What Is This Interactive Thing???
So I have been thinking, and searching, for information on how people run interactive businesses. After looking for a long time I haven’t found much. I have found tons about what we do but not a lot on the operations side of things. So in light of not finding a lot of information I’m going to take a stab at at least writing a few things down and maybe sharing a few gems that I have gone through so you done have to go down the same road. More on this later.
Wordpress Tricks
I have received a couple emails about how I built portions of this site with wordpress so I’ve decided to put together a quick post with some of the things I’ve learned over the past couple sites I’ve built.
1. What theme should I use?
There are two ways to go about this question and it depends largely on your comfort level with PHP and CSS. If you feel like you can layout your own css and manipulate the PHP I would start with a blank template. It’s easier to set up the CSS, easier to change the PHP if you need. Start by checking out http://wpframework.com. They have a pretty little set up running.
2. How do you create multiple single pages?
It’s actually really simple. In your current single.php page delete everything and turn it into an “if” statement (other logical ways exist but you get the idea). All you’d need to do is the following to have two different single pages for your theme. In this code I have separated them based on the different category of content.
<?php
$post = $wp_query->post;
if ( in_category(‘23′) ) {
include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/single_folioPersonal.php’);
} elseif ( in_category(‘22′) ) {
include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/single_folio.php’);
}
?>
3. What Plugins are you using?
A bunch actually. Here is a partial list
- All in one SEO Pack
- del.icio.us for WordPress
- Disqus
- Title Capitalization
- Akismet
- Regenerate Thumbnails
- Twitter Tools
Thats a start for now. I’ll update this post as I continue to change things and have more time to talk about how I setup the templates. Hope this helps.
Flash + Facebook Connect
If anyone is looking for way to connect their flash site to facebook then look no further. This blog post has the start of a project that I am very excited to start participating in and using for our clients. Check out the beginnings of a flash framework to integrate Facebook Connect.
http://www.wellconsidered.be/2009/01/04/facebook-connect-to-actionscript-3/
Lednine.com Is Complete (for Now)
Its finally complete. I hope to update this thang as much as possible moving forward. I’ve got a couple rants on my mind and a few pieces of personal work that I have been staring at for a long while. More coming soon.
Updates Are Up And Running
Just finished uploading and fixing my portfolio sections of the site. I hope to add a bunch more personal work into the mix soon but work always seems to take up my extra time. We have a sh*t ton going on right now and all of it is going to be something to be proud of showing. (fingers crossed)
Just Added a Newsletter
I just finished cobbling together a system to send out a Lednine newsletter. Sign up with the form on the right hand side of the page and ONLY when it seems right, I’ll send you the latest and greatest. The emails will mostly be latest work, news and information, and maybe some special things I have going on. Thanks
Moved My RSS Feed
I have moved my RSS feed to another service. Please subscribe to my RSS feed at this URL: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/Lednine
Thanks
A Rough Day…
Yesterday was a really hard for me at Xylem. Tough economic times have hit every aspect of the nation and Xylem was no exception. In the last 4 months we have seen the sales pipeline slow, clients push out payables, and client decisions take longer than expected. We have been staffed for a larger company and larger work load for some time and finally had to make the hard decision to re-build the company around the work we have. We had to see a lot of very talented people move on yesterday. All I can say is thanks to everyone. We’ll work together again some day. I’ll miss everyone.
New Look New Ideas
So I am in the middle of updating the look and functionality of Lednine. I’ll go ahead and apologize now for some of the css and js bugs. Still working out the kinks and I wanted to upload something tonight. In the next week I’ll re-release my work and other functionality as well as a few blog postings to start in a new direction. Thanks
Wordpress
I have been rebuilding this blog and I can’t say enough about how cool wordpress is as a blog/cms. It’s been so easy to make changes and so easy to configure. Anyways – I know this is nothing but I’m excited to get something up that I can update more frequently. I like what I have but it’s a pain to update. This new version will be cake to work with. Later