Develop Daly

New Theme: Malleable

Patrick Daly — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:26:53 +0000

Malleable is based upon an older theme I once released, but has been updated and simplified as a Hybrid child theme.

Malleable is a news-type theme that features a configurable slider and address (with microformats). It is based upon the Hybrid News theme so it shares many similarities.

More Details on Malleable

Trial: Five $300 PSD > Child Themes

Patrick Daly — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 06:33:52 +0000

I generally spend most of my time consulting and designing custom sites, but not everyone needs that service. For the rest, a decent design conversion fits the bill.

There’s plenty of PSD to WP conversion companies out there, but none that tailor to child themes, specifically. So I’m giving this a test run.

The first five requests I get will be $300. Send the tweets out and let your friends know about this deal because it won’t last long.

What you get:

A custom Hybrid child theme
One home page and one interior page
W3C Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict/CSS
IE 7+, Firefox, Safari, Chrome compatibility
SEO Code, Load Speed Optimization

In addition, I’ll be turning the designs around in one day each. Meaning, you’re likely to get your site the next day and, at most, five days later.

Interested?

Just visit the Contact page and I’ll get back to you ASAP.

What is Your WordPress Experience Level?

Patrick Daly — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:30:48 +0000

The most successful marketers have one thing in common — they know their audience. Unfortunately, I’ve taken my site in so many directions over the years that my audience has consistently changed, rather than consistently grown. So that’s mistake #1 that I made.

Mistake #2 is that since I’ve decided on the general goal of this site — that is, to make Develop Daly accessible to customers and to provide rich information on WordPress and web design — I haven’t really addressed who I’m writing to.

Now, whomever my audience is won’t dictate the exact content of the site, but it will help me determine whether or not posts like “Is @font-face Safe to Use Yet?” needs more or less explanation of the general topic of web fonts. With that said, leave your vote on the poll.

Safe to Use @font-face Yet?

Patrick Daly — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 06:17:16 +0000

If you’re not familiar with @font-face yet don’t fret. For years web-safe fonts have been the only easily used fonts for web designers. Along the way, Flash and image alternatives have been made up to accommodate the barren typographic landscape of the web.

The obvious reason for lack of web-safe fonts is that displaying a font on a website requires it to be installed on the computer viewing it — of which only a handful are universally accepted as common enough to be web-safe.

A technique called @font-face was invented to remove the dependence on a user’s computer and instead use fonts from the web itself. So, in short, it pulls fonts from a web server rather than a local computer, making them viewable by anyone…almost.

Slow Browser Support

While @font-face does its job well, we’re stuck relying on browsers to support the feature. Surprisingly, Internet Explorer was an early supporter — since version four. The limitation is that it required fonts of a certain font file type that was/is infrequently used (.eot).

Fast forward to today and now every major browser supports @font-face in some sort of fashion. Firefox just announced support for the newest supported font type: .woff. So the web font is still evolving, but the big question: is it safe to use yet?

Yes, you can use @font-face successfully in all current versions of major browsers!

The Wait Is Over

All major browsers now fully support @font-face. You’ll need to pay close attention to which browsers accept which font types, but as long as you provide all of the different font types required you’ll achieve the desired effect.

Browser	.otf TT, .ttf	.otf PS	.eot	.svg	.woff
IE4+
FireFox 3.5
FireFox 3.6
Chrome .3
Chrome 4
Safari 3.1+
Opera

What Fonts Can You Use?

Any font can be used now with the availability of font converters. The best font converter I’ve found is Font Squirrel’s @font-face Generator. With many different settings for generating the most compatible font and the option to generate all possible font types, Font Squirrel’s generator is amazing.

Seriously, Any Font?

First, any font can be used assuming a font generator is able to properly render all of the necessary font types .

However, judgment is necessary in which fonts you choose. Because you’re placing fonts on a server and making them publicly available you cannot use fonts that restrict distribution. So, only fonts that explicitly allow the use of a font for whichever purpose you’re intending (commercial, non-commercial, non-profit, etc.) are allowed to be used. In other words, if you have to pay for a font you likely cannot use it.

As An Example

The header above (As An Example) and many other elements on this page are using the font Graublau Sans Web, a free font available for use on the web.

Using @font-face

I think the easiest way to understand how to use @font-face is to simply download a font package from Font Squirrel and look at the stylesheet provided.

