Because I’m a sucker for projects that I don’t actually have time for – I’ve started trying to teach myself Ruby on Rails. I don’t actually have anything to say about that just yet, but this guide has been tremendously helpful.
My inspiration was fairly simple. I haven’t coded anything new in quite some time. I’ve been hearing about Ruby on Rails for years and I’m just now figuring that maybe I need to become a little more acquainted with the most popular programming language out there at current (or at least in my neck of the woods.) Rumor has it, Ruby is a forgiving language to learn and Rails has a phenomenal community. I intend to explore all of that in the coming weeks…consider this the back cover summary of things to come…
My name is Robert Drake. I only love technology some of the time – for everything else there’s hiking. Since hiking doesn’t pay the bills, I cohabitate with technology as a network administrator / web-designer based out of the college town/artist enclave/upstate hamlet of New Paltz, NY. Mostly I work for CreeksideSystems.com, a full service IT support company located in East Moriches, NY, but this site has my resume, some projects, and whatever else I decide to toss in the news section.
This website uses WordPress, the Scriptaculous JS library, and the usual LAMP server acronyms. An alternate ‘nighttime’ stylesheet is provided for the hell of it. By clicking the icons in the top-left you can select between either a white or black background. Enjoy!
WordPress 3.1 was supposed to come out last week, but they haven’t even put out a release candidate yet. Still, I’m pretty psyched for the features. At work I maintain a 35 node multisite install that probably going to grow to 40 here soon. The WP3.1 admin bar, very Drupalesque, will making managing them that much easier. The internal linking is, of course, eagerly awaited.
Until then I wait and read the feature list on repeat…
I’m not a programmer and never have been. In high school I dabbled with PERL, possibly the most idiosyncratic of the popular scripting languages. I still hold a certain fondness for PERL, but year by year I find fewer reasons to bother with it. Later in college, I made a few abortive attempts to learn C and C++, neither taking me beyond the absolute basics. I still have a great deal of regret that I never got immersed in any of the standard development languages to pick up more than a loose smattering of the lingo.
Since then I’ve been involved in making wordpress websites and acting as a network administrator. As a net admin I occasionally play around with bash or modifying other people’s python scripts, but my shop is small and scripting is almost always unnecessary. With wordpress my clients are looking for very quick and very cheap. Neither criteria lends itself to projects that go beyond a few stock plugins. As such, I have a user’s familiarity with php, but only the barest vocabulary to write it. The wordpress hooks and API however, I have a limited but growing capacity.
In the last few released of WordPress a number of features have come out that make it easier to develop functionality that would otherwise be time consuming and difficult. I still don’t consider myself a programmer or even a developer (rather a do-it-yourself website account representative) but its a testament to the WordPress API that I can bumble through and still manage some rather expansive projects usually with only a few hours of labor.
I’m six months late in my reporting, but this last week I’ve been brushing up on some of the nuances of wordpress taxonomy and custom posts. Since I never did delve into them previously I wanted to toss up a few links that have been invaluable in getting all the functionality locked down.
http://sixrevisions.com/wordpress/taxonomy/
http://sixrevisions.com/wordpress/wordpress-custom-post-types-guide/
The short summary is these two features combined allow a developer to use the general WordPress framework to create arbitrary objects with arbitrary fields of data which can then be organized, sorted, parsed, edited, and presented using WordPress functionality. WordPress has always had ‘blog’ like functionality down pat, but with WordPress 3.0 its grown substantially as a general CMS, which really just means that it has become that much easier to work with as a larger platform. I still regret never learning how to be an actual programmer, but release by release I’m being absolved of my crime…and its great.
Another busy week, but there’s apparently a Stack Exchange forum dedicated to wordpress. Greatness incarnate!
Best find so far: Collection of Code for your functions.php file
Enjoy
Note 1: setting up a Centos Ruby on Rails box isn’t nearly as easy as I was hoping. In fact, it’s downright miserable. The problem, as usual, lies with the fact that Centos sticks to its schedule of updated software which is a good few years behind what’s currently out there and generally standard. Ruby, of course, has no such prohibitions. Result: I’ve got an out of date ruby package that doesn’t align at all with the ruby gems that I try to pull down. When I get some time I’ll compile Ruby from source and go from there, but the short version is that it’s not the easiest process and frankly all of the guides I found were out of date to the point of being unhelpful. Yeah, yeah I know…I’m starting my own. Forthcoming like everything else.
