When developing our Hyperlocal WordPress theme called The Local Darren came up with the idea of adding the local weather to the themes header. After a bit of research I decided that the Yahoo! Weather api was the best solution.Before...
Recently I have been doing a lot of work with API’s and these often involve loading text content (rss/ xml/ json etc) from another website and then displaying the results – for instance the Twitter feed at the bottom of...
So far I think I have been rather lucky, there hasn’t been much spam on WPVote, and that’s great. But I know these types of sites can be a haven for spammers, so I have used a few different tricks...
The latest feature I have added to WPVote is a page that shows you all pages submitted to the site for a specific domain. Below I will show how I created the custom permalink structure without creating custom pages.The process...
Recently I have added some custom content to the RSS feeds on 2 of my websites.Here on Binary Moon I have added a notice that tells people if a specific post is in the Art Directed category, so they know...
Note: We’ve now released a plugin called Browser Shots that wraps up this functionality into something a little more official.When I was building WPVote I wanted to have screenshots of the webpages that were submitted. Clearly I didn’t want to...
Building WPVote has been a really interesting process for me. I have learnt stacks of new things, and through developing WPVote have added a stack of improvements to my WordPress Elemental.From start to finish I have: Building WPVote Part 1:...
In my plans for 2010 I said I wanted to release 3 premium themes, and earlier this week Darren Hoyt and I released the first of the bunch.Accumulo – WordPress themeAccumulo is an RSS aggregation theme designed to imitate sites...
Now that the WPVote site is almost complete I need to prepare it for release.Since I have developed online all I really need to do is redirect the DNS from the current site to my own servers. However there are...
I’m nearly finished with the design of my new WordPress voting site, WPVote, so now need to look more closely at the programming.I enjoy dissecting WordPress themes, and since I also like code simplicity and minimalism (and am working with...
Last time I wrote about WPVote I got a lot of feedback on the design of the logo. I was actually quite happy with how it was looking but the comments got me thinking and I soon realised it wasn’t...
Once I had finished researching similar voting sites I was ready to start designing and building the WPVote theme.To decide basic page structure I went with Balsamiq mockups and knocked out some quick reference designs. I had a firm idea...
After receiving the WPVote domain and theme from Jean I moved on to stage 3. Researching ‘competitors‘ websites.I must admit I tend not to do too much research when building a website, but this time I did decide to do...
In part 1 of Building WPVote I mentioned how I have recently purchased WPVote from Jean-Baptiste Jeung.The first thing I did before I even spoke to Jean was trying to think of simple things I could do that would add...
WordPress MU 2.8: Beginner’s Guide surprised me positively. To be honest, I did hesitate before accepting a review copy from the publishers as I fully expected it to be “just” a beginner’s guide to WordPress mu (the multi user version...
If I am totally honest there aren’t many computer books that I actually find useful, they’re generally for beginners or full of information you can get online for the low-cost of a Google search or two. WordPress Cookbook That’s why...
Being rather introverted I’m quite quiet on social networking sites, however recently I have made some changes that mean I am easily able to take part without leaving my comfort zone.There are actually a few reasons I don’t take part....
I have recently published my first ‘Art Directed’ posts on Binary Moon – namely my reviews for the movies Coraline and Up. Ever since I saw Jason Santa Marias art directed site the idea has brewed in my head that...
TimThumb is a popular image resizing script that was created for Mimbo Pro – but it’s never worked properly with WordPress MU, so I wanted to change that.The reason it doesn’t work is quite simple. Because of the way WordPress...
Elemental is the upcoming theme framework for Pro Theme Design. It’s been in development for absolutely ages, and the code is really showing it’s maturity, and I am really pleased with the possibilities it opens up.The focus when developing Elemental...
I have a massive appetite for learning. I am always reading books and blogs to try to better understand the things I want to do. Design, programming, marketing, copy-writing, I constantly strive to improve.On the web your skill set needs...