Posts

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Pen To Paper

Well, perhaps better written as fingers to keyboard. I have been struggling with a severe case of writer’s block lately and all of my sites are lacking for attention.

I have decided to get back to basics, which is essentially putting the pen to paper and simply writing. If the next few(?) posts tend to ramble it is just for as long as it takes to get my creative juices flowing again.

Write now … er, right now, I am tapping away on my iPhone just to get things started. It actually can go fairly quick if you just simply keep tapping out your thoughts with little concern for minor typos and punctuation!

Although I will wait to “publish” this until I am able to sit down at my desk later tonight (read: tomorrow afternoon) I will have little concern with editing this post.

Until next time …

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Royal Botanical Gardens

This is our first week of vacation in 2010 and like past vacations mostly a restful spur of the moment choice of places to go and things to do. Yesterday we waited for the weather reports to come in then decided to drive to the Royal Botanical Gardens near Hamilton, Ontario.

The weather was beautiful with blue skies and temperatures in the high 70’s; of course the humidity made it seem much more like the high 80’s but it was a great day all the same.

My wife, Terri, has a great eye for pictures and loves to take them. She must have clicked well over 300 digital photos on our day trip; myself, I only took a few with my iPhone that I found interesting. I rarely take pictures but with the built-in camera I am taking a lot more than what I have ever in the past. Here are some of the pictures I took:

The pictures are (in no particular order): My sandals on a bench, it was so nice to walk barefoot in the grasses; Roses in one of the Rose Gardens; My lunch at the Rock Garden Tea House, a Chicken Caesar in a spinach wrap with a Fanta; a small waterfall tucked away in the corner of the Rock Garden; and, a flower setting on exhibit representing Romeo and Juliet. Enjoy!

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10 Steps to BuddyPress MultiSite

... as presented at the WordPress Toronto Meetup Group May 2010 meeting ...

The 10 steps to go from having no domain to a BuddyPress MultiSite installation:

Presentation Slides: [download id=”2″]

  1. Register (or choose) a domain; and, choose a web host if needed.
  2. Start downloading WordPress 3.0 or greater.
  3. Enable “Wildcard DNS“.
  4. Create a database and assign a user for your WordPress installation.
  5. Upload WordPress.
  6. Start the WordPress installation.
  7. Read this page thoroughly: http://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network!
  8. Add define ('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true); to wp-config.php
  9. Go to your Dashboard (or refresh the page).
    • Under Tools | Network (now available from above step)
    • Choose your settings; click install.
      • Follow the directions on the page to modify wp-config.php and .htaccess
  10. Install the BuddyPress plugin; activate it; and, choose a BuddyPress friendly theme.
Your BuddyPress is Ready!

Enjoy!

NB: These steps are based on my experiences using HostGator Web Services, other web hosting services may vary in their requirements.

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Do Try

I believe you always need to strive for improvement. Sometimes you make mistakes along the way …

If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough
Vince Lombardi, football coach

… which is followed by:

Do … or do not. There is no try.
Yoda, Jedi master

To succeed at reaching your goals you cannot stop until you reach them … then you set higher goals.

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WPTO: Creating a Plugin

I will be delivering a brief overview at the WordPress Toronto April 2010 Meetup on how I recently created a plugin. This will be the first presentation made for the Meetup group; and, as part of the ongoing agenda ideas, the WordPress theme for this meeting.

The plugin, BNS Category Plus, was created for the HCAS Volunteers group and may be publicly available in the near future. The concept extends the default Categories plugin to allow additional options. The overview will cover some design ideas and programming tips on how this and other plugins can be quickly created to fill a niche. I will also talk about the tools and resources I use to write and research plugin code.

The slides from the presentation are available as a PDF here: [download id=”1″]

A link to the BNS Category Plus code will be provided once it is publicly released; meeting attendees are also welcome to contact me for a copy of the BNS Category Plus code before its release.

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Focus

Getting your head into the game is only the beginning; being on the same field as the rest of the team is the real key.

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WPToronto Meetup April 2010 #wpto

The Toronto WordPress Meetup Group‘s next meeting is set for April 17, 2010 at 2:00PM. This meeting’s venue will be Paupers Pub at 539 Bloor Street West, just east of Bathurst Street.

This will be another socially oriented meeting as the group continues to work on future themes, agendas, and presentations by WPToronto members … and other interesting people.

Come to the meeting and get to know some interesting people talking about WordPress and other related ideas … I’ll be there!

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World Rat Day 2010

My wife and I have been keeping fancy pet rats for several years now. They are very intelligent, affectionate little animals and a constant joy in our lives. To celebrate World Rat Day these last few years, I create a unique graphic to share with all other rat fanciers. This year, due to unforseen circumstances, I was not able to create this graphic until this morning:

World Rat Day 2010 with the elusive Easter Rat

As World Rat Day 2010 also falls on the same day as Easter Sunday I chose to incorporate the elusive Easter Rat and some pastel colors into the design.

Happy Easter … and Enjoy!

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Commemorative WordCamp Calling Card

I realized I did not include the commemorative calling card I created for WordCamp Toronto 2010 after I wrote yesterday’s post. These unique cards fit a niche market I like to address: short-run custom calling cards.

Here are the front and back images:

Edward Caissie - WordCamp Toronto 2010 (front)
Edward Caissie - WordCamp Toronto 2010 (back)

Feel free to contact myself if you have a need for your own short-run custom calling card.

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Successful WordCamp Toronto 2010 #wcto2010

WordCamp Toronto 2010 came to a close today a little behind schedule but filled with great information, wonderful ideas, and a growing network of new and old friends. A hearty thanks goes out to Matthew Yuill and Melissa Feeney for all their hard works and efforts organizing this WordCamp.

I offered my time at WordCamp as a volunteer. I believe that choice was one of the best I have made. I was given the opportunity to meet and greet almost every single attendee from “behind the bar” giving out the complimentary tee shirts.

There were many volunteers at the event and each one really appeared to enjoy the time at their stations … don’t let these candid photos fool you, these three “behind the bar” with me were all having a great time:

Claudia
Janine
Miroslav

Although I missed getting pictures of the other volunteers (Zamina, Paul, Sam, and Mike) they all did a great job and appeared to really enjoy themselves as well. I have a few pictures taken with my iPhone I will need to go through (and add at a later date?) but in the meantime I would like to add my thanks to the volunteers for their enthusiasm and strong work ethic. A job well done by all!

… and by all measures a very successful WordCamp!