Darren Hoyt Dot Com http://www.darrenhoyt.com A Blog, Portfolio and Personal Website Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:04:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en http://www.darrenhoyt.com/http://www.darrenhoyt.com/imagedump/feedimage.jpgDarren Hoyt Dot Com Creating Custom Listings with Expression Engine, Part II http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/10/22/creating-custom-listings-with-expression-engine-part-ii/ http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/10/22/creating-custom-listings-with-expression-engine-part-ii/#comments Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:26:53 +0000 Darren http://www.darrenhoyt.com/?p=309 Part I of the tutorial, we learned how to use Expression Engine's control panel to set up a custom field group which powers our "Homes" listings. In Part II, we learn how to upload, resize and display images in a variety of contexts.]]> In Part I of the tutorial, we learned how to use Expression Engine’s control panel to set up a custom field group which powers our “Homes” listings. The live working example looks like this:

With most of the control panel options already set, let’s install the various image components.

The “File” Extension

Mark Huot’s excellent “File” plugin must be installed first. It allows us to upload and manage images in conjunction with our custom fields. When that’s done, go to Admin › Section Administration › File Upload Preferences and set your preferences:

TimThumb

This thumbnail resize script was developed awhile back for Mimbo Pro and has been used a lot since. TimThumb will take every image we upload with EE and resize them according to height/width parameters we specify in our template. For this project, let’s drop it in our root /scripts/ folder.

The Featured Photo

Each listing will feature one large static photo, specified by the client. This custom field was already created in Part I. Simply go to Publish › Homes and upload your image. Further down, we’ll see how to call it in the template.

The Carousel

First, set up Jan Sorgalla’s jCarousel script and get it working with some sample images. I use this script a lot and have pared down the CSS to make it briefer and easier.

Once you’ve got the styling and positioning how you want, go to Publish › Homes and begin uploading photos:

Because we’ve checked “multiple uploads” in the preferences, EE will generate as many “Browse” fields as you need.

The Zoom Effect

Each thumbnail in the carousel will also use Cabel Sasser’s Fancy Zoom script to display a larger size. Download the files and link them in your <head>, per the instructions.

The Template Code

Now that the components are set up and the images uploaded, we can add some code to the left column of our “Homes” template that will tie it all together:

  1. {exp:weblog:entries weblog="homes"}
  2. <img src="/scripts/timthumb.php?src={featurephoto}&w=239&h=165&zc=;1" alt="{title}" />
  3. {if thumbnails}
  4. <ul class="mycarousel jcarousel-skin-tango">
  5. {thumbnails}
  6. <li><a href="/scripts/timthumb.php?src={file_url}&w=500&h=350&zc=1" alt="{title}" />
  7. <img src="/scripts/timthumb.php?src={file_url}&w=42&h=41&zc=1" alt="{title}" />
  8. </a>
  9. </li>
  10. {/thumbnails}
  11. </ul>
  12. {/if}
  13. {/exp:weblog:entries}

You’ll notice the exp:weblog:entries tag behaves similarly WordPress’s Loop. Here, it begins by querying entries from the weblog we created in Part I. Accordingly, it inserts our featured photo, applies TimThumb, then generates a list of the thumbnails for the carousel, if they exist.

Despite the complexities happening on the page, you’ll notice the actual template code is relatively clean and readable. For more details, see EE’s docs page.

Next Time…

In Part III, we’ll learn how to create relationships, pagination, Google Map integration, and tie the whole page together.

]]> http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/10/22/creating-custom-listings-with-expression-engine-part-ii/feed/ WordPress as a CMS: Making Your Content Unbreakable http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/10/21/wordpress-as-a-cms-making-your-content-unbreakable/ http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/10/21/wordpress-as-a-cms-making-your-content-unbreakable/#comments Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:03:11 +0000 Darren http://www.darrenhoyt.com/?p=299 It might surprise you how infrequently I build WordPress sites intended for actual blogging. More often, I’m building 15- or 20-page websites for businesses who need a bunch of static content displayed in a variety of ways. Some of this can be accomplished with plugins, but the rest must be inserted in the post-edit screen, making things messy for the client:

That’s one big drawback to using WordPress as a CMS: the lack of custom content types/groups, an area where Expression Engine really shines. EE’s custom field system allows developers to put restrictions on how clients insert content. This keeps the content clean, portable and relatively unbreakable because all the structural HTML is tucked away in the templates themselves, not in the post-edit screen.

