Hummingbird604.com » Redesigning my blog

Upgrading and adding WordPress plugins to my blog

Raul — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:15:19 +0000

I’ve written a lot on my blog very publicly about how much I’ve learned from my good friend Rebecca Bollwitt (aka Miss604). She was, and still is in many ways, my blogging Jedi Master. This past year, 2008, was a total breakthrough for me in regards to my use of content management systems tools (like WordPress), my involvement in social media and my growth as a blogger, and it was in great part thanks to Rebecca. I absorbed an immense amount of bits and pieces of knowledge about all things WP. As you know, I like to do my own stunts. I cleaned my own URLs last year, I bought and re-directed my domain to WP.com and even gave a presentation at WordCamp Fraser Valley. Last year, at WordCamp Vancouver 2008, Rebecca presented on how to insert photos to your posts and make them very pretty. This year, neither her nor myself have really had the time to spend together geeking out (even though we thoroughly enjoy doing that at either coffee shops or during our traditional lunches) and therefore I have had to do much of my own stuff, including upgrading my plugins and learning by doing. This is the best way to learn, albeit the learning curve is sometimes steep. Rebecca is naturally geeky and her technical skills way surpass mine. I could ask my good friend Karen Parker (who has helped me a lot in the past) but I know she’s busy too. So I have had to test much of the stuff I want to use on my own this past year.

As JT was driving me last Friday to my office (he tried very generously to solve a problem I had with my computer but there was a problem with the electrical energy and we couldn’t work on my stuff), we were chatting about how much time I was wasting going to my Flickr account and trying to find a photo to use (from me or from my own friends). JT suggested that I needed to spend the time exploring a number of new plugins that would give my blog more functionality ONCE and that I would be set for the future. JT was right. I just installed WP Touch (which should make your visualization of my blog on any smart phone like Android or iPhone much prettier), developed by our friends Duane and Dale; installed also Flickr Photo Album which allows me to insert photos much faster (although I still need to figure out how to do the footers quickly, I need to create a QuickTag). There are a couple of plugins I still need to upload and activate, including the one that allows you to tweet a post (or RT) and the one that lists the tweets that have mentioned your post.

Improvements to my site to increase the bi-directionality and conversation

Raul — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:12:57 +0000

I have previously indicated on my blog that I’m primarily interested in keeping the conversation up and engaging with people. My personal behaviours (engaging with people who follow me on Twitter and with whom I’ve met at tech events) are also indicative of this pattern. However, I had been remiss for the past few months to implement a few changes that would make interaction much easier.

While many excellent bloggers take a substantial amount of time to customize their sites with relative frequency, I am going to admit that I am, for the most part, somewhat reluctant to go into the techie parts of my site. Uploading plugins, activating them, customizing them, changing the theme, personalizing the site, etc. I know that all of these are things we need to do in order to facilitate and maintain good interaction between me as the blog writer and my readers, and amongst the people who read my blog.

The past couple of days, I decided to do some upgrading, and I’ve enhanced the blog with a couple of plugins. First, now all my comments are CommentLuv-enabled. This means that every time you drop a comment on my blog, this WordPress plugin will try and parse your latest post for display. How is this relevant? Well, it gives you as a commentator exposure as the title and link of your most recent blog entry will show directly underneath your comment (therefore creating link-love).

Second, I have enabled a handy contact form so that you don’t have to use your email client to send me a message. The contact form is in my About Me page. Third, I enabled “Subscribe to Comments” which will allow you as the reader to track the conversation that is occurring on the comments section. Finally, I have managed to install a stats package (not that I care that much about stats per se, but they do give me some sense of what people are reading).

Feel free to drop a comment (I am particularly testing these two plugins) on the blog post, and I hope it is useful for you as a reader!

Welcome to the new and improved Hummingbird604.com!

Raul — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 08:53:42 +0000

I had been talking about it for months. You had been waiting with baited breath. Everyone was wondering when it would happen. Well, it has happened now! Welcome to the new and improved Hummingbird604.com!

With the outstanding and very capable help of my friend J. Karen Parker, who did the customization of the theme, taught me how to do the FTP’ing and stuff, and helped me fix a number of issues with the self-hosted WP install (otherwise I would have been stuck in .htaccess hell!), I am now able to do way more than I could before (including CSS editing and theme customization, plugins, etc.)