Available Font Types

TrueType (.ttf): TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe’s Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. Source
OpenType (.otf): OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType’s basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. Source
OpenType PS (.otf): In addition, we have the PostScript (PS) “flavor”, sometimes known as OpenType PS or CFF-based OpenType and having an “.otf” file suffix. Adobe and font producers including Elsner+Flake, Emigre, Storm and URW++ typically produce fonts in the OpenType PS flavor. Source
OpenType TT (.ttf): OpenType terminology redefines Windows TrueType fonts as “the TrueType (TT) flavor of OpenType”, sometimes called OpenType TT and having a “.ttf” file suffix. Microsoft and other font producers including Linotype typically produce OpenType fonts in the OpenType TT flavor. Since OpenType TT fonts are for all practical purposes internally the same format as Windows TrueType fonts, there are no problems getting such fonts to work in Windows. Even Windows 3.1 from 1992 will display such fonts. Source
Embedded OpenType (.eot): Embedded OpenType fonts are a compact form of OpenType fonts designed by Microsoft for use as embedded fonts on web pages. Source
Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg): Scalable Vector Graphics is a family of specifications of an XML-based file format for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and dynamic (i.e. interactive or animated). Source
Web Open Font Format (.woff): The format itself is intended to be a simple repackaging of OpenType or TrueType font data, it doesn’t introduce any new behavior, alter the @font-face linking mechanism or affect the way fonts are rendered. Many font vendors have expressed support for this new format so the hope is this will open up a wider range of font options for web designers. Source

WordPress Tips 2010

Patrick Daly — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:38:08 +0000

For the past two years I’ve give ten tips on how to better use WordPress so I wanted to continue the tradition. This time, however, I’m taking a bigger picture look at the WordPress horizon. These “tips” are less tangible than adding a snippet of code to a template or installing a new plugin. Still, you’ll surely find them helpful for understanding WordPress more as well as keeping up with the always evolving software.

Also, there’s many posts out there featuring tips for WordPress. Honestly, I don’t have much more to add at this point. That said, after the 3.0 launch in April 2010 there will be much more to discuss.

Theme Frameworks

My prediction is that before long the majority of new themes will be child themes. That is, once the WordPress theme repository supports child themes I think they will catch on quickly with developers and gradually gain users. The reason is simple. Child themes are easier to make, maintain, and switch between than traditional themes.

The parent/child theme relationship is already possible with any theme, but frameworks built for the sole purpose of being said framework are so robust and well thought out that they’ll pioneer the themeing frontier for the next couple of years.

WordPress = BuddyPress + WordPress MU + bbPress

So this equation has long been one of frustration.

If you wanted to use BuddyPress with WordPress you needed WordPress MU.
If you wanted to use bbPress with WordPress it needed it’s own install.
If you wanted to use bbPress integrated with WordPress you got a headache.
If you wanted to use WordPress MU with all of the features of its standalone counterpart then you had to wait.

This year will be dominated with consolidation. All of these separate projects are already in the works to become seamless. WordPress MU will simply become WordPress. BuddyPress will work in WordPress. bbPress will become a plugin that will fit right into WordPress.

This has to be one of the most exciting things for developers. Suddenly managing these different properties will reside under one roof. Nuff said.

Community

The driving force behind WordPress’ success is community. 2010 seeks to make the community more accessible. Ideas are floating around about how to revamp WordPress.org to be more community-centric, giving everyone a voice and making ideas actionable.

On top of this, the WP user base is so large now that feuds pop up about the differences in how WordPress should be run. While its not ever a good thing to quarrel, it is nice to know that people care enough about this project to put their feelings into it.

And then on the flip side, the user base is so diluted with every type of person out there that wrangling the community is harder than ever. So it may not be long before large groups begin to move away from WP to find their new, upcoming project. There’s nothing wrong with that — its how WordPress grew to be so successful. Don’t fret though, WordPress is here to stay for a long, long time.

Pro, Premium, Core Plugins

I’m not differentiating between these three categories of plugins. They all share the same idea of being well-developed and supported plugins. In other words, its taking more and more to be considered a worthwhile plugin these days. Its the nature of capitalism at work and its been great for producing some high quality projects so far. The downside, of course, is that competing with the “big boys” is becoming harder.

