First WP Bug Report

I reported my first bug with WordPress today. I created a new development site, dev.andymercer.net, to test out my plugins with WP 4.0. Admin Classic Borders works perfectly, but I found an odd occurrence with Featured Galleries. Using it seemed to break the post editing screen.

I tested and found that the problem is a change in the header above the editor for 4.0. When this new version of WP is released, the header will become sticky, and it'll follow as you scroll down the page. It works by using JS to detect when a user starts to scroll, and changing the header from normal positioning to fixed, which lets it follow you. When a user scrolls upwards, the fixed positioning is eventually removed.

The problem occurs when you are scrolled down enough to cause the fixed positioning to kick in, and then suddenly are at the top of the page, without scrolling up. The can occur when remove a metabox, such as featured image. This causes the page to shrink suddenly, but doesn't trigger the JS to fix the header. I'm glad, because it's a problem with the new header code, not with my gallery.



Hopefully I found it early enough to be fixed before 4.0 comes out. You can follow along, and read more about it, here:

https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/29059

EDIT: Ticket was just assigned to the 4.0 milestone, meaning it has to be fixed before 4.0 can be released.

WordPress Media Selector - Mobile

WordPress 4.0 is coming along quite nicely, with Beta 2 being due soon. One area I'm very excited about is a makeover of the mobile version of the Media Selector. This is the popup that lets users insert media (pictures, video, etc) into posts. On the phone is currently looks very broken, so there's a big push right now to give it an overhaul. This is what you'd see on a phone right now, with WordPress 3.9:



As you can see, everything is squished because of how narrow the screen on a phone is. To address the problem, two major changes have been made. If the sidebar is removed, and the options a the top are changed from text links to a dropdown menu, everything gets a lot nicer. Throw in some CSS to make sure all the images are in a nice looking grid, and suddenly you have this:



Two changes can make a huge difference in the usability. I'm very excited about this change, along with everything else that is coming down the pipeline regarding media. WP just keeps getting better.

WordPress Plugin Update

A while back, I wrote about an idea for a plugin that I was going to try and write. It would add a folder system to WordPress's media capabilities. As I later explained, this was somewhat beyond my abilities at that point. I have since, however, written two separate plugins, which are currently up on the WordPress repository.

Admin Classic Borders

In WP 3.8, the admin backend of WordPress was completely redesigned. Taking queues from Windows 8, WP was made "cleaner", which means flatter and with less borders. Overall I think it looks good, but I like borders between items. I think borders make a site or app easier to use by cleanly dividing items.



To address what I perceive as shortcomings with the new design, I wrote some custom CSS to re-add borders, along with a few other things. Admin Classic Borders is simply a plugin wrapper for that CSS, along with a settings page to let users customize.



It's currently has a 5-star rating an almost 1000 downloads, which I think says quite a bit for my school of design thought. My second plugin, Featured Galleries, is a little more in-depth, so I'll discuss it in a separate post.

What Happened

Well, my last post (a long long longgggg while ago) mentioned that I was changing over to a new blog. This didn't happen. Long story short, it was supposed to be tied in to my new website (andymercer.net), but my new employer wanted me to redesign their website. I hadn't finished andymercer.net, so I used that as a development area. And it's still not finished. Months later.

It's going to be done by the end of this month though, so I can FINALLY get everything transferred over. So, just a recap of things that happened that I was interested in and would have wrote about since my last post:

Xbox One and PS4!

I got a Twitter account!

I got a new job!

I got MARRIED!!!!!!!!

I moved to a new city.

Marriage Equality is spreading like wildfire.

I've gotten really involved with WordPress... two plugins, I'm on a core plugin team, and I've submitted several improvement tickets.

I've gotten involved with StackOverflow as well.

And a lot more. Anyway, I'm still alive.

The Future

Recently I've been trying to find a new home for myself on the internet. A permanent one, based on my name. Andy.anything have all been taken long ago. Andy.com and Andy.net both aren't being used, and are even for sale. In the multiple thousand dollar range. Not happening. AndyMercer.com is unfortunately being used as a memorial page for an Andy Mercer from Florida who died in 2008. It's being maintained by a company who is run by the guy's uncle, so it'll be there, if not forever, for a a very long time.

I even looked into odd names. Ma.tt is currently the home of WordPress's founder. An.dy isn't possible though, because there is no .dy. There is a .er, so theoretically I could do AndyMerc.er. However, there are no companies selling that domain at the moment, and there are no plans for any other companies to start.

