Over the past 5 weeks, I have been absent from my office over at Starbucks - that quaint little table in the corner has missed me almost as much as I’ve missed it. You see, I’ve been playing general contractor since the middle of May, as we had an addition put onto our house, and I’ve had to temporarily re-prioritize things.
Thanks God it’s done. Looks great, but thank God it’s done.
Tomorrow morning (Monday) I’ll be back at work, I promise. I’ve tried my best of the past few weeks to stay afloat in terms of answering emails, supporting and developing Revolution, and just trying to maintain my business as I’ve had to make decisions on what color paint, where walls should be, how to angle the ceiling… blah blah blah.
I miss being totally in touch with things on the internet, and I’m just happy that I’ll have more time to blog (so sorry I’ve been out of touch here) and just do the things that I used to do on a daily basis.
One of the things I want to do on my blog here is to address questions that you all might have about WordPress, blogging, theme design or anything to do with the internet - it will give me something to blog about on a daily basis, so I’m opening up the comments on this post to you for questions.
Ask away, and I’ll answer them in the form of posts this week!
Feel free to leave a comment with a question that’s you’re burning to know the answer to. Personal questions are welcome too!
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Brian,
Congrats on the addition, I myself have to start mudding some walls this week, but I digress
Just a few questions..
1. Are you planning on implementing a way of showing other type videos then Youtube on your Featured video areas? (I have Revolution Pro). I know I can embed in other areas, but I would like the option of being able to show other types of formats in this box. (We run a military support site up here in GLAKES, not everything is on Youtube).
2. Also if you could when you get a chance, is there a function, setting to set a “SET” Page Length or a way to Set a “Set” Field size.. I.e if you look at my page, you will notice the scuttlebutt newletter area is shorter then the veteran news etc.. I would like to have a “SET” parameter for those areas.??? I hope you understand what I am asking..
Other then that. I love your work. I am thinking about getting the whole she-bang, so I can move things around to fit our site…
Also we are donating to your walk. Look for a Corpsman.com Donation from us. My wife is a ICU Nurse at the Cancer Treatment Center of America up here in Zion. I applaud your efforts towards this deadly disease. I see and hear to often from her what this disease does to folks.
Thanks..
Darrell “Da-Chief” Crone
Corpsman.com
Hi Brian,
Glad you got everything finished okay. Here’s a two-part question: how much time do you spend in Starbucks per day (when working), and do you have an office in your home?
Will be good to have you back and blogging Brian. Still a favorite of mine!
I have a question for you in response to your next to the last paragraph.
Wordpress? Name one thing you would like to see change about it to make it more useful or easier to use?
So was the house addition a new office space?
Darrell
Thanks for the comment - to answer the video question, yes, I’m hoping to include a text box on all theme options pages so that you can drop all of the video code, not just insert the YouTube url - working through a kink with that, but hopefully soon! Also, thanks for the consideration for the donation - every bit helps, and that’s greatly appreciated.
David
Normally it’s between 6:00 am and 12:00 noon, then I go home and play dad while my wife heads out the gym. We normally spend the afternoon hanging out as a family, eat dinner, play some more and then I’m back online usually at 9:00 for a few hours. Yes, we have a 3rd bedroom that I call my office, but I prefer to work out in various places as it’s fun to be around people!
Deborah
Your question is more the type that would require a full post, so I’ll put that in the works. The house addition was to double our family room space, and open up the house much more!
That’s great you can spend a lot of quality time with your family. I hope to do likewise if I’m lucky enough, and that’s part of the reason why I’m moving back to Northern Ireland after the summer. Pretty much all my family live there.
As a real estate agent I know how having a home remodeling project can get. I love all your themes and enjoy your tutorials and I am now starting to read your forum.
I see you say in your bio you are self taught and it has been a year. Is that year from 2007 to 2008 up to date?
Keep up the great work.
Starbusks is my second office and I have 3 to choose from between home and work. My fav is Vinings http://www.flickr.com/photos/javajoba/469804070/
Hi Brian-I’m new to wordpress, blogging and your work. I was immediately impressed by your beautifully design themes and your obvious passion for what you do! Synchronicity seems to be at work here…we are trying to develop a site and thankfully found your revolution themes. We have questions about some of its capabilities and I was wondering if it is possible to discuss some of our questions with you through a phone consultation or some less public forum? If so how would that work?
Jay
I started to mess around with WordPress and theme design at the beginning of 2007, so as of right now, it’s a bit out of date, as I wrote that page a while back. (thanks for asking this, I should probably update that page!)
Jack
How cool, a nice veranda just outside Starbucks, something mine does NOT have!
Cindi
Sure, just shoot me a note through the Revolution contact page and we can hook up by phone or IM!
Hi Brian - big fan here! I’ve purchased the Revolution Theme package and it’s fabulous. The support on your forums is also ridiculously good!