In this sense, WordPress is not quite a “full-fledged” CMS and developers must create workarounds.

Custom Code

Here’s a page from a recent WordPress project:

spring creek

Notice the 6 thumbnails and excerpts in the left column. Any attempt by the client to add/edit that information could easily disrupt the HTML and potentially break the design:

spring creek

Even if the visual editor was turned on, the client wouldn’t be able to—or necessarily know how to—properly wrap those elements with the necessary HTML. And if the client tried to copy-paste content from another site, the visual editor would inherit that HTML, creating a jumble of inconsistent code.

Luckily in the case of Spring Creek, we ended up writing some special PHP mixed with custom fields and TimThumb to generate and format the content, but not every client can afford to pay for that kind of automated solution.

Content Chunks as “Pages”

Here’s another page from a recent project:

In the sidebar of each static page is a chunk of related content. One method we’ve tried in the past is breaking up sidebar content into separate Pages and using PHP to dynamically insert them wherever appropriate:

That keeps keeps the code cleaner, but unfortunately adds a layer of confusion for the client who must edit his Page content and Sidebar content in two different places.

The <!–nextpage–> Quicktag

So for VA Film, we decided another way to break the content into pieces without allowing the client access to any structural HTML was to deploy the nextpage function:

The sidebar content gets called from within the template, like this:

<div id="sidebar">
<?php if ($numpages > '1') { ?>
<?php $temp_query = $wp_query; ?>
<?php query_posts('page_id='.$post->ID.'&page=2'); ?>
<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
	<div class="entry">
	<?php the_content(); ?>
	</div>
<?php endwhile; endif; ?>
<?php $wp_query = $temp_query; ?>
<?php } ?>
</div>

It’s still a hack, but it allows the client to edit primary content and sidebar content in the same place without inserting any extra <div>s. There are other useful hacks of the <!–nextpage–> function that I’ll write about again soon.

Widgets

The last obvious method would be to create multiple widgetized regions in your theme. This practice is becoming more common in themes like Thematic.

Unfortunately, while the concept of “widgets” might make sense to bloggers, it doesn’t always make sense to the business owner. And depending on the content, it may still require some HTML knowledge, for example: floating an image, inserting a list, or requiring certain <div>s:

Questions

Obviously none of these solutions is perfect. Static content can be displayed in a number of ways—columns, quadrants, floats, lists—but the more ambitious it becomes, the less likely the client can edit it cleanly. In my experience, nothing compares to the rigid control offered by Expression Engine’s custom fields.

Final thoughts:

  • What other ways can we prevent clients from breaking layouts?
  • Should we design page content to be as simple and linear as possible to allow clients easier editability?
  • Should we insist the client learn a bit about HTML before handing over the site?
  • Should we write elegant hacks based strictly on how much money the client can spend?
  • For larger sites with variable page layouts, should we just opt for a true CMS like Expression Engine instead? Should we not compare apples to oranges?
]]> http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/10/21/wordpress-as-a-cms-making-your-content-unbreakable/feed/ Improvisation in Design http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/10/03/improvisation-in-design/ http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/10/03/improvisation-in-design/#comments Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:44:13 +0000 Darren http://www.darrenhoyt.com/?p=292 textures and editing Kuler palettes, organizing them all in a central library, plus writing documentation, chipping away at baseline PSDs, CSS and WordPress frameworks, and generally streamlining the process. Setting the Rules and Regulations for the design department is part of my job description. This can be a double-edged sword.]]> fingerpaintingOn days when I’m not designing mockups, I’m creating paintbrushes and downloading textures and editing Kuler palettes, organizing them all in a central library, plus writing documentation, chipping away at baseline PSDs, CSS and WordPress frameworks, and generally streamlining the process. Setting the Rules and Regulations for the design department is part of my job description. This can be a double-edged sword.