But, an experiment is upon us and officially supported plugins (those that WordPress will put a stamp of approval on) are nearing. The debate is back and forth over whether having “official” plugins is good or not, but it should at least prove to be a move in the right direction for those wanting a bit more stability and longevity out of their sites.

Re-Dedication to Perfection

Matt and the WordPress committers have always been keen on keeping the code clean and bug-free. Nothing can be perfect, of course, but there seems to be a renewed spirit of making sure the best quality code gets into the core. Beyond that, there’s a promise for more stringent testing phases to ensure that bugs are caught and fixed before major releases. This comes from keeping the development cycle more organized and also from a simple spirit of making 3.0 the best WordPress ever.

CSS Video Tutorials

Patrick Daly — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:51:05 +0000

I‘m pretty excited to announce the availability of a new series of video tutorials on CSS.

Together with O’Reilly, we’ve put together (what we think) a unique set of tutorials that make learning CSS easy. Instead of reading a book this time, we’ve made it easy to watch 2-7 minute video clips on specific topics of CSS. This is great because you actually see how things are done. It’s also online which makes it much more organic than a book that’s written and never altered. This means that we’re able to add more tutorials where we see fit or even correct errors or provide further clarification.

I don’t need to go on and on about it here. Instead, check out the information page for the table of contents and a bit more explanation.

How I Backup Everything

Patrick Daly — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 06:10:21 +0000

After my incident last week I was glad I’d just recently started backing everything up automatically. I figured it’d be a good tip to share. First of all, this is only for PC users, sorry.

Your best friend here is SyncToy. There’s lots of backup tools out there, but most aren’t free. If they are, then they probably aren’t any good. However, SyncToy is both free and awesome. So go download it.

A prerequisite to all of this is that you have another drive to backup to. You’ll likely want a large external hard drive (I’m using a 1TB drive) so that you leave yourself plenty of growing room. So let’s setup SyncToy to backup our drive.

Setting Up SyncToy

You could just backup your Documents folder or your Pictures, but if we’re gonna play it safe let’s just backup our entire C drive (or whichever your main drive is).

Create a New Folder Pair

Your Left Folder is going to be your regular drive with all your stuff on it (C drive). Your Right Folder is the backup (your external drive, probably).

Action

SyncToy gives you three options on how to backup.

Synchronize
Echo
Contribute

We don’t want to Synchronize files because if you ever accidentally deleted something it would be reflected on both drives. We want to save everything just in case.

Echo sends everything to the backup drive, but if you change a file or folder name on the original drive then those changes are reflected on both drives. This is an okay option, but again, I’d rather keep everything just in case. That’s why we’re doing this in the first place!

So, I’ve chosen Contribute as it just backs up everything. If you rename a file then you have the old name and the new name on the backup drive.

Scheduling Your Backup

I’d prefer to have everything backed up nightly, but you have the option to do whatever you want. However often you chose, here’s how to schedule on Vista or Windows 7. For other operating systems, use SyncToy’s help menu as this is just coped right from there anyway:

From the Start menu, select All Programs – Accessories – System Tools – Task Scheduler.
Select Create Basic Task in the Actions pane on the right.
Add a Name and Description and select Next.
Choose when you want the task to start and select Next.
Choose date/times (if applicable) to run task and select Next.
Choose Start a Program option and select Next.
Select Browse and locate the SyncToyCmd.exe.
Type -R in the Add Arguments textbox. -R all by itself will run all folder pairs that are active for run all. If you want to run just a single folder pair, add -R"My Pair" to the end of the command line.

Now you can sleep well. Of course, this is only one step. What if your office caught fire and your computer and backup drive were destroyed. You probably won’t ever face that problem, but you’d want to look into remote backups to play it safe. But at least taking this step is much safer than you were before!

Backups, You Better Have ‘Em

Patrick Daly — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:24:56 +0000

I‘m sitting on my office floor right now because I just finished installing a new hard drive and I’m waiting for Windows to reinstall.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that when I booted up my computer I was getting a message that one of my two hard drives had failed, but everything was still working fine so I did about five minutes of research and gave up.

Then I came home from Thanksgiving to a DOS screen that told me that no bootable drive could be found. It ran some tests and eventually worked. But just about anytime I left the room I came back to the error message and it became increasingly more difficult to boot up. Then it just wouldn’t boot at all.