My question is about when to update WordPress. I hesitate to download the latest version as soon as it comes out because it always seems to have ‘bugs’. How do I know when it’s safe to download the latest version?
Thanks. . .from a fellow north central Illinoisan!
Stephanie
So where ya from in Illinois? As for the WordPress deal, when they make a release, there’s already been a ton of people testing it out, so it’s usually pretty stable. I’d suggest only upgrading when they release bigger versions, so when they went to WordPress 2.5, that would have been a good time.
Thanks Brian! I’ve from the LaSalle-Peru area (Spring Valley to be exact). I get up your way (about 1.5 hours) once a month - I love the city!
Would you mind answering another question? I’ve spend the last 4 hours reading WP forum posts and blogs trying to upload an image. I’ve installed the SWFUpload plugin (http://code.google.com/p/swfupload/) changed my CHMOD to 755 on my uploads folder and edited my “Full URL path to files” to “http://mysite.com/wp-content/uploads”. No joy. Aaarrrggghh! There are tons of posts on the WP support forum regarding this issue - I sure hope 2.6 solves it!
Any suggestions? Thanks Brian!
Hello Brain,
just wanted to say thanks for the WP themes. Great job!
Just got the Revolution Sports 2.0, did some modifications and the „old“ site has a new face. Need some work with the logo, though.
Cheers and take care
Stelios
From the Black Forest, Germany
Hi Brian. As far as Wordpress goes and what I would like you to post about (last paragraph of above) is to do with using Wordpress as a CMS, which I know that you design your themes to be capable of.
What I think is a must, for the next development of Wordpress (2.6?) is to be able to have better user permissions.
For example you may have several people looking after or posting on one site (Wordpress Install) and they may each look after a category. What I would love to be able to do is to restrict access for a certain user to certain pages/posts/categories etc.
Not really sure how that would work but it would certainly improve Wordpress CMS capabilities. What do you think?
Hi Brian. I just wanted to send you a quick shout to say thanks for putting together the great Vertigo template. I had my designer do a quick mod of the header and then it was good to go. All the best!
Shane Gibson
Stephanie
Try changing the CHMOD to 777!
Stelios
Nice job, looks like you got the hang of working with the theme!
Mark
Sounds interesting, but also difficult probably on the development side, so you’ll have to talk to Matt and the guys at Automattic about that one!
Shane
Nice job as well - love how you had the pic added to the header! And thanks for the kind words and taking the time to stop and say hi!
Hi Brian:
How difficult would it be to add some generic content and images to your themes for sale?
Granted, it would be a little work up front once, but it would really help those that are WP newbies. Or maybe you could include the content in your live demos with each sale.
Why? It’s a lot easier to see how things are laid out and where to go to edit when you can jump back and forth between the live site and the admin panel.
It’s much easier and more intuitive to replace a post or image than to try to guess how and where to add it in the first place.
Just a thought . . .
Steve
Commenting about your title to this post Brian. I hope you Starbucks is not one of those closing according to the headline news this a.m.!
If so hurry!
Deborah
No, I live in the northern suburbs of Chicago, and this is one of the most popular Starbucks around. I’m looking at the line right now and there’s 17 people waiting. No joke.
Brian, I’m glad to hear your Starbucks’ isn’t one slated to close. It appears the old joke about a Starbucks on every corner has come back to bite them.
Good to hear that you’ll be answering more general WordPress, design questions. My current design problem is changing the borders for images. I like more of a gray frame, rather than the basic black line.
I hear you about the problem of daily blogging. For myself, the problem isn’t finding something to write about, but scraping together the time. It seems, in blogging it is a question of either digging the tunnel, or selling the shovel. Some days I think shovel-sales is the place to be.
Brian,
yeah I have asked enough questions to last you a while..
But hey, I have been Volunteered to start a website for my kids school. Have you made a Template for “Schools” yet?
Just wondering.. I have to put something together in the next week.
Thanks!
Darrell
Darrell - I have been working on some education or schools themes over at my site Education Themes. At the moment there are two on there, but I have two ready to be released. Check out all the themes at this link. At this stage that is just a raw directory link I am affraid but if there is something there that interests you then let me know.
Vote #2 for school theme ideas. I, too, am jumping in to updated a sorely outdated K-8 school website. I’m thinking in terms of the news theme. I like it because I want to separately feature students, teachers, parents, admin and a couple of unique programs offered at the school.
I also like the prominent ad space because we use an amazon affiliate link for fundraising.
I also just stumbled on the new city theme and that looks like a strong possibility. Thoughts, Brian?
So…being from California AND a Starbies addict, does that make you one of those venti-soy-double-shot-hold-the-foam-vanilla-latte kinda guys … or just straight-up black refills?
Blessings from your home state - love your themes!
Nigel
(grande nonfat no whip mocha)
Great site you got here… glad to see you have more time to blog and more time for your Starbucks addiction.