Because we’re a service industry, contracts are written explicitly and design is charged by the hour. We collaborate with clients to set concise deadlines and roadmaps. All this R&D and streamlining and wireframing makes projects more efficient and helps establish boundaries. Regardless, nothing can, or should, be planned right down to the last detail or else it becomes a straitjacket.

Part of my R&D includes organizing hundreds of bookmarks, too often of the “37 Mind-Blowing Grunge Wallpapers” or “23 Skull-Shattering CSS Frameworks” variety — Kyle Meyer touched on these kinds of articles awhile back. What I’ve found is that they, too, encourage restrictiveness. It’s nice to have readymade solutions, but they can also cause a lazy, assembly-line, just-add-water approach.

So how do you break the constraints? It’s inevitable, over time, to find yourself using a personal design “formula”. But there must be room for improvisation and a willingness to break your own rules. Anyone who’s played in a band knows that you can play songs over and over again in practice, but live onstage, you immediately want to embellish and make the songs better and more interesting. There’s no planning for that. You just do it.

In the last six months of designs, I’ve found myself deviating more and more from the agreed-upon wireframes and sketches. I’ve attempted mind-mapping, stared at Flickr’s “interesting” tags, sifted through Ads of the World and Veer Wallpapers and CoolHunter archives and generally tried to find inspiration elsewere, as Anthony Zinni mentioned:

Usually by observing great design outside the medium I am focusing on I am able to apply design principles that are not like current trends and are still appealing. This also often helps take my mind off of the project, which is usually when I am able to find a great solution.

I’ve become comfortable knowing that 50% of the decisions will be made at the drawing board and the other 50% made in-the-moment. It’s nice to exercise the right-half of the brain more often anyway, as it gets easily forgotten in a technical, time-sensitive industry.

The feedback I’ve been hearing more often lately is:

Wait, that’s not exactly what we outlined in the contract - but I like it better.

Improvising more often has kept me from steering into ruts and giving clients rote, half-hearted designs. Richard Rutter said it nicely:

Just as with Colly at Erskine, so we at Clearleft have a pre-defined process. User-centred design demands it, and potential clients like to see a process before hiring their agency. But what we’re starting to enjoy more and more is deviating from the process to achieve the same goal. Skipping steps, changing the order, adding extra steps, using different tools. This all keeps us fresh, but it also helps eliminate the production line approach it’s so easy to fall into.

]]> http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/10/03/improvisation-in-design/feed/ Exploring WordPress Frameworks and Child Themes http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/18/exploring-wordpress-frameworks-and-child-themes/ http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/18/exploring-wordpress-frameworks-and-child-themes/#comments Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:14:20 +0000 Darren http://www.darrenhoyt.com/?p=296 ThemeShaper blog this summer (if you haven't, you should be looking deep within yourself to ask why not), you've seen loads of documentation for his WordPress framework, Thematic and the various child themes which inherit their power from Thematic's mothership functionality. ]]> If you’ve been keeping up with Ian Stewart’s ThemeShaper blog this summer (if you haven’t, you should be looking deep within yourself to ask why not), you’ve seen loads of documentation for his WordPress framework, Thematic and the various child themes which inherit their power from Thematic’s mothership functionality.

Anyone who builds a quantity of WordPress sites throughout the year would be crazy to not already have their own baseline theme, much like anyone who re-uses the same dozen structural classes would be crazy not to deploy their own CSS framework for each project. Streamlining is a way of life when you’re charging by the hour.

But Thematic is more than just the groundwork. It’s also a handy way to keep the core theme functions isolated from from the child theme styling so they are easily updated with no damage to the site. It also offers a dozen options for widgetized regions, plus a library of custom hooks and filters. Sounds tricky, but this gives child-theme authors a wide range of options to incorporate or repurpose, all from within the functions.php file.

Why does this interest me? Because a year after the release of Mimbo 2.2, there have been nearly 70,000 downloads. If I were to release v2.3 tomorrow, that custom styling would be lost for many users with modded themes. But if I were to build a Mimbo parent theme and release 1-2 child themes, upgrading would be easy.

