Diary of a Network Geek

It’s no secret that I love WordPress.

I mean, seriously, I really, really love WordPress as a blogging platform and as an easy-to-understand Content Management System.  But, did you know that I’m one of the three most important people in WordPress? No, for real! And, I have a certificate from Matt Mullenweg himself to prove it!

Okay, so, yeah, I know, I’m not really one of the most important people in WordPress, outside of being one of millions of users who do, in fact, make WordPress a force to be reckoned with. But, we only manage that as a group, as a community. No, that certificate is a joke. Literally. It’s a joke from Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress, regarding an incident some weeks back involving a theme developer who didn’t want to use the GPL, which is the software license that WordPress uses and all theme developers are required to use. I know people will disagree, but, based on my understanding of the GPL, any derivative works of a product that uses the GPL must also use the GPL.  So, really, for most of their code, theme developers are required to use the GPL.  Honestly, I’ve never worried about it.  I mean, mostly, it’s a bunch of legal speak that means very little to the average end-user.
One of the things that this theme developer claimed, erroneously, was that he was one of the “three most important people in WordPress” because he felt that so many people used his theme.  I think he may have been surprised at how many of those folks jumped ship when they found out there was something wrong with that theme and its license.

In any case, what does matter to us about all this is that Matt took that attention and made a marketing opportunity out of it.  For starters, he started buying people premium themes that didn’t violate the GPL as a kind of protest and a way to draw attention to how serious he is about supporting the GPL.  And lots of people took him up on the offer.  But, apparently, someone griped about not wanting a premium theme or something and so, instead, Matt made a second offer to those of us who didn’t want, or couldn’t decide on, a premium theme.  He offered us free t-shirts.

Well, I’m always up for a free t-shirt, especially one that advertises something I believe in and use, so I was on this offer like white on rice.  Now, I can only imagine how many people also took advantage of this, too, but I went to his website, and filled out the form and sent off my e-mail like a kid sending in his box-tops for his toy surprise.  And, then I forgot about it.  I try to do that, frankly, when I enter contests and such.  Like casting my bread upon the water, I do what I need to do to enter and then forget it.  That way, if something does arrive, I’m pleasantly surprised.  That’s just what I was this past Friday when I found the package from Matt in my mailbox; pleasantly surprised!

As you can see from the picture, the t-shirt came with a few other things.
First of all, there were all kinds of stickers, which I love.  It reminds me of the old days when you got swag at the conventions and covered your laptop in stickers.  But, there was also an iPhone skin and pencils and, of course, the certificate, which made me laugh out loud.
I’ve already worn the t-shirt, which, as you can see, says “Code is poetry” on the front.  What you can’t tell from the photograph is that the t-shirt reads “WordPress.org” and has the official WordPress logo on the back.  Frankly, that’s the part I love.

Now, all I need to do is actually read all those books I’ve gotten on WordPress theme design and get working on it…
Anyway, thanks for all the stuff, Matt!

Okay, so this may not be of interest to many of my readers.

But, for the two or three people who do find it interesting…
Have you ever wanted to test some PHP code in your blog’s theme? Well, Jon Dyer has posted a tutorial on how to do that over at his blog, Dyers.org. It’s a cool idea for testing something on your site or blog to see what it would look like with your particular settings and style. I’d thought about how to do this, too, but the way Dyer does it is pretty clever.

Go check it out!

I found out Friday that I got accepted into the WordPress iPhone app beta test group.

As you might imagine, a geek like me was so excited that I just about plotzed right there. Or, at least you would if you were a regular reader. I’ve been a huge fan of WordPress since I started using it back during the big Moveable Type license debacle. And, frankly, I’ve been hooked on the iPhone since almost the first moment I started using it. So, naturally, when I saw that there was an iPhone app that would let me blog no matter where I was, as long as I could get a cell signal. Combine that with the Flickr app and, well, I think I may well have found the perfect phone for me.

When I saw that the people who created the iPhone app were looking for beta testers, well, I jumped on that like white on rice. When I got the news I was accepted… Well, I already mentioned how excited I was. As soon as I could, I tried to install it. I had a little trouble getting it set right to install onto my phone, but once I did, it’s been working fine. Now, I did have a small problem when it tried to connect to my blogs where I had no signal or wifi, but, I suspect that the problem had more to do with my impatience than with a programming issue. What’s more, I haven’t had a problem since. Of course, I’ve only used the app when I’ve had a good connection since then, too, so that may have something to do with it.
I have to admit, the tiny, virtual keyboard on the iPhone is far from the ideal tool for a long post, but it certianly seems to get the job done. Also, the auto-correct feature actually seems to work in my favor. Of course, that does say
something quite terrible about my spelling or typing or something, doesn’t it?

Oh, and, in case you were wondering, this entire post was, in fact, written entirely on my iPhone with that WordPress beta app that I’m so happy to be testing.
How cool is that?

So, if you have an iPhone and use WordPress, either on a self-hosted blog or on WordPress.com, I highly recommend getting this app. When they upgrade the current version to the one I’m using, you’ll love it.
Trust me.

Sorry there wasn’t a post yesterday, but I was pretty beat from a tough week at work. Also, I upgraded to WordPress version 2.8 on most of my sites last night.
Hopefully, you’ll be enjoying the extra speed it’s supposed to give me.

I made my first, primitive blog entry here nine years ago today.

