Ian M Rountree

Project Manager, Copywriter, Digital Marketer

Why Genesis Framework Rocks

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I’ve used the Genesis Framework from StudioPress as the basis for my blog for a couple of months now, and am about to finish the fourth site I’ve developed on it. I need to say this: The framework rocks. Everything from the format, to the support from StudioPress, to helpful tools people have published have helped me cut down my modification and theme building time significantly.

Genesis is slick. Genesis is smooth. And, above all, it doesn’t always look the same – even when you’re using the same elements for design.

Here are the sites I’ve now got going, built on either Genesis itself, or one of its child themes.

The Dowager Shadow - Built on Genesis Framework
The Dowager Shadow
Ian M Rountree - Built on Genesis Framework
Ian M Rountree
Hard Refresh Blog - Built on Genesis Framework
Hard Refresh
Jazmine Rhomyk Gallery - Built on Genesis Framework
Jazmine Rhomyk

Yes. I like blue. Don’t judge me.

Why did I switch from Standard Theme to Genesis Framework?

  • SEO options – unless you’re using plugins, it’s the bee’s knees. Seriously – beyond just being able to designate title and meta descriptions, Genesis allows for built in redirects, which is great for link blogs.
  • Ease of design – Spending a lot of time building sites isn’t my goal – I want to get decent looking sites up quickly, so I can start filling them in with content.
  • Ease of modification – The above being said, I want to be able to iterate my work quickly. If there’s a feature I want to add, or a design change I want to make, I want to be able to make it on the fly. Genesis allows for that.
  • Updates and notifications – Really. What other theme tells you, on its own, when it’s ready to get upgraded?
  • The Showcase – totally for bragging rights. There are a lot of awesome examples in the SutioPress showcase of well-built Genesis framework powered websites. Two – and soon, I hope, three – of mine are there.

Genesis Framework can help wordpress become a proper CMS very swiftly.

Many of StudioPress’ turn-key themes make developing non-standard blogs a breeze. One of the troubles most people see with using WordPress in general is that so many WP-based websites look… Well, like WordPress websites. Getting away from the usual columned layout, and adding some flair is one of the many places where Genesis is a viking.

Check Genesis Framework out – it’s well worth it if you spend a lot of time working with wordpress.

My Platform – The Tools I Use

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overdrive - FlickrWhen you’re doing work online, there’s a lot to consider, not just about the work you’re going to do, but about the tools you used to do it.

This goes beyond just picking between Blogger and WordPress or Tumblr and TypePad – the tools for web workers to build their platforms on range from getting the right laptop and Skype-ready headset on the hardware side, to picking seemingly low-priority things like task management software, browser plugins, and Instant Messenger clients.

Very often, the things that seem to be the least of our concerns when setting up turn out to make the biggest difference in the long term.

It’s easy to buy a new keyboard for a desktop computer. But what about laptops? We look for good screens, good speakers… Maybe a good processor or large harddrive if we’re savvy enough – but how many of us buy laptops based on typing tests and the way they fit our hands? It’s virtually impossible to replace the keyboard in a laptop.

Choosing your tools wisely is important. Here are some of the ones I use.

Some of the hardware that gets me through the day:

  • Dell Studio 17′ laptop – I chose the beast based on screen size, keyboard, and capacity for graphical work. When you’re a writer, any old typing machine will do (If you can type on it) but storing loads of data – hundreds of pages of writing, images, photoshop files… Big data is making its way down to the individual, so having a large harddrive is a good idea. My Dell has a terrabyte of storage.
  • Sony MDR-XB300 Headphones – picked based on their range (they work for the music I listen to) and for their comfort. I listen to a LOT of music, in addition to podcasts
  • BlackBerry 8520 – I’ve got the WordPress app, as well as Twitter, Facebook, Google Talk, Live Messenger, and AIM on my phone. Oh, and Evernote as well. I use my phone as a backup publishing platform – mostly for ideation and review of ideas I’ve had. It’s astonishing how much having even a little access can increase productivity, and accessibility.
  • Razer/Microsoft Habu mouse – it’s a gaming mouse, really, but I got it based on ergonomics and high DPI, which is a boon when working in Photoshop.

