WordPress

PSA: Do Not Use camelCase for WordPress Shortcode Attribute Names

Use lower or snake case instead of camel case for WordPress shortcode attribute names.

I just wasted nearly an hour troubleshooting a shortcode for a project because I did not know that WordPress shortcode attributes are passed through PHP’s strtolower() function (view source). I rarely use camelCase in PHP, and am also not a huge fan of shortcodes, so have easily managed to get through 15 years of developing …

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Happy 10th Anniversary WordPress!

WordPress 10th Anniversary

WordPress will be 10 years old on May 27th, 2013. Hard to believe it has been so long! Dougal Campbell had a great idea to start the WordPress 10th Anniversary Blogging Project. I have been using WordPress since v 0.71 and it is still my favorite way to build a website. What better way to celebrate …

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BeeDragon.com 2010

BeeDragon Web Services

2010 has been the most successful year yet for my business, BeeDragon Web Services. I have been getting a lot of work from other web developers and designers. It is very exciting getting to work with talented people who do similar work. When each person combines their unique skills, we make each other’s work shine. …

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WordPress eCommerce Plugins: Shopp vs WP e-Commerce

Update (10/21/09): Comments for this post have been closed. Thanks for your comments everyone! It has been nearly a year since I wrote this review. It is based on WP e-Commerce 3.6.9 and Shopp 1.0. Both plugins have had significant upgrades since then. I bought a developer license for Shopp and have used it in …

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WordPress 2.7

Earlier today, I updated this site to WordPress 2.7. It was a completely smooth upgrade, even though I forgot to disable my plugins and 2.7 is only a release candidate. I have been using the beta version, and now RC1 on a website I have been building for the past couple of months. It has …

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Work, WordCamp, Dolly, Autiblogger, and .me

This week started out kind of insane. Nearly all of my clients wanted things at once. It hurt my brain pretty bad, but somehow I managed to get almost everything done. To make matters worse, my work environment has become somewhat of an ergonomic nightmare. I fixed my wrist problem by switching to a trackball, wearing …

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The Who and Other Good Things

Pete TownshendI am still having a very hard time with school, but I am tired of whining about it. Decided to take a break from driving myself insane and not getting anything done. It is several hours later and I realize that I am not miserable and exhausted anymore. Doesn’t help my school situation any, but it did wonders for my brain. Suddenly it is filled with happy things.

Saturday night, there was a VH1 Rock Honors show at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion. It will be aired on VH1 on Thursday. VH1 has been having tons of Who stuff on lately. Makes me happy. The Who is one of my favorite bands of all time, and in particular, the one that made my teenagerhood bearable. Lots of performers played at the show including The Who, Pearl Jam, and Tenacious D. I also love the D.

Karate was very fun today. Only did actual karate for half the time, then heard some great stories about martial arts history and got to see a bunch of cool videos of our teacher learning from “the professor” (Professor Chow, I think). I love that kind of stuff. I like Kenpo. It is a lot like Cuong Nhu, but with more emphasis on the Chinese styles than the Japanese. I like my new school because daytime classes are very small and not as structured as night-time ones. I also like the teacher. He is patient and shows me things until I get them, then moves on to the next thing.

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Bay Area WordPress Meetup

There was a meeting of the newly reincarnated Bay Area WordPress Meetup on Sunday at Chaat Cafe in San Francisco. This meetup formerly went by the name of San Francisco WordPress Meetup. Being a resident of Oakland, I prefer the new name, even though the meeting was still in SF. photo credit: Ianiv & Arieanna …

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if $brain >= $fried ? ramble : $code;

I am too busy. I suck at being busy. It is my worst thing and it always ends badly. I am not sure how to not be busy. It is a vicious cycle. As soon as I start feeling better, I want to do things. All the things that I can’t do when I am …

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WordCamp 2007

I have been so busy this week that I haven’t had time to write about WordCamp. Lots of work these days and then on Wednesday, I got my 2 top wisdom teeth pulled. K came with me (thank you K!) and we had to wait for an hour in the waiting room, and then what seemed like forever in the dentist room. I cried. I have a hard time going to the dentist. After almost two hours of waiting, the dentist pulled my teeth in about 5 minutes. I didn’t feel a thing, but the noise was pretty sick. It doesn’t hurt too bad as long as I take tylenol and don’t eat food that requires chewing.

This weekend, I went to WordCamp 2007 in San Francisco. It was even better than last year. Surrounded by WordPress geeks. In some ways, I like it better than macworld. There are not too many things that I like better than macworld. WordCamp is smaller and more focused. Lucky for me, it is focused on some of my favorite things.