As you may notice, the DevArt theme has been customized to better fit my blog. The hummingbird604 logo that Rebecca kindly customized for my previous theme remains instact. Luckily, this WP.org install allows me to use Javascript, plugins and do a number of things that I wanted to do but was unable to, for a long while.

Thanks a million to Karen for all her help, to everyone who encouraged me to go self-hosted and I hope you enjoy the new layout! Feedback, of course, is always appreciated.

Accepting suggestions for my 1000th post

Raul — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:10:28 +0000

I’ve been polishing the presentation for Fraser Valley WordCamp and in the process, I’ve come to realize that I am REALLY close to 1000 posts on WordPress (I lost 132 posts in the importing process, which was kind of awful, but oh well). Since I’m at 922 (this post included), I have been thinking of organizing a MargaritaCamp + NachoCamp + GinCamp to celebrate my 1000 posts.

At my current writing rate, I estimate that’s going to fall somewhere around the week of Blogathon, so I might have a middle of the week RaulCamp (or simply combine it with the Vancouver Bloggers Meetup!) because, after all, it’s all about me (inside joke, you’ll have to see the t-shirt to know what I’m talking about).

So, I’m opening the floor for suggestions for my 1000th post. I was actually thinking of holding it at a wifi-enabled site (like the Blackwater Cafe) or a bar so that we can celebrate the actual moment of pushing the “Publish” button on my WordPress Dashboard. Any interest in joining for said RaulCamp?

The CSS customization and going self-hosted “light”

Raul — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:12:40 +0000

My WordPress-ification process has been quite intense, and it’s hard to juggle searching for a job, doing academic work, socializing AND trying to master WordPress. But right now I feel pretty good about it, and wouldn’t go back to the Blogger platform. The last time I posted something on Blogger I was actually kind of weirded out. “WHOA. It’s like I’ve never used this“.

This week (probably Thursday or Friday, as I want to stay away from the computer for a while), I am buying the CSS customization option for WordPress as I want to be able to tinker with the layout and the theme color scheme. Since I’ve been previously known to avoid the WordPress Codex, I figured this time I would follow the rules and go and read the Codex before I ask my friends “how do I go about this…”

Both Rebecca and Andy wrote recently about themes, and Rebecca unveiled her awesome new theme just this week. But to be quite honest, I still had one question in my mind – what IS a theme?

A WordPress Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying unifying design for a weblog.[WP Codex-Themes]

Yeah. RIIIIIGHT. The preceding paragraph proceeded to explain what a theme is in WPGeekSpeak. That’s the point where I realized one of the things that I hadn’t done (shame on me) ever – CHECK THE GLOSSARY. So I went to the Codex WordPress lesson semantics. Are themes the same as CSS? I have discovered that no, they’re not. I roamed around the glossary and semantics site for a while, and now I understand that by customizing the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), I will be able to define colors, layouts, etc. The theme is more overarching, then…

I may request help to customize my CSS, but I also want to learn how to change it myself, because I don’t want to be a fake geek. I like being a true geek, and I like to do my own stunts. I am well aware that asking for help is one of my challenges, but thankfully, being a computer geek is complicated enough that I am always willing to ask someone to give me a hand. So, I hope that soon enough, you’ll see a different color scheme, although it may be a while for a change in theme!

My new header, with thanks to Miss604 :-)

Raul — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:10:17 +0000

Since last week, Rebecca Bollwitt and I have been chatting about the feedback I got from Jordan Behan and Boris Mann re: the header of my site last week. Jordan, Rebecca and Boris agree: my blog *needs* to reflect the concept of ME… sort of “this is Raul – and this is what Raul is all about“.

After last week’s blog re-design, I’ve got a lot of positive responses to the new layout, but the header of the blog still kept feeling somewhat … how to put it… STILL NOT ME. Since the new header image was a modification of the standard image in this blog, it didn’t really reflect ME. Rebecca thought about the header for a while and came up with the one that is currently on the blog.

I’ll discuss more about the blog re-design in further posts, but instead of telling YOU what the changes are, I’d like you to tell ME – what do you think? If you have met me in person (or even if you haven’t) … does it reflect who I am? Thanks first of all to Rebecca for the hard work in creating the header, and to you my readers for providing the feedback