April 27th, 2013
I owe much of my career to WordPress and it’s use of use. However, none of it would have been possible without the community. Contributing to WordPress is a great way to become better with WordPress as a developer, designer, teacher, writer… there are contributing opportunities for everyone.
During my talk at WordCamp Ottawa I’ll be sharing info on how you can get started.
In the meantime, here are my slides for the presentation:
April 13th, 2013
These past few days has seen some alarming news about CMS sites being attacked by botnets. Targeting WordPress and Joomla, these bots are simply trying to access your backend with different combinations of usernames and passwords. Various articles have been written about this and below is a roundup of what can be done to keep your WordPress site safe.
Do not use “admin” as your username: Matt points out that since WordPress 3.0 allows you to pick a custom username on installation, to replace the default “admin”. Hackers and bots will attack your site using admin as the username, so if you are using this, please change it right away.
Read more…
April 12th, 2013
The first ever WordCamp Ottawa is happening in a few weeks on April 27. It will be held at the University in the MonPetit Hall. I graduated from University in 1991 and haven’t been back since. I’m a little apprehensive about going back, but excited as well.
I’ll give a talk in the developer track and discuss ways to become a better developer by contributing to WordPress and joining the community.
The title of my talk might be a bit misleading though. I probably shouldn’t have said developer.
Designers, teachers, writers and organizers are also needed and welcomed in the WordPress community. I hope that all types of WordPress enthusiasts will join me and get to know the many ways in which one can participate.
See you there.
March 27th, 2013
If you’ve visited the Bluelime Media website lately, you’ll have noticed that it’s undergone yet another design change. This latest design is simpler, I removed a lot of content but more interestingly, I substituted the social media icons with genericons. Genericons are vector icons embedded in a webfont designed to be clean and simple keeping with a generic aesthetic. Brought to you by Automattic, they are indeed a pleasure to work with.
With more and more folks migrating to new Macs with retina display, I thought it would be a good idea to get in the habit of using vector icons.
In addition to the Bluelime site, I’ve also built a few responsive sites lately and my starter theme has proven very handy. However, I did find myself changing the same things over and over again. So earlier today, I made the following changes to the BLM responsive starter theme.
If you’ve used the BLM responsive starter theme, I would love to hear your thoughts. If you think it could be improved, enhanced or modified in any way, please let me know. For those interested in seeing the code changes, have a look through the commits.
March 07th, 2013
I first started working with the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care (WFPICCS) in 2003. When I first met with them, the intention was to have a website which they could maintain and add information for doctors and nurses pertaining to news and event in the pediatric field. At the time CMS were very costly and so I built them a PHP website with a very simple admin interface allowing them to add news, events and update bits of information here and there.
While teaching at BCIT, I discovered that at the end of each term, students select projects from a list. So I inquired and thought that a re-design and conversion of WFPICCS into WordPress would be a great project. I was lucky enough to have my project selected by a team of 4. Kate, Chad, Gabe and Sesil did a wonderful job working together and built a great looking site for WFPICCS.
The site has a slider on the home page which is updatable by using a custom post type for each slide. Another custom post type was used for the board of directors and officers making it very easy for the folks at WFICCS to update and maintain.
A responsive design was also selected to allow visitors to access the site via platforms other than the desktop. Overall WFPICCS and I are very pleased with the site and looking forward to working with more BCIT students on future projects.
January 23rd, 2013
My new theme color palette is now in the WordPress repository.
This new theme is fully responsive and comes with a choice of five different colour schemes. Once installed, just go to the theme customizer and browse through the colour options.
I hope that you like it and if you care to comment, don’t hesitate to do so.
December 16th, 2012
With the release of WordPress 3.5 comes a great new default theme called Twenty Twelve. Twenty Twelve is responsive, beautiful and a super easy to child theme. Child themes are now accepted on the WordPress repository so I thought I would try my hand at making one. You can now download my child theme, Deux Milles Douze. I also wrote a short tutorial explaining the steps I took to make it. If you’re interested in child themes, I would suggest that you give Twenty Twelve a try.
November 03rd, 2012
In my last post, I mentioned that many action items were made following numerous discussions and conversations. I myself had the opportunity to speak to various members of the Theme Review Team and came up with my own set of personal action items.
My theme Mon Cahier was quite popular when it came out, but of course, now that’s it’s not as new it’s no longer as popular. One thing that one can do to make a more popular theme is by offering right to left language support. WordPress itself is very good at providing right to left support for countries in the Middle east and Persia but only a small percentage of themes offer it. Providing RTL is quite easy, since it’s only a matter of adding a stylesheet, so I thought I would update my theme. I took care of that task this weekend and will be submitting it to the WordPress repo. Fingers crossed it will be updated soon.
I also plan on making it responsive and need to make better use of the theme customizer, but these two action items will need to be put on the back burner for now.
I’ve been teaching WordPress for a few years now and my efforts have not gone unnoticed. One of the great things to come out of the WordPress Community Summit is the handbooks that are currently in the works. I’ve been asked to be the lead of setting up a curriculum for teachers. This material will consist of teaching materials, videos and tutorials. This task is quite big, but I’ve already chatted to a few people who have offered to help. Similarly to the other handbooks, a website will be put in place allowing people to contribute, edit and share information. The website and plan of action should be put in place in a few weeks. I’m very excited about this project and look forward to see how it progresses and evolves.
August 07th, 2012
August 07th, 2012
I’ve had the pleasure of working with Rob Lewis for years on the Kits website. Rob is great to work with as he let’s me try out different designs and doesn’t demand pixel perfection. During our last conversation, he suggested the site needed a refresh and needed to be more suited for mobile viewers. Responsive sites are more and more common and I’ve dabbled a bit, but diving into a new territory is always a bit scary.
Following the WordPress theme weekend, I was inspired to give Reverie a try. Other folks seem to like it and so I thought it would serve me well. Unfortunately after about 6 hours of tinkering, I just wasn’t getting the look and feel I was hoping for. I decided instead to give Emil Uzelac’s responsive theme a go. Once installed, I created my child theme and added my style changes to the stylesheet. I soon realized that changes to the templates themselves would be needed, but the theme files were so well laid out and commented, that child theming was a breeze. In fact, I can’t remember having so much fun building a theme. I hope that the viewers at Kitsilano.ca will enjoy the changes.
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