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Random Geekery

First, an iphone update. It still rocks! Most of the annoyances do not bug me anymore except for safari not remembering my zoom (Edit: I forgot that a double tap zooms in the safari window, so I rescind that last annoyance), lack of basic text select, copy, and paste features, and poor navigation. Some breadcrumb …

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Review: iPhone 1.0

I cracked. Didn’t even last a week. I tried to resist, but every day I went to the apple store to play with an iPhone. The 8GB models were continuously out of stock. Usually the 4G models were too. It compelled me. Like the iMac did nearly 2 years ago, and like another mac most …

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Back In Business

I have finally updated my business site! I last updated it in 2004 and it was so out of date that I had to unpublish half of the pages because the information was no longer accurate. The focus of my business has changed over the years. When I first started out, I made mostly static …

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WordPress 2.2 Upgrade

I am starting to believe that the days of the fast and easy WordPress upgrade have come to an end. Version 2.0 brought some problems for upgraders. Version 2.1 seemed to bring even more due to some database changes breaking certain themes and plugins. The 2.0 upgrade went very smoothly for me. 2.1 did not. …

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Useless 2.0 – Glass is half full version

One good thing about being useless for a couple of days is that my brain gets a rest and then suddenly I can do things! I have worked almost non-stop for the past 2 days and gotten tons of stuff done. I realize that working non-stop was how I got to be useless in the …

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More WordPress Plugins

The first plugin of today is not actually a wordpress plugin at all, but it works like one (at least like one that has a slightly complicated installation). It is called iBox. Installation is relatively simple if you are comfortable with uploading and modifying files. Kind of a pain if you’re not. There is some code that needs to be added to the header.php file of your theme, an image that needs to go in the root images directory, and two files that need to go into your theme’s main directory.

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Plugin Update

I have given up on the Share This plugin for now. No time to mess with it anymore. I am back to using the social bookmarks plugin, but I like the way Share This works and looks much better. When I have more time, I will try again. Yesterday, I added the WP-chgFontSize plugin, which …

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New Old Meds

So much going on. New meds. Well, not exactly new. Same as the last meds only in a different formula and dose of pill. Started yesterday. So far, so good. I can breathe. Hopefully the new kind of pill will not give me the same kind of allergic reaction as the last time. I realized when I picked it up this time that ‘trouble breathing’ is listed in the package insert as a possible allergic reaction, not as a side effect.

The good news is that the side effects of strattera are finally wearing off. My body feels more normal and the strange sores that I’ve been getting underneath the skin on my hands and feet has almost completely disappeared just as suddenly as they appeared shortly after I started taking the meds. Mystery solved. All those blood tests for nothing.

It has been very hard to work. Even hard to play. I am half playing while I am writing this. Turning in quests. It has been fun playing warcrack with the mac guild, the Reservoir Dogcows. Nice folks. I still haven’t played much in groups, but when I did, they were very helpful. Tsayad the night elf hunter (that’s me) is almost level 40. That is a cool thing in world of warcraft. For hunters like Tsayad, it means you can start wearing mail armor instead of leather. It also means you can get a ‘mount’, which is an animal that you ride on so you can go a lot faster. For a night elf, the standard mount is one of several giant cats. Cool.

I have so much work to do. I sure hope these meds kick in soon! I wonder if I will ever be able to read again. I suppose I should be patient. There are good things too.

We got a harness and a long lead for Nikkyo and have been taking her outside in the backyard. She likes it 🙂 Mostly she sniffs the other cats and eats grass. Cats sure do like to eat grass.

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WordPress Love

I love WordPress. My first thought about making new websites for clients, friends, or myself is “How can I do this with WordPress?”. In most cases, there is a way. I have used more open source php/mysql content management systems over the years than I can count, and at this point WordPress is my favorite by far.

The code is clean. That is the thing I love best. The file structure makes sense. It is usually pretty easy to completely customize a site design by altering only the theme files. In most other systems that I have used, hacking the core files is part of customizing the design, and updating the core files can be a nightmare. I do end up hacking WordPress plugin and widget files from time to time, but that usually has more to do with function than design.

A basic install of WordPress is small and fast. I like that. The plugin system is excellent and the developer community is incredible! It is nice to be able to customize site features as needed, rather than having to install a gigantic supersystem every time that overwhelms clients and has a negative impact on site performance.

My favorite WordPress plugins and widgets:

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Autiblogger

I am working on a new project to provide free blogs to the autism community. Autiblogger.com is now in the first public testing phase. It is powered by WordPress MU, and so far all is going very well. I have been wanting to set this up for a while and am very glad to finally …

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