Another reason I’d like to try a parent-child scheme is for sites which redesign annually and want their Archives section to reflect that. The site I’m thinking of is The Virginia Film Festival, which I designed and built on WordPress, and which launched again just yesterday:

vafilm

It’s built on a baseline stylesheet and baseline WordPress theme that I’ve been developing at Category 4 for the last year. It’s currently the foundation for probably 30 recent sites we’ve developed, and a major timesaver. But, the Va Film project is a little different.

Each year, the festival has a different theme, which obviously requires a new design. If you check out the Archives page, you’ll see it’s currently handled with static screenshots. Going forward, we’d like a more elegant way to let users explore the same content but with a different skin, aka, child theme. The parent theme would be a pretty generic layout similar to what you see on the homepage, minus the styling, with child themes called /2007/, /2006/, /2005/, and so on.

But couldn’t we just use one of the various theme-switching plugins available? We could, but 5 years from now when there are 15 different site designs, we want global changes to be painless - hence, the parent theme framework.

In any case, Ian’s explorations on the subject have inspired a lot of “aha!” moments among WP developers. It’s likely they will influence aspects of how new versions of WordPress handle parent-child relationships. Or maybe that’s happened already - WP 2.7 will allow child themes to override entire parent templates.

Don’t miss these related articles:

]]> http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/18/exploring-wordpress-frameworks-and-child-themes/feed/ Notes on the Agregado Theme http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/14/notes-on-the-agregado-theme/ http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/14/notes-on-the-agregado-theme/#comments Sun, 14 Sep 2008 05:35:59 +0000 Darren http://www.darrenhoyt.com/?p=284 Agregado launched on Monday, we've had about 3500 downloads plus a lot of questions about how it works and why it was made. Here's a bit more documentation to add to what Smashing already published.]]> Since Agregado launched on Monday, we’ve had about 3500 downloads plus a lot of questions about how it works and why it was made. Here’s a bit more documentation to add to what Smashing already published.

The Inspiration

This year it became obvious microblogging tools like Twitter were monopolizing people’s attention. Blogs got updated less and the sidebar content (Flickr thumbs, delicious bookmarks) largely directed users elsewhere. Tumblr and FriendFeed also became popular and it seemed many bloggers suddenly felt limited by the traditional blog format.

Already thinking about all this, I got an email from Smashing Magazine in June offering to commission a theme. I pitched a lifestream+blog concept, sent rough comps and they were totally supportive. I enlisted my friend/co-worker and developer extraordinaire Matt Dawson to split up the duties.

Overall Design

Agregado is Portuguese for “syndicate, collect, aggregate”. The homepage mockups were designed while using a new MacBook and working evenings in a dark, cramped pub in Portugal. It’s interesting that the dark, shiny design ended up reflecting that work environment, but it wasn’t really on purpose.

The design elements aren’t really based on anything, mainly improvisation. It’s always hard to design something general enough to suit everyone’s blogging purposes, but that’s a topic for another post.

The Navigation

Because the layout incorporates a lot of different content types, I obviously didn’t want to go the route of the magazine layout and overwhelm users. I wanted to do a theme that felt very personal and very compressed. WordPress comes with a number of sidebar modules by default (XHTML Validation, Monthly Archives, Search), but I find myself using them pretty rarely.

Subcategories have been compressed behind dropdowns, which use a heavily modified version of these Coda-style bubbles that run on jQuery. They also use opacity attributes which aren’t supported by older browsers, but it goes to show that a lot of Agregado was improvised. This first week after launching, we’re still gauging what works and what doesn’t. If this was a pro theme, I would not have been quite so free-wheeling.

We did run into some trouble here: for the jQuery bit to work, each <a> tag in the nav needed a class of “trigger”, but wp_list_categories only attaches a class to the <li>. So Matt was able to use a bit of jQuery magic to dynamically add the class, although it’s not visible in the source code unless you’re inspecting with a tool like Firebug. It was cool to see how that was done and it’s already inspired a couple more ideas for future themes.

The icons on the right side of the navbar are just another attempt to compress information and get it out of the way to make room for the main event: the last 9 blog posts. Does it work? I can see why some would have trouble with the usability, but again it’s all an experiment. Succeed or fail, it highlights the need to break out of the standard WordPress schema once in awhile.

