August « 2008 « Will Goldstone

August, 2008

Design — 3 Comments
21
Aug 08

Getting Started with WordPress Development

Being an avid fan of WordPress and developing many sites in it this year, I wanted to share a few handy resources to get you started as a WordPress developer. WordPress began as a blogging platform a few years back, but has evolved into a complex, yet easy to master content manager that many competent developers choose to use over making their own sites from scratch. Its also sparked a massive open source extension community of developers making plugins, themes and modifications for it. Given that wordpress is free to use and design with, this can only be great news for you and me, so if you haven’t already discovered WordPress development, its never been a better time to get on board!

Now before you go diving in headfirst into the PHP of a template, or making your own from scratch, you may wish to [as I did when I started] begin by modifying existing templates and/or using them to get to grips with how most WordPress sites manage their content.

Getting Started

Obviously the first thing you’ll need is the latest build of wordpress to install on your server – i’ll assume you’ve bought some hosting and a domain at this point, if not, google can help with this, or I recommend buying with Dreamhost.com or Mediatemple.com. So head on over to WordPress.org – not to be confused with the ready hosted blog service WordPress.com and download the zip file of the latest version, at time of writing this is 2.6.1.

Once you’ve downloaded this and uploaded your files to a folder on your server (or into the root), you’ll need to visit your hosting backend and make a new SQL database for wordpress to fill with your site’s data, your host should be able to help you with this if it is not obvious as to how to do it. Now visit your URL and fill in the details of your SQL database and wordpress will do the rest, easy eh?

Dropping Kubrick : Get a Theme!

So now your blog is set up, you’ll want to ditch the standard style template, known as Kubrick with its blue and white dullness – lets get some individual style up in here! So to save you trawling the web for a decent template – and let me tell you there are a shit ton of poor templates out there, hell, you could be searching for hours, if not for the great guys at Smashing Apps, who have provided this cracking list of 21 Premium quality (but FREE!) themes -

http://www.smashingapps.com/2008/08/20/21-mindblowing-premium-like-free-wordpress-themes.html

Pick a theme you like, download it, and then install it by dropping the Theme’s folder (unzip it first!) into the following directory on your server -

www.example.com/wp-content/themes/

Then go to the admin section of your blog to select the theme as the one you want to use. If you haven’t spotted it yet, to login to your wordpress backend, visit -

www.example.com/wp-admin/

That’ll always get you to the login screen. Now login and go to Design > Themes, and choose the theme you just installed from the list, making sure to click ‘Activate’.

Other useful resources for free wordpress themes -

Bust-a-Theme

Free WP Themes

Theme Lab

Extending WordPress : The World of Plugins

Now there are many additional features being added by the WordPress team with each new point release but some people just can’t wait that long and provide additional functionality by making their own plugins – this is great news for us developers because if there’s anything you want your wordpress site to do, you can pretty much guarantee someone else has already thought of this by now, and made a plugin that’ll do the job for you.

Your first port of call is always the plugin directory on WordPress.org/extend/plugins, as this lists currently available plugins and their compatibility with versions of WordPress – you should always assume that if a plugin isn’t listed on WordPress.org, either its out of date, or simply not very good. Always double check if you find a plugin elsewhere, that it is compliant with WordPress version 2+ as things have changed so much since version 2 its not worth getting plugins that haven’t been updated since.

Once you’ve found a plugin that seems to do what you want, time to try it out. Download it and drop it into -

www.example.com/wp-content/plugins/

Then in your wordpress admin backend, go to Plugins in the top right and then activate the plugin you just uploaded. Some plugins will build in their functionality automatically, whereas others will give you a piece of PHP code you’ll need to drop into your template, often in single.php [the file which handles displaying full length posts] to make them work.

For example, Sociable – a free plugin that adds social networking buttons to your posts, allows you to either use the wordpress backend menu, or drop code in where you’d like buttons to share your post to appear. You’ll see these buttons at the bottom of this article, where is says ‘Share And Enjoy’ – thats the sociable plugin at work.

Other useful plug-in sites -

Mashable’s List of Social Plugins

Blogjoint’s List of useful Plugins

That should be enough to get you started for now, If you’ve got any further queries on developing with WordPress, either drop me an email, or sign up for the forums on wordpress.org.

Music — No Comments
20
Aug 08

Brighton Funk Jam

Got together at the weekend with my mates from way back, hit up some funk jammage in Scream studios in Brighton. They’re up at vimeo.com’s cracking HD video service, hooray!

Jam 1

Jam 2

General — No Comments
20
Aug 08

Play DVDs and Homebrew Apps on your Wii

Lifehacker comes up trumps again, bringing you a more concise guide to the softmodding scene that emerged since the security holes discovered in Zelda : Twilight Princess. All you’ll need is a copy of the game, a PC, an SD memory card, and the installer for the software. Handy!

