Snow’s Up Dude
After picking up the pieces of my server crash, I have to admit that this week has been much better. So far so good with the server, and there are a lot of exciting things coming up!
Tomorrow morning I’ll be heading out of town for a few days, for a MUCH needed vacation. I’m very excited to say that I’m heading to Taos, New Mexico with one my best friends Cory Miller to rip up the Rocky Mountains.
Yes, we are going without wives or children, so it’ll be the boys and the mountain. (Contrary to popular belief, I actually do have a life outside of private messaging, emailing, blogging, developing, designing, supporting, marketing, brainstorming, updating, releasing and so on…)
Anyway, aside from being gone, I wanted to share with you something VERY cool with the way I am updating my themes. Many of you know that currently my homepages are setup by category calls, and the current structure means that to configure them, you need to go into the home.php files and change cat=1 to the category ID you want to display.
This poses two problems – it forces users who aren’t code-friendly to go into theme files, and that makes people nervous. It also means that people have to figure out what category IDs are, where they are located and how they can change the code by themselves.
So, without further adieu, I am providing a screenshot below of how upcoming themes will look (actually the Chrome theme now has this) and the ability to configure the homepage with the ease of this:
The other point of this post, is to share with you my desire to widgetize as much as possible. One question you might have after seeing the new theme options page, is “Where did all of the YouTube, AdSense, Feedburner, etc go?”
Well the bad news is that I have done away with configuring those things on the theme options page. The good news is that everything now will run using text widgets, as in my opinion, this gives users more flexibility in how they configure the theme.
As you can see from the screenshot provided, all areas that currently held a theme options page requirement can now be configured using widgets.
What is the bottom line?
Well, I’ll admit that I am a compulsive refiner by nature – and that’s a good thing, because it makes me continually work on (and make better) the themes that I develop. It’s my intent to make them as user-friendly as possible, so that both WordPress newbies as well as developers can use them.
Anyhow, I’ll be gone for a few days, and will be back Saturday night. So if it takes me some time to get back to you, that is why! (and I’ll try to snag some pics with the iPhone along the way to post updates!)
Caught on Film: When Animals Attack
Haven’t you ever seen that video clip, where the guy drops his camera at the zoo, and panics, because he just spent a lot of money on it? So he climbs over the fence and just when he thinks his life is bad enough, he realizes that he just entered the lion’s den?
Well, the past three days of my life have pretty much been that, and I wanted to share with you what happens when animals attack… your business.
I would fathom to guess that a majority of you have been aware that over the past few days, all of my websites have been running slow – yes, it has been very frustrating for us all, and I deeply apologize for that.
Wednesday night at 6:00, my server died.
In other words, I’m the man who just dropped his camera and then hopped the fence to save it. As I write this, I am currently staring into the eyes of a hungry lion.
I will point out that just when you think it’s bad enough (slow load times) it CAN get worse. The first thing I want to say is that I am currently learning a significant lession in life – how you deal with a situation is far more important than what it is you are actually going through.
Standing alone in the company of a maneater doesn’t necessarily have to be a horrific event – yes, our natual tendency is to panic and run as fast as we can towards the fence. I was close to doing that the other night, when I was on the phone with my webhost and they told me the server had died. I wanted to run, to grab my things and sprint as fast as I could to safety.
But, for some amazing reason, an overwhelming calmness took over. I have no idea where it came from, but what I will say is that my natural tendency would have been to panic, make lots of noise and ultimately make the wrong choice.
In essence, I would have been eaten.
The reason for this post is twofold – part therapy for me while I sit here waiting for my server to be rebuilt, and part apology, sincere apology in fact, to those who are looking to purchase a Revolution theme package or need support. Trust me, this is the last thing in the world I want to be dealing with.
But in life, cameras fall, and lions salivate.
How we chose to handle a situation like this is really what builds our character and defines who we are. I’m doing my best to remain calm and ask that you please extend some grace while I pick up the pieces of the past few days. That might mean a delay in returned emails, or what not.
I want to thank all of you who contacted me through email, through text, and through chat to notify me of my sites being down and whatnot – I truly appreciate that you would care enough to look out for me.
The bottom line is that I am doing mybest to handle what’s going on, and by the time you read this, it will mean my sites are back up. The good news is that I am hopefully going to be migrated to a new, faster, better, call it whatever you want server, and that performace from here on out should increase as a result.
Thanks again for understanding!
Happy Tuesday!
For some reason this morning I am feeling a wee bit jovial, so I decided to write up a post on some things that I’m excited about. First and foremost, you might notice that I have a new design here on my site – mainly because the thought of seeing jingle bells in January when I’m looking forward to summer was a bit depressing.
The design that I have on my site now, will ultimately see it’s way over to you know where are some point as a packaged theme. Not sure of the timing, and I bet it looks a little different than it does now, but for those of you know already plan on asking me – yes, it will be available.
Another reason that I’m feeling positive vibes is that the Featured Content Gallery plugin is very close to being updated and released with some new features. I’m warning you in advance, that the plugin is moving away from it’s current location, as a team of quality guys are going to update and support it on it’s own site.
Here’s what they have planned for future functionality:
- Add options to determine display and transition time length
- Add option to specify transition style and color
- Add option to link to pages or posts
- Simplify featured content page or post selection in options page
- Add functionality to dynamically change “Featured Content” text in carousel
- Resolve conflict with Lightbox/Slimbox WP plugins
- Add ability to have multiple galleries and add them to individual pages or posts within WP
By the way, this is great news in the WordPress community, as the team that is going to handle this has the time and energy to move forward with it and take the plugin to places that a lot of people have wanted it to go.
Anyway, other things that are on the horizon, are a complete recoding and redesign of the Chrome theme, as well as development of at least a few more themes that should be ready within the next few weeks.
Lastly, a special shout-out to my good buddy Kevin over at Rocket Genius for some graphic help and inspiration on the redesign.
Introducing the Agent WordPress Theme
I am very happy to announce that the Agent WordPress Theme has been officially released today. This theme is ideal for real estate agents or brokers with multiple agents. Go on, take it for a test drive!
Here’s a screenshot of the homepage:
Here’s a screenshot of a sample property post:
Introducing StudioPress: Online Business Solutions
I am very proud to announce the launching of my professional website, StudioPress – online business solutions using WordPress. This is something that I have needed to do for quite some time, and am glad that I finally was able to develop it.
In short, StudioPress is going to be my official web design, WordPress services and consultancy website – a place where I can be hired.
StudioPress will be the parent company for all that I do online, which means ultimately Revolution will fall underneath it as a web property that I own/run.
One thing I will say is that I have a lot of plans moving forward, both with Revolution and other things in general, and needed an umbrella to keep it all under. For a number of reasons, I was advised to do this. (aren’t lawyers and accountants great?)
Looking back over the past year, I have realized that I am running Revolution all by myself – true, I have some forum moderators, but the bottom line is that in order to continue developing professional themes, building an ever-growing community of users and ensuring quality documentation, it was best to build a company in which I can hire people to help do things.
After all, I’m only a one man show at this point, and you would all be surprised by the amount of work that running a WordPress theme website entails. (not to mention the 100’s of emails and private messages I get on a daily basis)
With the possibility of speaking at conferences and upcoming WordCamps, I needed to grow – and growing means not just doing more as an individual, but inviting important people who have proven themselves to join me. With the possibility that Revolution will be run on an incredibly popular website in the near future, (sorry no hints yet) my life might become insanely busier.
Thus, the launching of StudioPress…