Typography

Because the theme uses light text on a dark background, I used larger type size for single-post pages, and kept the line-height (145%) and letter-spacing (0.15em) pretty breathable.

On the homepage posts and lifestream, you’ll notice fresher headlines are bigger/lighter, but get incrementally smaller/darker as they get older. This was an attempt to make posts a little more visually meaningful, more like tag clouds. Don’t know if it works for everyone, but I enjoy the effect.

The Last 9 Posts

To pull those headlines and style the font-size and -color accordingly, Matt put together some code (similar to Probama) that attached unique #id’s to those left-floating list-items…

<li id="headline-1">

…which makes CSS styling easy. But how did each <li> actually get assigned an #id? Matt explains:

I added a little counter incrementer right at the beginning of the loop. It gets printed to the page on each iteration as part of that entries class, and then at the end of that iteration, it gets one added to it ($count++).

Essentially, it counts the posts and inserts a numerical value in the class. This technique is also used to break up the monotony on Mimbo Pro’s category archives pages.

The Lifestream

The lifestream is central to the theme, even though it only appears on the homepage. After a couple mockups displaying the lifestream in various formats, the Smashing Mag folks and I decided it was best in a sidebar, completely distinct and separate from the blog posts.

The code itself is a fork of Kieran Delaney’s SimpleLife plugin, which uses SimplePie to parse RSS feeds and display them in chronological order. The code was built right into functions.php with hooks into the control panel to configure feeds.

While revamping SimpleLife, many bugs were fixed, but a few remained, even a couple days after the launch. There are currently still some limitations: certain feeds can be slow, erratic, feature strange unparseable characters, or just not show up at all. Matt added some functionality which creates a /cache/ folder and sets 0777 permissions, speeding things up a bit. I’d also recommend WP Super Cache.

The Contact Form

This was code developed by Tim McDaniels that was adapted from Mimbo Pro. It hooks into the control panel, allowing admins to set their email address and success message. Due to spam these days, it’s no longer safe to publish a static email address to blogs, so including a contact form in personal blog like Agregado was an obvious choice. It currently has no CAPTCHA, but seems to collect virtually no spam in my experience.

The Static Pages

Agregado includes custom code which determines whether a Page is parent-level, and if so prints the child links in the sidebar. Accordingly, CSS is used to show or hide submenus. This sounds obvious, but we were never a fan of how WordPress handled this natively while building sites at Category 4, so I re-used some code from our own WordPress framework.

The Archives Page

Admittedly, for blogs with thousands of posts, the custom archives page could get a bit messy. At the same time, the way we’re typically expected to navigate archives never appealed to me either — clicking “November 2006″, for example, and hoping to find the right post. Visually, it works much better for me to see everything in a grid, sorted by month, in descending order.

The Pagination

I’ve never loved paging back through archives when my only options are “newer” or “older” because I can’t quickly visualize just how large the archives might be. So Matt adapted the code from Yellow Swordfish’s WP plugin and built it right into functions.php. You can see it at the bottom of an archive pages like this one, or in search results. To my eye, much more useful.

The Release

You ever test the hell of something, then make some 11th-hour changes which end up affecting other parts of the code, but since you already tested those things the first time around, you don’t check to see if the other parts are affected?

Yeah.

Some of these issues even slipped past the beta testers. In any case, we had a few “oh shit!” moments in the 48hrs after the original release, but got those bugs squashed pretty quickly.

Matt was a great partner in this project and did not seem to mind when I threw random tasks at him (the animated dropdowns, the cascading font sizes) during spontaneous brainstorms. Matt’s posted a few of his own discoveries during the building of Agregado:

  1. Aggregating Your Social Bookmarking Feeds with Simple Pie
  2. Preventing Your Javascript from Loading in an iFrame
  3. Using WordPress’ wp_enqueue Script in Themes and Plugins

The Future

We’re going to release a fully localized version of Agregado soon, thanks to some editing of strings by our friend Ralph in Austria. Plus, better error-checking and more consistent parsing of feeds from services like Yahoo Pipes. Keep sending any suggestions you’ve got.

