Archive for Blogging
Enjoying WordPress 2.7 Almost Beta
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve been running my various sites and our latest demo site on the nightly builds of WordPress 2.7 to get used to 2.7 to field the myriad of questions that are sure to come my way when the upgrade goes final. It looks like it is almost time to start recording my video tutorials for basic WP usage, but I think I’ll hold off for a full beta/release-candidate version in case any visuals or layout items change.
Here’s my take on 2.7 so far, including some nice screenshots. This was written with 2.7-almost-beta-9300, by the way, so we’ll see if I encounter any problems.
My initial impression was a simple, “whoa… that’s different!” Of course, Matt has been saying that the update is, in large part, for improving navigation and usability by eliminating unnecessary clicking to get to the screens you need. We are far too familiar with waiting for the Design page to load and then clicking Theme Editor to get anything done.
They have accomplished this massive improvement by creating a vertical menu on the left side that can either be represented by icons or words that collapse and expand to display the dashboard link without refreshing the dashboard. You can even hover over the menu and still right-click or command-click to open the page in a new tab or window.
Did you ever think the main dashboard page was too busy? You can hide areas with a Page Options link at the top to display the minimum items that you want. I didn’t notice any compatibility issues with my myriad of plugins, though I did discover one popular slideshow plugin had problems, but I’ve notified the author of that.
UPDATE: Since I began writing this post, WP 2.6.3 released.
Last Site Design Until Flexx Architect
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This is my last re-design until our long-anticipated uber-theme, Flexx Architect, is released. I’m busy working on the demo site’s content and ensuring that it will showcase all of its features, include tutorials linked right in there. If you would like to get a chance at Flexx Architect before anyone else, you have to purchase the 2008 Theme Club, and the individual price of our Flexx themes will be a significant portion of the Club price.
My goals for Flexx Architect as the Customer Service Manager are:
- Anticipate customer questions
- Anticipate customer requests
- Showcase images, galleries, headings, and HTML styles
- Incorporate monetization as an oft-requested feature
- Develop more tutorials for this theme than any I have before (>14)
For any of you who missed the big announcement, here is what Flexx Architect is all about: The Best Premium Theme by iThemes Yet!
New Sports Team Theme Available
Posted by: | CommentsOne day, my mind wouldn’t stop working in overdrive. You know those days; just sitting there working on something and the ideas for a million other things won’t stop. I had one of those moments of brilliance and just HAD to e-mail my boss, Cory, about what popped in my head:
I went to bed last night and had such a good idea (IMHO) that I got back up and wrote it down: iSports - a theme for junior sports leagues and those local professional teams.
He replied in the morning that our project manager/designer, James Dalman, had already talked to him about doing that for his son’s football team. They were full-bore on the idea at that point.
Looking back, that was August 30th, so here we are one month later with an AWESOME theme for all the Pop Warner football and Little League baseball, and local soccer teams out there, all easily able to be set up with WordPress. I’ve already produced 13 video tutorials for walkthroughs to getting iTeam set up on your site, and there are a few more on the way.
The last little gravy we added, in addition to our normal arsenal of easy-to-use themes, is an image cross-fader for that home page’s feature image. All you do is add the images using our custom interface (so easy your kids can do it themselves), and choose the display options. Here is a run-down of the rest of the features:
- Post Game Video On Your Website – Upload your sports video to YouTube or Vimeo and insert it directly into the iTeam home page through our iTeam Dashboard options page
- Upload Your Team’s Logo – Our image uploader feature allows you to personalize your site with your own logo
- Showcase Sports Photos Easily – iTeam comes with a random image script that allows you to display multiple photos on your home page; plus we’ve got a Flickr photo gallery installed as well
- Post Live Games Updates – Using Twitter.com and iTeam, you can easily post live game updates to your team’s website
Download iTeam here when it releases on Monday, October 6th, 2008.
Brian Gardner and Revolution Goes Open Source
Posted by: | CommentsI was shocked this morning, as many in the premium WordPress theme community when Brian Gardner posted an announcement that he will be making Revolution themes Open Source under the GPL License. His new business model consists of teaming up with Jason Schuller from WP Elements to offer new themes for free and offering paid support and training packages.
It’s a bold move; daring, but possibly brilliant before its time. Only November 1st will tell.
http://www.briangardner.com/blog/revolution-going-open-source.htm