So, I went and bought a new drive today (Windows just finished installing, so I’ll wrap this up soon) and I’m back in business.

Thankfully on Black Friday I noticed Target was selling 1TB external hard drives for $59.99 (that’s crazy!) so I got one and as soon as I got home started backing up all my data. I already have another external HD, but it was about to max out.

In the past I haven’t been so fortunate to have all my data backed up, but I made a concerted effort to backup everything this past year and it certainly paid off.

Make sure you’re backing up your computer and your website. It’s not a lesson worth learning the hard way.

Hybrid Byline Plugin 0.1 Beta

Patrick Daly — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:00:45 +0000

If you’ve ever used the Hybrid theme and tried to do much customization of the code you may have been somewhat frustrated if you don’t understand how to use hooks. That’s ok, they’re not for everyone. Hybrid is still an excellent theme framework though, but you just need to know how to utilize it. One of those ways is adding additional features to it that make it easier for the end user, while keeping it simple for developers and bloat-free.

A common question about modifying Hybrid is how to change the byline. It’s the part below the post or page title that says states the author, date, etc. Until now, you’ve needed to be PHP savvy (or at least know how to edit a PHP file).

What can it do?

This plugin will add new options to the “Hybrid Settings” page that’s already under your “Appearance” tab in the WordPress backend (assuming you’re using Hybrid!).

Hybrid Byline Plugin Settings

This is what you’ll see after you install and activate the plugin. By default, the checked boxes reflect the current byline settings that Hybrid uses. It gives you the ability to add categories or the number of comments to your post byline. You’ll also notice that you can add the author and date to pages as well. One extra addition is that you can choose to add nofollow to the post author link (a possible SEO benefit).

Possible Future Features

The plugin is brand new and can certainly use some other features.

Change the date format
Change the text before the author and between the author and date (i.e. “by” and “on”)
Select whether the author name links to the author’s archive or website URL
Choose where the byline appears
- Currently the byline changes will be reflected in all areas the loop is run (i.e. posts page, archives, category pages, etc.)

It’s in beta!

Download Hybrid Byline Plugin

I haven’t fully tested this yet, so I don’t advise using it on a live site just yet, but I would appreciate any feedback.

Please use the forums to alert me of any bugs or ideas about how to improve the plugin.

I’m Thankful For WordPress

Patrick Daly — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:23:59 +0000

There’s a lot of things I’m thankful for: my family, my dog, a freelancer’s freedom, Christ. But as it pertains to my livelihood I’m particularly thankful for WordPress.

Not only was WordPress my kick-start into standards-based web design, but it has since served as my primary CMS of choice. I don’t need to go into features that make WordPress great. They are and if you don’t believe me I can prove it to you elsewhere.

The WordPress feature-set is nice, but I’m most thankful for everything surrounding WordPress. Community: IRC, forums, thousands of WP-centered blogs with great info, WordCamps, passion.

I’d like to touch on that last note: passion. I’ve seen some passionate people around the WordPress-o-sphere for a while, but I’ve recently just really noticed it. I’ve always felt passionate about WordPress, but of course the fire grows.

Any sort of product, service, company, etc. with a following there will have turmoil at some point. WordPress licensing debates have gone on forever, but within the past year they’ve really blown up. The same sort of fiery issues come up every once in a while (i.e. commercial plugins, duplicating premium themes, wp.org progress, MU, etc.). Those on both sides of an issue dig their trenches and seemingly burrow deeper and deeper as the argument continues.

Of course fighting for your stance tooth and nail isn’t anything new. But what amazes me is that WordPress can cause it. For starters, WordPress is six years old. In part, its infancy is probably a cause of some of the issues. Nevertheless, it hasn’t be around long and already there are enough users divided amongst themselves. It’s not a good thing, but it is cool to see so many people making their cases because they care.

No one would waste their time arguing about WordPress if they didn’t care — almost no one, that is. Sure, there’s some people that argue because they just like to disagree with people. Others do so selfishly and care not what is best for WordPress but for themselves. For the most part, though, people want to see WordPress succeed (beyond what it’s incredibly achieved so far).

So we argue debate because we care.

Sometimes we just need a reminder of what we’re thankful for. Keep that in mind if you’re amongst those of us who spend time (too much?) trying to figure out where WordPress is, where it should go and how to get there.

Happy Thanksgiving.