Back then, I coded every page by hand, often in a text editor and uploaded the pages. That was back before blogging was cool and everyone was doing it, too, so there just wasn’t any blogging software to speak of. Everyone who had a blog, which is short for “web log”, wrote their posts and pages by hand. Of course, I was mostly out of work back then, too, so I had lots of time to code it all up and link everything by hand. Thank God that all changed! First MovableType and then WordPress. Who knows what else will be coming next?

Of course, a lot has changed in my non-digital life, too. Married then divorced again. Changed jobs four times. Moved once, after buying a house. Survived cancer.
Sometimes, looking back on it all, it sure does seem like a lot happening in a short amount of time. It’s crazy, crazy stuff.

Anyway, I noticed that the date was coming not too long ago and I thought I’d point it out.

Oh, this is cool!

Now, you have got to understand that I am a total office supply junkie. I love interesting pens and notepads and all that junk. I have a bunch of Moleskine notebooks, for instance. And, I’ve been trying to sketch out a new WordPress theme in a sad sort of design notebook I’ve been keeping. Obviously that hasn’t been quite as well as I’d like, but this Web Design Sketchbook may inspire me a bit more.

It’s from a site called HuntingLodge.no, which is in Norway, and there is a store, but it was being upgraded when I wrote this. It maybe working now, though. Basically, it’s just a regular sketchbook, but with printed graphics on it that are like a browser window. So, when you’re sketching the design, whoever you’re sketching it for can sort of see how it would look in a browser window. How cool is that!? I know I’ll end up having to get one of these from them when their store is working again, but, until then, enjoy their “review” of it.

So, you ever want to design a WordPress theme?

Well, I’ve been thinking about theme design for WordPress for a while now. I mean, I’ve done some small stuff, taking the basic themes and customizing them to make them my own, as it were, but I’ve never done anything from scratch. I’m working on it though. And, as I think about it, and work on it, I’ve been finding resources that might come in handy. Here are a few:

• From Web Designer Wall, WordPress Theme Hacks
• From CSS-Tricks, Designing for WordPress
• General color stuff from AdamPolselli.com, “Get The Look”
• More color scheme stuff from pic2color.com, uh, pic2color
• If you’re designing from scratch, like for a new website, you might want to checkout Building With WordPress
• That article talked about several tools that are for more than just WordPress, including YUI Grids CSS and Aptana, which is a free, OpenSource web development tool.
• Then, there’s the Theme Lessons on WordPress.org
• and the book, WordPress Theme Design

Feel free to add your own in the comments!

Um, this may post twice.

Look, I so rarely make pages in WordPress, I’m not sure which way is right, but rather than risk it, I’m just going to post a link to the Zombie Theme page. This will take you to the official, temporary Zombie Theme page, where, naturally, you can download my first publicly available theme. I made it just for the upcoming Halloween holiday. Well, and all the crazy zombie fans out there. (I have to confess, I’ve been reading a lot of zombie stuff lately. It’s a curse, I tell you!)

Anyway, enjoy!

EvenMoreBooksonTable

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I don’t particularly feel like writing today, but, well, it’s time for an update.

Okay, that’s not quite true. I just don’t feel like writing anything that I feel comfortable sharing on the blog. Not that I have anything in particular going on, really, but there’s just no way for me to talk it through, so to speak, in writing and have it come through in a way I’m willing to put on the web for all to see. That may surprise some of my readers, considering what I’ve thrown out in the past, but there it is.

The picture here is one of several stacks of books in my house that make up my “to be read” queue, or, as I think of it, pile.
If you get in close, you’ll see a strange combination of subjects. At the bottom of the stack, there are books on chemistry, space flight, the Yakuza and gun running. All basically purchased for research for a semi-mythical story that will probably never get written. Still, these are all things that interest me anyway, so I figure it’s money well spent.
The next layer up is computer books. Specifically, books related to WordPress and web design or web page creation. These are all meant to help me build a better theme for this blog, and my other blogs. Not to mention potentially making a theme that other people might like to use and possibly even donate a bit of money to use. At least, that’s the idea.
The rest of the books are a mish mash of assorted subjects that have interested me to a greater or lesser degree over the past several months.

So, there’s an update of sorts to keep the Google-gods and blog-spirits happy. Ciao!

So, it seems like I still have some issues.

Someone e-mailed me this morning to see if my site was down because they were getting a blank page. Well, so was I. At least, until I hit refresh. Then, hitting the links on the categories didn’t work at all. So, I checked the WordPress support forum and tweaked a couple of things. Now, the categories give you blank pages, until you hit the refresh button. And, actually, this is all in Firefox. Firefox 2, actually, so I have no idea if any other browsers are having trouble or not. If you are, leave me a comment here so I can keep track, would you?

And, in any case, I’m working on it. Right now, the fix seems to be coming in a minor version update. This is why I usually wait a couple of months before upgrading. It’s just that this version had some things I wanted to use, so… Well, anyway, like I wrote, I’m working on it.

UPDATE:
First, let me thank you all for not taking advantage of that opening line.  It is sort of like putting on a “kick me” sign and sticking one’s rump out.
Secondly, I think I found the problem.  I upgraded WordPress, but not all the plugins I have loaded.  So, I deactivated one until I can get the new version.  Luckily, it’s one that works behind the scenes doing things for me, so your viewing experience shouldn’t be effected.
Thanks for your help and attention!