Note 2: Currently working on a big proposal for an exciting Creekside Systems job. Three parts, two are web-design related. I think we can make a strong bid for each of them, but only if I can get everything written out. No complaints from me though. Proof I’m not a real tech-head: I actually like doing the paperwork preparation that comes with IT work. Yep, I’m that guy…
More news next week? Hopefully.
Because I’m a sucker for projects that I don’t actually have time for – I’ve started trying to teach myself Ruby on Rails. I don’t actually have anything to say about that just yet, but this guide has been tremendously helpful.
My inspiration was fairly simple. I haven’t coded anything new in quite some time. I’ve been hearing about Ruby on Rails for years and I’m just now figuring that maybe I need to become a little more acquainted with the most popular programming language out there at current (or at least in my neck of the woods.) Rumor has it, Ruby is a forgiving language to learn and Rails has a phenomenal community. I intend to explore all of that in the coming weeks…consider this the back cover summary of things to come…
Category Shortcode
Contributors: Robert Drake
Donate link: http://robertdrake.net
Tags: category, shortcode
Requires at least: 2.9.0
Tested up to: 2.9.3
Stable tag: trunk
Plugin adds shortcode capability for adding posts by category to a page.
Description
This plugin creates the Category Shortcode. The code takes 5 arguments:
number: the number of posts to display. 0 equals the default number. -1 equals the total available.
Order: Ascending or Descending
Display Method: Full, Extract, or Title
Order By: Author, Date, Title, Modified, Parent, ID, Rand, None, or Comment Count.
Category: this is the category id the category or categories that should be searched. Multiple categories can be specified in a comma separated list.
Example shortcode:
Category number=’5′ method=’title’ order=’asc’ id=’11,45′ orderby=’comment_count’
This will show 5 posts in ascending order of category 11 and 45 as arranged by comment_count and will display just the post titles.
Installation
1. Upload the `category_shortcode` directory to the `/wp-content/plugins` directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Place a valid Category code into a page.
Frequently Asked Questions
=How do I create a valid category tag?
A tool has been provided under the tools menu (Category Shortcode). Use this generate valid tags. Note: the tool cannot be used to generate a tag that displays multiple categories, but the shortcode does support this.
=How do I style the output?
I’ve made div classes around the content data. These classes are:
csc_post_thumbnail
csc_post_title
csc_post_date
csc_post_author
csc_post_category
csc_post_exceprt
csc_post_content
csc_break (a div between each post)
An example style to modify the size of the title would be
.csc_post_title {
font-size: 14px;
}
These properties can be set to display: none; to hide the data. More advanced styling could be done modifying the php in the section commented OUTPUT STYLING.
Changelog
= 1.0 =
* Plugin introduced into the wild.
= 1.1 =
* Fixed bug where content was floating to the top of the page
* Changed some formatting
= 1.2 =
* NOTICE TO THOSE UPDATING — this release may change how the visual output because html tags will no longer be stripped out of the full post or excerpt output. Be aware.
* The Get_Content function strips out tags. I’ve tweaked the code so tags are retained in the excerpt and full output styles
* Added post thumbnail to the excerpt and title output with the csc_post_thumbnail css class
* Expanded explanation of CSS Styling
Future Additions?
1. Let plugin form allow for multiple category selections
2. Let plugin form allow for multiple orderby methods
3. In admin form restrict Number of posts to numbers only.
4. In admin form setup a copy and paste script
5. Accept a category name as a valid input
6. Internationalization of the plugin
7. Improve Formatting of Posts / Make formatting easier to edit./ Give user more control over formatting
8. Allow attachments to come through
9. Turn title links on or off.
10. Allow comments in output
11. Give user more control over the postformatting
12. Add ability to modify thumbnail options through shortcode
Centos 5.3 + Webmin + Samba | Centos 5.3 + Webmin + RT |