That’s an incomplete list, but you get the idea I hope – if any of these pieces of my kit fail, it changes the way I do my work. All of it was chosen based on knowledge of my workflow,

Some desktop software I use for productivity:

  • iTunes for music – because… Well, it’s iTunes. And I have an iPod.
  • Google Chrome – because it’s fast, even though it has some issues with WordPress’ post editor. Also, add-ons like;
    • SEO Site Tools
    • Bit.ly
    • ScribeFire
  • Instant Messaging software, like;
    • Live Messenger
    • AIM – AOL Instant Messenger
    • Skype
    • Google Talk
  • Evernote – as mentioned above, because it lets me keep information on the move.
  • Dropbox because it keeps my things safe and lets me collaborate easily.
  • TweetDeck for Twitter management.
  • Adobe CreativeSuite software – it’s a standard, really, though mine’s outdated.
  • YNAB – You Need A Budget to keep things in order.

There’s also web software:

  • (mt)MediaTemple for web hosting – for reasons I’ve covered in a review previously. My domains register through them as well.
  • WordPress.org as a blogging software, because it’s infinitely extensible and powerful – I’ll get into more detail about WP.org later.
  • Standard Theme 2 which I developed my current site theme on top of, for reasons also covered in a review
  • Google Apps for my domain email and other tools – everything, at this point, routes through my Google Apps account

This is, of course, an incomplete list – in both cases. However, the trend is clear; I’ve chosen a set of tools that works the way I need them to. It’s not all flash and sizzle, but it does the trick, exactly as I expect, every time.

Picking hardware and software that works well in concert with your best creative workflow is of paramount importance. What tools do you use to get stuff done online?

Image by extranoise.

How To: Turn Your WordPress.org Blog Into An Event Manager

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If you spend any kind of time out in public, doing stuff, you’ll appreciate that keeping your calendar not only up to date, but accessible is important.

"Events, Places I'll Be" section in my blog's footer area
Simple, dynamic, maintainable

For example; I’ve been getting out and doing stuff more often lately (and this will continue in the future), and I wanted to display this information here on my site. for a while, I just edited text in my footer (pictured to the right) – but that’s not sustainable, really, and not efficient.

Then, I read this tutorial from Devin Price (@devinsays on Twitter), explaining how to build a Custom Post Type into WordPress 3.0 to handle events. Perfect!

Here’s how it works, in short. You’re going to need a little knowledge of WordPress theme development to get this done – or have access to someone who knows. I’d call this a “intermediate” difficulty task – you need to know your way around, but don’t need to know too much.

It all hinges around code in two files (and one image for nice display). I’ve included a download link at the end of this post.

The code in the events-function.php file needs to be added to your WordPress theme’s functions.php file. Here’s what it does:

  • Adds a custom post type called “Events” to your WordPress backend.
  • Changes some of the admin info within the post editor to better suite the Events post type
  • Modified WordPress defaults so that posts in the future (scheduled posts) can be displayed
  • Note: You, or whoever is doing this adjustment for you, will have to modify the path to the calendar-icon.gif file, otherwise it won’t appear.

The code in the events-display.php file can be added to your theme wherever you want to display your events. As it’s set up now, it does the following:

  • Grabs the four Events with the highest date numbers (most recent or farthest in the future)
  • Displays the date and the content of the Events entry
  • Note: This code comes right out of my theme, you’ll need to style the Events area to suit your own site.

That’s it for theme modification – not terribly difficult at all. But here’s where it gets really interesting.

Editorial Calendar displaying Events post type in WordPress backend
Look at that! There's my next event!

Some WordPress plugins to amazing things on their own – and some of them jump through some really awesome hoops at unexpected times.