In the next year or two, I think services like Tumblr will continue gaining popularity and people will want more and more ways to mix media and social/third-party content into their blogs. Most bloggers aren’t writing as many essay-length posts. Attention spans are becoming seriously short. I think the challenge for designers and theme authors is finding ways to present information as immediately as possible, from multiple sources, without it being chaotic or unnavigable.

]]> http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/14/notes-on-the-agregado-theme/feed/ Agregado 1.2 Released http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/10/agregado-12-released/ http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/10/agregado-12-released/#comments Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:55:14 +0000 Darren http://www.darrenhoyt.com/?p=295 More feedback, more changes to the theme, thanks again for everyone’s testing and patience:

  1. Fixed a bug for Last.fm/audioscrobbler feeds
  2. Changed the sizing of Flickr images
  3. Changed the titling of Flickr images
  4. Fixed icon issues with “Additional 1,2,3,4″ feeds

Go download now!

]]> http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/10/agregado-12-released/feed/ Agregado 1.1 Released http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/09/agregado-11-released/ http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/09/agregado-11-released/#comments Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:59:58 +0000 Darren http://www.darrenhoyt.com/?p=293 the Agregado release has been fantastic and the folks at Smashing were great to collaborate with. Here are some changes we've already made]]> The response to the Agregado release has been fantastic and the folks at Smashing were great to collaborate with.

Here are some changes we’ve already made:

  1. Permissions have been set automatically for all scripts and folders
  2. The “Tags/Categories” bar at the bottom of posts should wrap correctly
  3. Any jQuery calls within header.php now point to WP’s native jQuery installation. This should prevent any collisions with plugins like Lightbox.
  4. Subpage menus should now be consistent
  5. Archives link now uses ‘url’ instead of ‘template_url’ parameter. Should resolve any broken links.

We knew if the theme was ambitious, the potential for quirks would be much higher. Still, 1000+ downloads in the first day with just bit of breakage! We’ll continue taking feedback from anyone having issues.

]]> http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/09/agregado-11-released/feed/ Agregado Lifestream Theme for Wordpress Released http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/08/agregado-lifestream-theme-for-wordpress-released/ http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/08/agregado-lifestream-theme-for-wordpress-released/#comments Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:28:53 +0000 Darren http://www.darrenhoyt.com/?p=282 Matt Dawson, commissioned by the folks at Smashing Magazine. It features a built-in lifestream module and contact form with with custom control panel options. ]]> Agregado is a WordPress theme by Darren Hoyt and Matt Dawson, commissioned by the folks at Smashing Magazine. It features a built-in lifestream module and contact form with custom control panel options.

The motivation was to preserve the personal website, aggregate your data from sources around the web like Flickr, Delicious and Twitter, and publish it all in one convenient place in a consistent format. More details & documentation»

Live Demo

View it here»

Download the Theme

Agregado Theme (ZIP, 241KB)

Download the PSD

Agregado PSD (ZIP, 3.91MB)

Requirements

  • WordPress 2.6+
  • Tested in: Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.0+, IE7+
  • Host server with PHP5+ and cURL installed

Features

  1. Lifestream module with carousel
  2. Animated dropdown menus
  3. Custom archives page
  4. Built-in contact form module with AJAX sent/fail message
  5. Built-in drop caps for paragraphs
  6. Numerical pagination on archive and search pages
  7. Author-highlighting for comments
  8. User profile module
  9. Widgetized bottom bar on homepage
  10. Widgetized sidebar on single post pages
  11. ‘More in this Category’ sidebar module
  12. Control panel options for lifestream and contact form

Getting things configured

  1. Go to Settings->Permalinks and ensure your URLs use names, so the “Archives” icon links correctly
  2. Go to Write->Page, and create a new page called Archives, selecting “archives” from the Template pulldown menu.
  3. Go to Design->Agregado Options and input your RSS information from services you want featured in your lifestream, such as Flickr, Delicious or Twitter.
  4. Go to Design->Agregado Options and input your email address and success message for the contact form
  5. Go to Users->Your Profile and fill out the First Name, Last Name and Biographical Info fields.

