CoderBrown Blog

First WordPress Project

Matt — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:30:20 +0000

I didn’t intend for this to happen so soon—and certainly not on what I consider my first official project—but I am now involved in building a website using WordPress as a CMS. I figured I would build at least a few static HTML sites before delving into the world of content management systems. But this project I’ve been “barterlancing” on (see previous post) has morphed from a simple multipage HTML site to one that is driven by a CMS. Now this goes against the original intent of me building the site, since I was going to teach Patrick how to build websites by using his site as the tutorial. But I think the reality of the situation is that it takes time to learn how to build websites, and you certainly don’t learn it all on one project. Plus Patrick has a thriving design business so he needs to keep at that in order to pay the bills and not wander off with me into the land of HTML and CSS. And I knew I needed to gain experience in how to build a site that will incorporate a CMS, so in the long run it’s better that it happened this way.

I had already built the site in XHTML and was almost finished with the CSS when Patrick and I agreed that we should use a CMS, and I suggested WordPress. I don’t know PHP, and my only experience with tinkering with WordPress was when I tweaked the layout on my two blogs, but I knew WordPress could be altered to suit your needs and I wanted to gain more experience with WordPress.

The next issue was where I was going to build the WordPress dev site. Do I use my server or Patrick’s? If I used Patrick’s his site would potentially be down since I would have WordPress installed at the root level. If I used my server I’d be facing the task of migrating the database and files to Patrick’s server. I could have hosted the site but Patrick had just renewed his hosting and he was reluctant to move. The answer came when Patrick emailed me an article he found about installing WordPress locally on your Mac. That turned out to be a great solution, which I’ll write about in my next post. In the mean time I’m making my way through PHP and WordPress, and it has been going smoothly so far.

Barterlancing

Matt — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:28:12 +0000

For almost the last year I’ve been involved in a “barterlancing” project (barterlancing is my term for freelancers who barter services). Last summer I came across the website of Patrick, a colleague who I worked with at Discovery. He has his own freelance design business, but his website is a single page with one image and an image map to define clickable links. Since I’m a Web Standards advocate and firmly believe in semantic markup this site didn’t sit well with me at all, so I decided to rebuild his site.

A couple days later I emailed Patrick the link to the site I built with a note suggesting we talk. I admit now that my motive for doing this was I wanted a website designed for me, and I was hoping to barter services by offering to build a site for Patrick. Patrick responded to my message asking exactly what I anticipated and thus this project was born.

We didn’t have a deadline set for the project other than “soon”, but as we all know this is not a real deadline. So “soon” turned out to be several months of little progress while both of our schedules were hectic. At the beginning of this year we vowed to concentrate on the project and so far we’ve been making good progress—even though the project ended up being more complicated than I had anticipated. This is because our original intent was to have me build the site and teach Patrick how to build the site, and for Patrick to design a logo and website for me. My logo is almost done but Patrick’s site changed direction when we decided to incorporate WordPress as a CMS for the site. This is a totally unfamiliar process for me, as I detail in my following post. But I’m hoping I can use the knowledge gained from this project on future (non-free) projects.

First Web Hosting Client

Matt — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:18:00 +0000

Yesterday I started hosting my first client website. I use the word “client” loosely because he’s a band parent and a friend of the family. But nonetheless I’m excited about this opportunity. I have a Media Temple (gs) Grid-Service server for my web hosting and it’s simple to set up sites on it. The only thing it doesn’t have is a control panel for each site so they can’t be independently controlled. But that’s OK in my case because I anticipate the level of my clients will not be that technically advanced to run their own web server anyway, and it’s more convenient for me to have the sites all under one account.

I’ll post a link later when the site has launched but it’s for a residential improvement business. When I asked my client what software he used to build his site he said he didn’t—he hand-coded it. This is very impressive, because the average person isn’t going to learn HTML just to build a simple site. He said he had asked others to build a site for him but they never followed through. So he took classes and learned HTML himself, and his wife got involved and helped to design and build the site. A dynamic duo. Hopefully I’ll be able to pick up more clients like him.

Official Launch of the CoderBrown Blog

Matt — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:18:42 +0000

Wow, “official launch” sounds so…official. But I couldn’t think of another way to announce “Hey, I’m blogging!” My vision for this blog is for me to discuss technical aspects of web development specifically and technology in general. I hope to one day grow CoderBrown into a full-time freelance web development and hosting business but for now I’m content with my present “day” job.

The byline on this blog reads “The professional blog of CoderBrown.” This is because I also have a blog that I call a journal (journal.coderbrown.com) and its byline is “The personal blog of CoderBrown.” I’m also working on revamping my website, coderbrown.com, and plan to make it a combination business and personal site, but with the main focus on business. You can also check the links on the right (”CoderBrown is on…”) to learn more about me. Eventually I’ll publish an About page on this blog.

CoderBrown is my online identity, an easily searchable way for me to gain a presence on the web and also the name of my freelance business. The name is a play on “Farmer Brown,” in that I work with code instead of in the fields. It’s not how I refer to or call myself (so please don’t call and ask for CoderBrown!).

In upcoming posts I’ll have more information about my business. In the mean time feel free to leave a comment any time you wish on any of my posts.