Install the Editorial Calendar plugin for WordPress – this helps schedule posts, and normally lets you keep a better handle on your posting schedule. However, with the Events post type set up, something interesting happens. Because we’ve set the Events post type to “post” – the Editorial Calendar plugin fires for our Events!

The result of having both the Events post type – whether you display your events or not – and the Editorial Calendar plugin amounts to a super-simple, portable, personal event organizer.

There’s a lot of opportunity to expand on this which I’ve intentionally not taken – changing the display code to show the next three events, for example (for people with many more events than me), or setting up a taxonomy to display only events labelled “Public” on the blog, and keep “Private” appointments from showing up. One could even build an entire events calendar page template, to do the job the Editorial Calendar plugin does in the back end, and let site visitors see all your events, past and future.

I stopped where I did with my work on this because, for now, this does exactly what I wanted it to. What else would you add to this?

Download the code (and the image) – and make sure you give @devinsays a shout-out for the handy stuff!

Redundant Filtering and The Joy Of New Projects

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Epiphany 3 on FlickrI discovered Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero video this evening as I was trying to do some personal filtering, and it’s so drastically changed the landscape of my personal email.Twenty or so extra filters, even though the suggestion is against this kind of thing, mean I’ll be getting one, perhaps two personal messages per day instead of thirty to fifty newsletters, notifications and so on. The mail will still come in, it’ll just be routed to an appropriate box to be dealt with not-on-my-blackberry.

I was also pointed at an article about GoDaddy sales techniques, talking about how a Google patent lets them suggest longer terms on domain sales to boost multi-year registrations. It won’t mean anything for me, though, because all of my projects are term-based, if that, but it may have implications for other bloggers out there.

Does this happen to you? One or two things come together, and suddenly the system changes for the better. This happens to be all the time, especially with the internet.

What can I say? I get excited about new prospects.

Since I bought my first dot com in 2003, I’ve owned nearly a dozen different domains. I’ve also let lapse just about every one of them within their first year except my former blog, which lasted six before I retired it in favour of this one last fall. I’ve been told it looks like a habit of failure, but I disagree. I choose to think of it as metered utility. Wings of Wax (the six year long blog) had its usefulness, as did Why Read The Manual (the four month long study in blogging the wrong thing). Similarly, The Arcadia System still has potential as a collaborative story, The Dowager Shadow just started, and others such as Red Gryphon Design are lapsing soon. It’s a mixed bag of success.

I’ve had just about the same ratio with web hosting. Two hosts I’ve outgrown, including the last one – Host Gator, which had this blog until last night, as well as everything else I had going over the last year – and one failed my etiquette standards when the administrator offered to trade a month of hosting for a donation to his online poker account. Hey, people are people, but putting a human face on business sometimes has drawbacks.

So now I’m doing this site, as well as a couple of others including the soon to be launched Unspeakable Media repository and The Dowager Shadow. As of yesterday all of these are now hosted on Media Temple – the Grid Service that Hann of Chickenball Design and I are now sharing has more than enough space for both of us to grow into, and is extensible. It’s an exciting prospect, especially considering all of my experience up to now has been with CPanel-based hosting services, and this gives me an excuse to learn a bit more about server administration.

Trivial? Maybe. But then again, it’s opportunity.

My job doesn’t allow for much rabbit hole chasing. As I’ve said earlier, I let the cat very slowly exit the bag, I’m now a content developer and SEO (search engine optimization) technician for Modern Earth Custom Web Design – which is a dreadfully exciting job, full of loads of new skills and information. The kind of extensible component I’ve been looking for in other areas for ages and now seem to be finding everywhere.

The job is very precision-oriented and, while I’m learning a lot, exploring what’s possible within the scope of my new skills is not something that can happen at work. So, I take notes, and fiddle with the toys I’ve already got when I get home. Which, in this case, means two or three new sites, new skills, and a whole new server slice to play about with.

So that’s what’s happened in my world lately. What’s happened in yours?