Having been kicking around the exciting world of installing and customizing WordPress, I felt it was high time I launched myself into the even more exciting world of developing for WordPress.  And here’s what I’ve come up with:

Recent User Posts

Recent Category Posts

Both of these are widgets that do basically the same thing, so I’ll describe them together here.

In developing the new Wharton Magazine blog, we needed a widget to display the Editor’s most recent post.  I poked around for a bit, and realized that there really wasn’t a plugin to handle this, so the need for one was obvious.  After getting the basics down, I decided that it actually had more applications than just a single post, and started adding features.

So, the end result is two widgets.  Enter a title, select the user/category you want to display, enter the number of posts to display, and select if you want to display a link to the user/category and the time and date.  Not complicated to use and does just what it says it does.

Before I release it to the WordPress Plugins Codex, I’d like to see if anyone wants a shot at debugging or can offer any tips or suggestions.  Files are at the links above, and thanks in advance!

I was hoping to post a lot more go lives here, but I’ve changed jobs to a position at UPenn’s Wharton School of Business External Affairs, and I’m working mainly on internal projects.

However, I’ve just completed a website for my Friendly Local Gaming Store, Alternate Universes.

Alternate Universes had an existing website, but it was built using static HTML that wasn’t very easy to update. The new site uses WordPress as a CMS, offering much greater ease of updating, as well as being able to update multiple pages using a single post. This allows for various pages to keep important content without the need to move content to those pages or clutter up the homepage for weeks or months.

Individual sub-pages are coded to include their related categories, allowing for general information for that page and a listing of pertinent posts.

The old site had an outdated calendar system, so I integrated Google Calendars using the wpng-calendar plugin for the site’s sidebar, as well as a static instance of the full calendar. This allows for much easier management and import of calendar data.

I converted the old phpBB3 forum to myBB, which was a bit more difficult than anticipated, even with a conversion app. The app didn’t accurately convert the forum settings, which necessitated a lot of snooping around in the database to get everything matched up. Once I found the broken relationships, though, it went rather quickly. There were also a few glitches with forum caches and settings files needing to be rebuilt, but all-in-all, the structure converted quite nicely. The new system will very aggressively tackle the issues they’d been having with Russian spambots filling their forum with Viagra ads and the like.

And finally, I get to take credit for the design. I don’t tackle design very often, because this is about the best I’m capable of.

PMRS Inc.

PMRS, Inc.

What the client wanted:
A newly-redesigned website to represent their corporate face on the internet. They had concerns about the site being visible in IE6, possibly without JavaScript enabled, due to their target audience using almost exculsively large corporate internet connections with older technology and security restrictions.

What I delivered:
The design itself has a number of floating elements, including Flash and irregularly-repeating backgrounds with alpha-channel elements. PNGs were going to be necessary, and to make sure they worked in IE6, I employed the TwinHelix IE6 PNG hack. This lead me to the horrible realization that positioning background PNGs is problematic in IE6, so there were a few concessions made for IE6 support, but largely, the site looks identical in all browsers.

There was no concern with SEO friendliness, so I went with a JavaScript-based dropdown menu for multi-level support. To compensate for the possibility of a JS being disabled, each top-level menu item has its own landing page, and there is a separate stylesheet loaded with a noscript tag.

I’ve decided to start cataloging the sites that I’ve done recently, big or small. So, here we go:

Indian Valley Dental

Indian Valley Dental

What the client wanted:
This was a redesign of an existing CMS site that had a lot of Flash-based elements, including the navigation.

What I delivered:
The design kept the header flash from the old site, and I brought over the little Flash page title flourish.

I reworked the existing CMS to provide data is much more search-engine friendly and a lot more streamlined. The header navigation uses a CSS hover effect with a jQuery dropdown. The bottom navigation uses a quick server-side element to generate a style that underlines the page that you’re currently on, and the Contact Us page uses jQuery form validation and an AJAX spam-catcher.

The site is identical in IE 6, 7 and 8, Firefox 3, Chrome 3, Safari 4PB and Opera 10 (aside from a few form elements that resist styling).

Simple from the ground up, but that’s the way I like them.

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