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. I installed Agregado - why isn’t WP finding my stylesheets and javascript? Why are subpage menus not working on certain pages?
    Check to make sure none of your plugins are colliding with any of the theme’s jQuery. Starting by turning them all off. If you find specific collisions, please email me.
  2. Why does the lifestream load slowly sometimes?
    Sometimes fetching certain feeds (ex: Twitter) takes a second longer. Also make sure permissions are set to 0777 on the /includes/ and /includes/cache/ folders, though this should happen automatically upon install.

    In the control panel options, you can also set the intervals feeds are retrieved (ex: 60 minutes).

    I would also recommend Donncha’s awesome WP Super Cache plugin to speed things up.

  3. Why doesn’t my link to the Archives page work?
    Make sure you have created a new Page called “Archives” and selected your custom template from the pulldown.
  4. How does the user profile pic work?
    If you haven’t already, visit Gravatar and sign up for an account using the same email address as your WordPress admin account.

Big Thanks…

…to Chris Coyier, Ben Gillbanks, Ian Stewart and Hafiz Rahman for beta testing.

Changelog

• Version 1.2 | Sep 10, 2008
• Version 1.1 | Sep 9, 2008
• Version 1.0 | Sep 8, 2008

]]> http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/08/agregado-lifestream-theme-for-wordpress-released/feed/ All the Way Down http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/01/all-the-way-down/ http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/01/all-the-way-down/#comments Mon, 01 Sep 2008 04:19:39 +0000 Darren http://www.darrenhoyt.com/?p=291 this week's heavy rainfall which surely killed hundreds of animals unlucky enough to be trapped in small spaces.]]> At the swimming pool, Wistar and I sometimes poke around in the filters to see what animal carnage might be swirling around. Usually it’s frogs, Japanese beetles, dragonflies, grasshoppers or some combination. This is especially true during summer storms, like this week’s heavy rainfall which surely killed hundreds of animals unlucky enough to be trapped in small spaces.

But yesterday we found something else - a turtle, exhausted and barely able to stay afloat any longer, supporting a frog on its back while a spider clung to the frog’s head to avoid drowning.

turtle

We guessed it had been 3 days since the storms hit, when the filters were last emptied. Somehow the three had survived in 8″ of water, one of top of the other like ice cream scoops. Even after their rescue, they were reluctant to part ways. Finally, the spider disappeared into the grass and the frog hopped in the other direction.

For some reason this weird little event stuck with me. I thought about turtles in mythology. The Hindu god Vishnu had taken the avatar form of a turtle (”Kurma”) and held mountains on his back. Another Iroquois creation myth depicts the North American continent as supported by the strength and steadfastness of a turtle.

These are great stories. They make agnosticism that much harder, not feeling comfortable with supernatural explanations or resisting speculation about what greater force might be out there, carrying us all on its back.

I’m more likely to be contrary and ask, “if the turtle holds up the world, who holds up the turtle?”, as the anecdote goes:

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

It was Wistar’s father who held up this particular turtle yesterday so that we could snap some pictures. The turtle was surprisingly at ease in someone else’s hands. He may have been shocked or exhausted or just relieved to be found. On another day, all alone, he would not have been so lucky.

Update:

The picture has generated quite a few comments on Reddit and Post Punk Kitchen, plus an inspirational poster. The Cvillain folks also Dugg it.

]]> http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/01/all-the-way-down/feed/ Back to School Sale on Mimbo Pro http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/08/27/back-to-school-sale-on-mimbo-pro/ http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/08/27/back-to-school-sale-on-mimbo-pro/#comments Thu, 28 Aug 2008 03:09:22 +0000 Darren http://www.darrenhoyt.com/?p=287 st, Pro Theme Design will be having a 30% off sale on all copies of Mimbo Pro. How does it work? Follow my Twitter feed and be on the lookout for a tweet containing the special coupon code. The sale only lasts 24 hrs, so mark your calendars.]]> On September 1st, Pro Theme Design will be having a 30% off sale on all copies of Mimbo Pro. How does it work? Follow my Twitter feed and be on the lookout for a tweet containing the special coupon code. The sale only lasts 24 hrs, so mark your calendars.

In the meantime, school is starting soon. Time to start bugging Mom for that sweet Members Only jacket and Trapper Keeper.

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