WordPress

The First Week

Well I made it through the first week working at DigiMedia and I gotta say, I loved it. It is a bit of a big change from freelancing from home but I was expecting that. I love having to go to work each day and being around other developers and designers and working on larger projects. I spent most of this week in Photoshop cranking out graphics. The rest of the time was spent finishing a WordPress project that was already started. Fixing errors, setting up some new plugins, and other things of that nature. I got a crash course on their Ad Manager which is just massive and look forward to messing with it more and ending up giving a quick class on WordPress to some retail people. Overall it was a pretty good week and I think I will enjoy working there. Another plus with the new job is having to learn Ruby. As you know, I’ve wanted to for awhile but client work always got in the way. However, with most of the work at DigiMedia being done in Ruby this gives me a chance to finally learn it. I have some books that I’m going through and several people I can turn to for help if needed.

Besides starting the new job this month we will also be moving in the coming weeks. We are still debating on a house or apartment, either way we plan to rent. Between me just starting the new job and Melissa planning to change from online classes at Uni of Phoenix Online to local classes here at Midwestern State University for nursing starting in January we just aren’t sure what would be better for us. Either way it will only be for 2-3 years.

I am also attempting to finish my redesign. I posted a screen of it on flickr awhile back and got lots of great feedback. I have started coding it to WordPress and just about done with the main page but still have several things to do. The problem is client work is on top of my list right now and taking up most of my evenings and weekends so I’m having to make time for my projects which right now there just isn’t enough of. I would like to have it done by the end of the month. As next month is full as well between getting settled into the new place and taking a mini-vacation to Kansas to see Melissa’s grandparents.

Game Night

Had my Grandma, mom and brother over for dinner and some games. Started off teaching them Rock Band. Went pretty good. My Grandma doesn’t have the reaction time to see the notes and play them (drums or bass) but she did pretty good. My mom also did okay on vocals and bass. We only got kicked off stage a few times at first. Overall it was fun. After that we did a little ‘Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader’ DVD which is pretty fun. I think the game is basically a chance to show you that the things you learn in school you never remember or use unless of course you buy this dvd. My teachers in 5th grade didn’t tell me I would have to wait so many years just to put this knowledge to use for a dvd game. Anyways, it ended up being a pretty good night. We had not seen or talked to my mom in about 6 months due to some problems and arguments. Not sure if things are patched but a start. Looking forward to the weekend and working on my redesign. Still doing css on it but have started a little moving it to WordPress. Had a few problems but plan to attack them this weekend. Still no plans to put it up until February though. My goal is February 4th.

Custom WP Login

I have been looking for an easy way to customize the WordPress login page for clients. I thought about hardcoding it but that would just be a problem when updating the WordPress core. I searched around a little and didn’t find anything I could use but today MattBrett posted a screenshot of his WP login screen and a plugin that he is using. It works great. I thought I would share the site with everybody else using WordPress. You can find the plugin here. There is also a Flickr Group with other screenshots of how others are using the plugin.

Site Problems

The site had several problems today but most (if not all) were mine. I have been messing with plugins and WordPress today getting ready to finally put up my new layout (as its been delayed for weeks now). The new layout is just about finished (just messing with WP tags and plugins now) however I had some problems today which caused some sql errors and and wp errors for a few hours. Everything seems to be fixed and working (nothing was lost).

Today was spent mostly offline as we had tons of work to do around the house. We still hadn’t finished unpacking everything and needed to do some clean up. I also finally finished getting my computer setup and organizing my desk. Still have work to do but not this weekend. Tomorrow starts my first day back to client work in about two weeks and trust me the stack of work has been growing. I use activeCollab as my project management software to communicate with clients and organize work lists and after logging in yesterday to check up on some things before the week starts and found a ton of new tasks had been added (including some coding work). I might get an early start and do a little work tonight.

Its not that plain…

Is it? Maybe it is. However this is just a temp setup. Its actually a theme from PlainTxt. They are really simple WP themes. Basically a great starting place when creating your own themes. I’m currently using one called Simplr. This isn’t the one I’m currently editing but I kinda liked the simple one column layout (haven’t really used a one column design in awhile). I am working on my own design right now. Mainly getting together a color scheme and logo design. I already have the basic layout done just gotta do some styling. Coding WordPress Themes is actually a lot easier then it looks. Reading the docs on the WP site its a little much at first but the once you open another theme and start messing around its pretty simple. I know the site has been pretty slow the past 2 months as I’ve had several new clients and a ton of work however so far things are calming down so I’m going to be working on this site.

Update: I wasn’t liking the white bg and black text so I did a little styling to this theme. Its actually the colors I plan to use for my upcoming design.

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