Click here for the guide

Music — No Comments
20
Aug 08

Finch : New EP! [review]

After nearly two years hiatus, Finch finally return in recorded form with a new self-titled EP. Now I loved ‘Say Hello to Sunshine’ and still listen to it as one of my favourite modern rock records. Sadly it seems that wasn’t the case for a large enough chunk of their fanbase, who didn’t like it as much as debut full length ‘What it is to Burn’. I always found that a massive shame and it must’ve really screwed with the band who, as far as fans of S.H.T.S. were concerned, had honed their sound to an unique and matured new level.

After much pondering one can only assume that those who didn’t enjoy the second album were too hung up on the ballad-y post punk elements of What it is to Burn to embrace the new sound Finch. Songs such as Letters to You and Stay With Me had gotten a lot of radio play around the time Finch really blew up commercially, and presumably fans who enjoyed that sound were hoping for more of the same – why? well ask record promoters and they’ll tell you, it sells! (see current pop punk crap such as Fall Out Boy and Kids in Glass Houses for examples of cash injection pop success).

Sadly originality and ‘trying something fresh’ is often badly recieved – sometimes fairly as bands ‘go off on one’ with a new idea, but I always found the evolved Finch to be just that, evolved – with new time signatures, interesting use of guitar effects, massively ranging vocals in terms of style and sound, and generally a sound to the album that no other band had to offer.

In the time away, Finch hasn’t capitulated to the fans who disliked Say Hello to Sunshine, moreover – their new EP released this month seems like a band finally ready to say fuck it and carry on precisely where they left off with album # 2. With 4 tracks in all, it may seem like a tepid comeback, but the new material still sounds as fresh as Say Hello To Sunshine upon its release, with Barcalow’s vocal range and Strohmeyer’s creative guitar writing shining through as ever.

Opener ‘Daylight’ is most reminiscent of tracks from ‘..Sunshine’, and has some fantastically catchy hooks, but the band soon progress to show off further development with the other 3 tracks, sounding in places like some of the more interesting bands to emerge during their hiatus – Fall Of Troy being one that springs to mind listening to the EP. Don’t get me wrong here – i’m certainly not accusing Finch of plagiarism, i’m actually enjoying the influences these guys seem to have had whilst re-evaluating the band’s future.

The EP is available on iTunes only at the moment (press a cd damn it!) but presumably when they can afford to, a full commercial release could follow – so buy it from itunes and support this criminally overlooked band! click here for the purchase page.

finch 2008

Design — 2 Comments
19
Aug 08

7 Principles of Neat and Optimized CSS

The guys over at Smashingmagazine.com bring us another fantastic tech article courtesy of Tony White. Covering standards for writing modern compliant CSS, this excellent checklist is a must for any XHTML designer.

click here!

Gaming — No Comments
15
Aug 08

Bionic Commando : Evolution [trailer]

If you’re a nes fan like me, you’ll have spent many hours as a kid playing side scrolling shooter games like contra, metroid and also a little title called Bionic Commando.

Yet another game to be brought back from the dead and polished up for next next gen consoles (or whatever we’re on by now) this one actually looks pretty damn promising.

With the highly original title ‘Bionic Commando : Evolution’ this could have been a cheap cash in like some of the 80s remakes we’ve seen, but by the look of the preview material i’ve seen so far, this could be a fantastic title in its own respect. But hey, don’t take my word for it, take a look at the trailer which pays homage to its roots beautifully before cracking on with the new stuff..

Movies — No Comments
15
Aug 08

The Informers [trailer]

As a major fan of Bret Easton Ellis’ work (The rules of attraction rocks), I’ve always got an eye out for film adaptations, especially since the amazing job Roger Avary did with the aforementioned novel.

Whilst Less Than Zero (the film) wasn’t amazing, the forthcoming adaptation of The Informers looks highly intriguing on cast alone, you’ve got Thornton, Rourke, Ryder, and even Chris Isaak for pity’s sake! amazing, also its by Gregor Jordan, the director of the fantastic Buffalo Soldiers – that should be enough to sell it to you, if not, here’s the trailer -

General — No Comments
13
Aug 08

Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture

This is a little gem I came across on youtube – you may have already heard of it if you’re one of the 6 million people who have already watched it. Randy Pausch was a professor of engineering in the field of HCI and Virtual Reality, who sadly passed away from pancreatic cancer in july this year.

He gave this ‘last lecture’, which is semi autobiographical, but is also fascinating and inspiring for anyone interested in virtual environments, and general creative human computer interaction. It also has some familiar insight into the workings of academia and team based projects which some of you will find amusing.

I was skeptical upon discovering this video as it was titled ‘Achieving your childhood dreams’ – lots of awful self help books sprang to mind from my days as a Waterstones bookboy, but this is nothing of the cheesy sort – he discusses his childhood briefly before moving onto discussing his time in teaching. Pausch delivers the lecture with remarkable humor given his situation at the time (around 6 months prior to his death as predicted by his doctors) and I recommend you give it a watch, whilst being a good hour long its very interesting stuff indeed.