Category: Bluelime News

WFPICCS gets a new responsive website

I first started working with the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care (WFPICCS) in 2003. When I first met with them, the intention was to have a website which they could maintain and add information for doctors and nurses pertaining to news and event in the pediatric field. At the time CMS were very costly and so I built them a PHP website with a very simple admin interface allowing them to add news, events and update bits of information here and there.

While teaching at BCIT, I discovered that at the end of each term, students select projects from a list. So I inquired and thought that a re-design and conversion of WFPICCS into WordPress would be a great project. I was lucky enough to have my project selected by a team of 4. Kate, Chad, Gabe and Sesil did a wonderful job working together and built a great looking site for WFPICCS.

The site has a slider on the home page which is updatable by using a custom post type for each slide. Another custom post type was used for the board of directors and officers making it very easy for the folks at WFICCS to update and maintain.

A responsive design was also selected to allow visitors to access the site via platforms other than the desktop. Overall WFPICCS and I are very pleased with the site and looking forward to working with more BCIT students on future projects.

wfpiccs

Learning Child Theming with Twenty Twelve

With the release of WordPress 3.5 comes a great new default theme called Twenty Twelve. Twenty Twelve is responsive, beautiful and a super easy to child theme. Child themes are now accepted on the WordPress repository so I thought I would try my hand at making one. You can now download my child theme, Deux Milles Douze. I also wrote a short tutorial explaining the steps I took to make it. If you’re interested in child themes, I would suggest that you give Twenty Twelve a try.

Deux-Milles-Douze

WPCS Personal Action Items

In my last post, I mentioned that many action items were made following numerous discussions and conversations. I myself had the opportunity to speak to various members of the Theme Review Team and came up with my own set of personal action items.

Updates to Mon Cahier

My theme Mon Cahier was quite popular when it came out, but of course, now that’s it’s not as new it’s no longer as popular. One thing that one can do to make a more popular theme is by offering right to left language support. WordPress itself is very good at providing right to left support for countries in the Middle east and Persia but only a small percentage of themes offer it. Providing RTL is quite easy, since it’s only a matter of adding a stylesheet, so I thought I would update my theme. I took care of that task this weekend and will be submitting it to the WordPress repo. Fingers crossed it will be updated soon.

I also plan on making it responsive and need to make better use of the theme customizer, but these two action items will need to be put on the back burner for now.

Learn WordPress

I’ve been teaching WordPress for a few years now and my efforts have not gone unnoticed. One of the great things to come out of the WordPress Community Summit is the handbooks that are currently in the works. I’ve been asked to be the lead of setting up a curriculum for teachers. This material will consist of teaching materials, videos and tutorials. This task is quite big, but I’ve already chatted to a few people who have offered to help. Similarly to the other handbooks, a website will be put in place allowing people to contribute, edit and share information. The website and plan of action should be put in place in a few weeks. I’m very excited about this project and  look forward to see how it progresses and evolves.

Kitsilano.ca goes Responsive

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Rob Lewis for years on the Kits website. Rob is great to work with as he let’s me try out different designs and doesn’t demand pixel perfection. During our last conversation, he suggested the site needed a refresh and needed to be more suited for mobile viewers. Responsive sites are more and more common and I’ve dabbled a bit, but diving into a new territory is always a bit scary.

Following the WordPress theme weekend, I was inspired to give Reverie a try. Other folks seem to like it and so I thought it would serve me well. Unfortunately after about 6 hours of tinkering, I just wasn’t getting the look and feel I was hoping for. I decided instead to give Emil Uzelac’s responsive theme a go. Once installed, I created my child theme and added my style changes to the stylesheet. I soon realized that changes to the templates themselves would be needed, but the theme files were so well laid out and commented, that child theming was a breeze. In fact, I can’t remember having so much fun building a theme. I hope that the viewers at Kitsilano.ca will enjoy the changes.

Code Poet Interview

Code Poet has been around for a while and back in May I wrote that the site was now transformed form a directory to a full resources site. Code Poet is a great place to find quizzes, free e-books and interviews. Last week, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Krista Stevens and the interview is now live. This articles focuses on my teaching rather than theme building, but if you’ve ever wanted to know why I love WordPress, check it out.

Announcing Mon Cahier, a new theme available for Free

I’m happy to announce that my second theme, Mon Cahier, has been accepted in the WordPress Theme Repository. This means that anyone can download it and install it for Free. This new theme is very simple, clean and elegant. It’s main purpose is to showcase your content. Please feel free to download it and let me know how you like it.

Releasing themes using underscores as a starting point

One of my year’s goal for 2012, was to release a theme in the WordPress theme repository. Releasing a theme is an easy enough thing to do as long as you follow all the guidelines and ensure that your theme meets all of the requirements. But the bar is set quite high. Although I’ve been building/creating themes for years now and average one a week, creating themes for the masses is a whole different ball game.

I unsuccessfully tried in 2010 and then got busy, so just keep “Adding a theme to the repo” on my teuxdeux list. Then a few months ago, Ian Stewart and his team at Automattic announced the release of _s theme.

This theme is the perfect starter theme for anyone wishing to create themes. It’s not meant to be used as a parent theme, but instead, it’s your foundation.

Knowing that Ian is an incredibly smart guy and that the theme had the Automattic stamp of approval, I proceeded to study it, poked around and came up with my very own theme – Stripay. Feel free to download it and check it out to see how it works. I also urge you, if you are a theme developer, to look at _s. It’s FREE for anyone to use and makes theming way easier.

PS: Why such a weird name? There’s a lot of themes in the repo. Stripes, stripey, were all taken, so I just started randomly choosing letters!

WordCamp Seattle 2012

One of the best thing about WordPress is the online community and the many ways one can learn how to use WordPress as a blogging platform or as a CMS. WordCamps are always a lot of fun and a great way to meet other developers and bloggers. This year, I’ve been fortunate to have been selected as one of the speakers at WordCamp Seattle. Check out the schedule and come and say hi.

My slides used for the presentation can be found here.

The theme created for this presentation can be viewed here.