AndyMercer.net and AndyMercer.me both are second-tier choices, but both pretty good. I ended up going with AndyMercer.net because .net is a better known domain than .me. I have purchased .net (and given that it's only 15 bucks in the future I could always change to .me), and so I will be moving there shortly. I am going to be upgrading to a WordPress installation. Makes sense, given that I develop WordPress sites through Catstache Design, LLC. I'm really excited about the design of my new site. It's entirely from scratch, with heavy inspiration from several other sites which I'll detail soon. This URL will redirect to AndyMercer.net/blog, which will be the new URL of my blog until such time as I acquire AndyMercer.com or Andy.something (a long long time from now, if ever).

Anyway, stay tuned. The site is up and running on my internal server, and I'm getting the last few bugs worked. Should be up online soon. Thank you all for your continued support (support being reading, given that I don't do ads ... because screw ads).

WordPress Plugin

I recently finished work on IndyGreekFest.org (Old Site), and am in my reflective period that follows every project. One issue that I ran into with this site is the organization of images on the site.

Several sections of the website are basically image galleries; food, media, etc. It would be nice if I could upload images into folders and organize them by the page in which they are embedded. Unfortunately, with WordPress, this isn't possible.

WordPress started as a simple blog software, and while it's doing an admirable job slowly transforming itself into a full CMS, it's not there yet. The way it handles images is a prime example of this. Currently, there is a single media folder, in which all uploaded images go. WordPress each month, a new folders is made by wordpress inside the media folder. All images uploaded that month go in there. Additionally, when viewing the images, there is a single list of images. One can't view folders.

It would be nice to fix this. I have sketched out several user interfaces which would incorporate folders. A real fix would require updating the core, though, which I'm not really prepared to do. A plugin, however, I think is within my current capabilities. A plugin will not be able to full accomplish my goals, but it will let me start. So tonight, I am going to write a simple Hello World plugin to teach myself the basics. Having created several themes in the past, it shouldn't be too difficult.

From there, I can start figuring out how to go about adding folders to WordPress.

Wordpress and the Rise of Vector Image Fonts

As a Wordpress developer (ironic, I realize, since this blog is hosted on Blogger), one thing I follow pretty closely is the Wordpress Make UI blog. An overhaul of the WP backend has been cooking for several months now, and one aspect of that overhaul is a change in the way icons are displayed. Currently, WP uses PNG rastor icons, but the new backend will likely use vector icons in the format of a font. Confused yet? Let me give you some background info.

Images come in two types: Raster and Vector. Most images you see on the internet are Raster. JPGs, PNGs, GIFs, all of these are Raster images, which means that they are static. You can think of them as a giant grid, with each point, or pixel, having a specifically set color. When all these points are put close enough together, you can't tell that it's square points. But when images are zoomed in, they look blocky. Vector images don't consist of set points. They use lines and formulas and things that I don't fully understand. The end product is an image that will look sharp no matter how far it is zoomed in and out.

Wordpress is switching from Raster to Vector, because Vector images look better when zoomed in (when using a Retina display, for example). They are also going one step further and using a font, instead of image files. Fonts have used Vector images for a long time. Each character is a small image with a transparent background. It's certainly possible to place custom images yourself. I found a very interesting article on the reasoning behind switching to icon fonts, rather than using icon image files, which I've added a link to here.

The Era of Symbol Fonts

Misc Updates

Been nearly 2 weeks since I last touched this blog. You might notice a new name though. No longer do you have to type in .blogspot between the name and .com. 1and1 was having a weekend special, URLs for $0.99, so I picked up thephilosophicalgeek.com. A small thing, but it makes me happy.

Catstache is finally fully official as well, we now have an operating agreement and a bank account, so we can finally start our first project. Additionally I've been picking up some work for TKOSEO, which has been nice. It'll be my first legit paycheck since December.

In other news, I mentioned several weeks ago that I was going out. And while things haven't been perfect, she hasn't told me to jump in a lake yet, so that's good! I'm going to see the new Spiderman movie with her later this week; I'm looking forward to it.

I'm going to try to start posting some things about Wordpress here soon. The stuff I've been doing for TKOSEO has been theme building from scratch, which has involved a lot of backend work. I've learned more about Wordpress in the past two weeks than any time before combined, and my first theme has a custom backend menu page that can change all sorts of options.

Hopefully I'll have time to start writing up some of the basics here. There are many advanced tutorials on the internet. But very few basic ones; everyone assumes the reader is familiar with Wordpress development.

