPress as much as I am, you might want to check out some of the posts below. They talk about the new features of 3.0. They helped me get this blog started and I think they will help you too.

Relaunch 2.0 is a Go!

AJ Morris — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 07:00:06 +0000

I’m pleased to be relaunching this site today, especially on my birthday! I decided to hold off another week so that I could get a few more posts done, and a few more little things working right with this blog. I am pretty happy with the results of waiting for a week.

Over the past few months I’ve been working hard to relaunch this site and get a few other ones ready to launch over the next few weeks. This site is just the start! Getting designs finished, doing all the tweaking that needs to get done, let alone get all the content ready.

All these sites will be running on the WordPress platform, and all on one install of WP 3.0. Being able to run them all on a couple of servers and having the same administration login for all should make it easier to manage them. I think one of the best features with WP 3.0 is the fact that they merged WP and WPmu together. It makes it a lot easier for people that have multiple sites to manage them.

Now I’m sure a few of your are thinking, but wait AJ you’re a rails developer…That’s right, I am a Ruby developer. Well the reason I chose WordPress as the platform is that it just works. I don’t have to muck around with security, logins, blogs, taxonomy, pages, etc. All I had to do was some design work (or farm parts of it out. ) and create or use a few plugins. The development time was pretty quick. Also, I believe that you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel just to get something out there when another product out there. Besides there’s lots of Rails/Ruby developers out there that rock WordPress backed blogs!

This theme was designed as a child theme to the new default theme, TwentyTen. I wanted to play around with creating my first child theme as well as test out the new Google Fonts API. We’ll see how long I keep all these Google Fonts! So please take a look around, provide any feedback you have for me in the comments, and I’ll be back soon with more goodies!!