New Look
I got tired of the previous design - aside from the fact that it was cool and up to date in 2002, it did its time. I've accumulated much WordPress knowledge since that setup was thought of, and I felt it was time. So here goes, a brand new design. I've kept several elements from the past one, such as the Disqus comments and WP-prettyPhoto, but it brought more interesting features not only in terms of display but also in terms of embedded plugins. The author of the theme hardcoded (obviously with function_exists checks) to ensure good compatibility, such as Yoast Breadcrumbs, PageNavi and others. So I got to play with a bunch of new toys and hack this theme up a bit.
I've also incorporated ads into this design. Yes. This blog is amazingly popular for mobile-related stuff (mostly Cydia), and well I'd be stupid not to monetize it. There's one ad unit in the sidebar that's low enough to be unobtrusive and another more obvious one at the top of single posts. I've discovered why my blog has been showing public service ads for the last 2 years and fixed that (shows how much I care).
Ideally, I'll start posting interesting stuff here eventually about WordPress, Mobile and general development. Stay tuned, and thanks for your loyalty - I still don't understand why anyone would read this blog, but whatever floats your boats.
Hacking WordPress: Introduction to custom plugins and advanced templating
For those of you who don't know (which may very well be all of you right now), I will be presenting a talk at WordCamp Montreal July 12th. The title of the presentation, if you haven't guessed, is "Hacking WordPress: Introduction to custom plugins and advanced templating". I'll explain how you can use your own plugins and functions to make your WordPress site sing. In other words, it will basically be a relatively improvised primer on the following things:
- Introduction to creating WordPress plugins
- Managing your sidebars and widgets
- Using WordPress' Codex and API documentation
- Hacking up your templates to use all the power provided by WordPress
If you're not registered yet, you have until July 9th to do so on EventBrite. For more information regarding WordPress Montreal 2009, check out the official site, mailing list, blog, Facebook group and Twitter account or see what's going on by looking up the #wcmtl tag.
More updates
Well I haven't posted in a while, so I figured it was my duty to do so while I had some free time. Work at CloudRaker has been great so far, I'm having a blast and everyone is great. We've launched a project last week, which I assume I can mention since it's live. It's a christmas greeting card for BRP. It was not a huge project, but the deadline was tight which made it fun. Aside from that, I'm still working on that big project I mentioned in another post, and that's going pretty nicely as well. So far, I've got nothing to whine about at CloudRaker. We're having our christmas party on the 18th I think, so that should be pretty fun. I've been getting used to my MBP though I still don't feel fully comfortable. I hate that fucking apple button! But I'm getting there.
If you've notice, there's a few additions to the site. I've been playing around with WordPress lately, and I made some modifications to this blog. Among them is the lifestream, which pretty much aggregates all my activity from social networks. If you want to stalk me, that is the perfect tool as I keep those network pretty up to date. You can read more about social networks on the lifestream page, and you can see the archives over here. I've also made it mandatory to register in order to comment, so go ahead and do that.
I've also created another blog-like site. I'm going to use it to post lyrics that I like, since I'm a huge fan of lyrics. It'll also be pretty much music related, so if you're a fan of lyrical music, check it out. I've called it fusi0n lyrics.
CloudRaker it will be!
I've been looking for a job for one full week, and it seems that I found a fit in this Montreal web company. They're called CloudRaker, and they're located downtown Montreal, just an stone's throw north of Ste-Catherine and De Bleury. They're pretty close, actually, 2.3 kilometers. I'll be able to walk/longboard/rollerblade it in summer, and take a rather easy bus route in the winter. Sweet stuff. I'll be working on basically the same kind of things I was working on back at NVI, with a little more frontend thrown in. Nothing I can't handle. They seem to be a pretty cool gang there. They've been around for 8 years, and they still have that startup feel to everything, which is pretty rare for expanding companies. Looking forward to seeing the challenges ahead and meeting everyone! Be sure to check out their blog.
On another note, I've been playing quite a lot with WordPress lately, namely, this WordPress. I've installed a few plugins and made some modifications of my own. If you intent to browse around, I'm sure you'll come across many of them: AJAXed WordPress (AWP), cformsII, and OpenID. They've all turned out pretty nice so far. Also added two pages (up top) - Links and Contact. One is a feed from my newly created Delicious account, the other allows you to contact me.
I've also been playing a lot with Zend Framework lately for a project I'm working on. I'll probably be posting snippets of code eventually, stuff that might be useful to the general public, so stay tuned.
Marketers and SEO consultants: Give me a fucking break.
Alright, this will hit home to some of my readers, but fuck it, I won't stand for that shit. I work at a company that has as a main objective SEO, or in layman's terms, optimizing search results for a specific site or URL. I respect what they do as a company and as individuals, it's not my field and, even if I've judged it in the past, I made peace with it. While I do not approve some of the techniques which border blackhatness or ethical questionning, there's a market, there's a demand, and they provide the means to an end, which is perfectly fine. I've never done it for any of my sites, some of which had a million hits per month without SEO or advertising. I subscribe to the school of people who think that if you want good position in search engines, have a better product or a better content than the other guy -- but that's my personal take on it, and it's in no way profitable for anyone. All that to say that I understand the concept, I don't approve some of it, but I live with it and manage to respect people who do that for a living.
With that being said, one thing I won't fucking tolerate is people who I call friends commenting on my blog using SEO techniques. Fuck you. That's fucking insulting. This is my private blog, one that if you don't have anything to say, I want you to shut the fuck up. Don't pull that shit on me - I will ban your ass and not give one look back.
I'm not gonna make this a rant about SEO, the state of the web today, marketing or the company I work for. What had to be said has been said, and if you can't respect it, get the fuck out right this second.
Thank you.
Edit: wanted to add that after talking it over with the person in question, I hold no grudge and feel no animosity towards him.
fusi0n v423
So as you might've noticed, this is a new blog. I promise I will try to keep it entertaining, and post as often as possible. I can't guarantee the pertinence or length of the articles, but it'll get updated. I've had this sites for a few years, and I honestly never done anything with it, so I think it's time stuff changes. I'm thinking I'll use the main domain (fusi0n.org) for stuff about me, and this sub for the blog.
So yeah, I coded my own blog platform a few years ago, but looking back at it now, it's really something I can't be proud of. I'm amazed no one exploited it - in fact, I'm not, since I had about 3 readers, 1 of them being a clueless grandma who had no idea how she ended up here in the first place.
Alright, I'll need to get used to this WordPress platform. It seems everyone's using it, so I figured I'd stop being an elitist jerk and try it. It's not bad so far, I can tell that there has been a lot of work involved in the user-friendliness aspect of it. I'll have to look for plugins (I plan to ask blogmasters at work) and maybe create a theme out of the fusi0n designs I already have.
On that, I'll wish you a good whatever-time-of-the-day-it-is, and I'll see you next time.