Anyway, hopefully we won't have any more 2 week gaps here. Depends on time, as does everything.
 

Installing Wordpress on WAMP

As I mentioned recently, I set up a server environment on my local computer using WAMP. Today I installed a fresh copy of Wordpress, so that I could play around with some realty listings plugins. Unfortunately I couldn't even get through the setup without something going wrong.

After Wordpress was installed, I created a test page, and then changed the URL linking over to use names. IE, the post's URL would be localhost/testpage/, instead of localhost/post=001. I clicked to view it, and I got a 404 error. Imagine my surprise, given that this is a pretty common change.

It took me a while to track down, but I finally found the answer and solution online. Turns out that WAMP's default Apache installation has a setting that prevents things I don't really understand from happening, which in turn prevents Wordpress from working correctly. A.N.M. Saiful over at Checkmate had the solution, which was to go into the Apache config file and mess with some settings.

Not being a server guy, I really have no idea what it means, but Wordpress now works on my localhost server, so I consider it to be a success.
 

Things are Moving!

Any reader of this blog knows that I love web design. HTML, CSS, PHP, jQuery. Recently I've gotten really into mobile, and I'm trying to push myself with the actual graphic design part, though I'm still quite terrible in that aspect. Yet, what is the point in all this, besides it being fun?

I was approached by a good friend of mine a while back about starting a web design company, and turning my hobby into a part time job on the side. (A profitable one, since an average personal wordpress site goes for anywhere from $700 to $2000). Still, it's been slow going, weeks passing with really nothing happening. However, over the past week things have finally started moving.

The first surprisingly difficult hurdle was creating a name. Catchy, simple, and most importantly, not already taken. And if you think that there are lots of names out there not taken, try googling random stuff followed by the word design. We progressed through Blue Hat, to Blue Beard, to Cat Beard, and finally came up with out new name: CatStasche.

Picture, the face of a cat, with a prominent mustache.

That done, we registered the URL, www.catstachedesign.com, and I put up a coming soon page. Then work started on our actual site. It'll be powered by WordPress eventually, but right now we're working with static HTML and CSS just to get the layout working. One major aspect I'm putting a lot of effort into is responsive design, which is one of the few areas that I both A, understand well, and B, am getting in on the ground floor of.

I've decided on standardizing upon 4 widths, and making the design flexible within each of the four.

Mobile

0px - 600px

Smartphones, tablets in portrait mode

Narrow

600px - 1000px

Old monitors, and tablets in landscape mode

Normal

1000px - 1400px

Traditional 1024x768, and very common 1280x1024.

Wide

1400px - Infinity

Widescreen large monitors, normally 22" and above

Some sites have the region that I have as mobile split again, for phones in landscape vs portrait, but all my mobile designs are going to be 100% flexible, using no fixed-length values, so it'll scale, and make another split unnecessary. I've got the layout tentatively working for Wide and Normal, and will be working on the Narrow and Mobile versions over the next few days while my partner finishes the logo and starts working on the color scheme. Hopefully the site should be completely designed within the next week, so I can then spend the week after moving translating it to WordPress. And then we'll really be ready to rock.  

WordPress Update

So I'm trying to start a web design business with a friend, using WordPress. Over the past couple days, I've finally had a bunch of free time, so I've been reading a lot on how WordPress actually works. Turns out, Thesis is just a theme, not a tool to edit other themes. The only difference is that it's very easy to edit using checkboxes and things, without touching code. That's really the only benefit, that one pays 80 bucks for. 80 bucks, for every website. Or 160 for a dev license plus 40 per site. I really don't think it's worth it.

In fact paying for any premium theme to edit and resell to a client doesn't seem to be worth it. The real money is in MAKING the themes from scratch. And that's what I've been trying to figure out how to do. I've had limited success already though, actually. I went through a from scratch tutorial, and managed to create a whole new theme. Looks terrible, it's some white boxes with black borders. But it works, and it pulls the info from WordPress. Posts and pages. Then last night I built a nav bar with dropdown menus and added it, and it grabs the entries from WordPress successfully as well.

If I can get good at this, it's something I might switch over to focusing on full time. A prebuilt WordPress site goes for $700. A custom built one can run up to $1000-$2000. For personal sites. And when I get good, it won't take much longer to build it using WordPress than it does using static HTML, which means a couple weeks. Could certainly pay for my last semester. Sadly though, the URL I want if I ever started a company myself, 79 Design Co, is taken. 79design.com actually just got renewed, doesn't end until next march.