The Webgazette theme is now available. More details on the Webgazette Theme page. Get it while it’s hot 
Webgazette Theme is Released
by on Monday, October 19, 2009, 19:55pm - 2 Comments
General
WordPress Code Crazy and phpDocumentor
by on Thursday, October 15, 2009, 15:32pm - No Comment
General
It’s been a long while since I last played around with WordPress themes.
I’d heard that things had moved along to the stage where WordPress themes had become very complicated and more about programming than design, but I’m glad to say, that while some things have changed, they haven’t changed that much.
Once of the most obvious changes is the use of phpDocumentor tags in the default and classic themes. I’m not sure why WordPress have started to use these tags in the themes. I haven’t been able to find any official explanation about why they are being used. Maybe it’s just good practice and part of a wider WordPress code documentation project?
These tags aren’t that significant as far a creating themes are concerned. It has to be borne in mind that these are just comments at the beginning of the file which can be used by phpDocumentor for creating documentation for php projects.
I found these quite useful and have adopted them myself and used more tags to record more details about the theme such as author, version and what needs doing etc. Most WordPress files already have comments at the beginning and indeed throughout the file anyway.
Otherwise things don’t seem to have changed that much and it’s business as usual.
A New WordPress Theme
by on Monday, October 12, 2009, 12:26pm - 2 Comments
General
I’ve been looking through some old files and I found the old ainsliejohnson.com theme and though it would be a good idea to release it into the wild.
I’ve decided to call it “Webgazette” as it was originally used here on ainsliejohnson.com. It’s a good looking theme and I’m sure that many people will want to download it. I’m not making any promises as to when it is likely to be released, as it needs a bit of tidying up and refinement, but hopefully it’ll not take too long to get knocked into shape. It’s also been a while since I worked with WordPress themes so the coding may have changed a bit and I’m going to need to catch up a bit. I’ll post more news at a later date when I’ve made some progress.
Best Music Streaming Service
by on Saturday, October 10, 2009, 10:40pm - No Comment
General
A while back I wrote about my surprise that it was cheaper to buy a music CD rather than download Mp3s in my post: “Now That’s What I Call a Rip Off“.
This was brought back to mind when I recently saw that “Now That’s What I Call Music! 73” had been released. Priced at £11.70 in my local supermarket but a monstrous £36.00 on one download service I saw. Hard to believe anybody would pay that, and certainly not me!
Anyway getting back to the story… Since I stopped downloading music, I’ve missed being able to listen to new music by streaming it. You know, it’s a good way of previewing music to see if the CD’s worth buying – so many CDs these days, it seems, are 1 or 2 good songs and the remainder crap! So off I went in search of a good music streaming service.
My first approach was to try a search: best music streaming service. From there I Checked out this post: “The World’s Top 10 Free Music Streaming Services”. Here I found a good list to think about, and some not-so obvious, including:
I’m not going to go into much detail here as Crenk have done a good job of doing that and I suggest you check out their post for more details, here. In summary, these range from paid for music download and streaming services through social networks to search engines finding Mp3 on the web (are these legal?) and quiet a few have geographical limitations.
For me Spotify seemed to fit the bill. Just sign up for an account, download the software, log in and you’re away streaming a wide range of tunes, all be it peppered with the odd, un-skippable, advert now and again. Not too intrusive though and no worse that commercial radio here in the UK but with the advantage I can pick and choose what I listen to. Of course, you can get a day pass for £0.99 or subscribe for £9.99 a month for an ad free experience. I didn’t subscribe. Call me scrooge if you like but £9.99 a month seemed to much for skipping an advert every 30 minutes or so, and you don’t get a great deal more value for your money as far as I can see. Greater quality streaming perhaps but not a lot of point on my laptop speakers.
So that was the situation until yesterday, when I heard about a new level of Napster membership called Unlimited. For £5 a month you can stream all you like and as many times as you like without ads and get 5 Mp3 downloads a month included and are free to buy more if I want. So I signed up straight away. For me this seems the best way. I can stream music from any internet connected computer and get a few Mp3s for my Mp3 player every month. I can buy more if I want and of course I can still go an buy that cheap CD from my local supermarket if I want.
Where’s the Conversation
by on Thursday, October 08, 2009, 8:28pm - No Comment
General
After taking a 6 month break from blogging I’m feeling out of touch with the blog world. I’ve still got some of my old favourites in my feed reader but not many. The trouble is, being so out of touch it’s difficult to just jump back in and make a good contribution to a conversation.
I’m also starting to think that I’m not interested in what I used to be so much any more. So where’s the conversation at?
Advice For a Wannabe Web Designer
by on Tuesday, October 06, 2009, 6:25pm - No Comment
General
I though I would share this for the benefit of any budding theme designers out there. It can be quite a shock just how much attention can come your way when you start making WordPress themes.
I got a little burnt out by the demands of a trying to support users of my WordPress themes. I’m sure I’m not the only person who has experienced this. At one stage I was getting hundreds of emails a day and as much as I loved designing templates and themes it can soon turn into a real chore when the support requests never let up.
You know, you feel guilty ignoring emails but I don’t have the time to answer them all. I guess it the global scale of the WordPress theme thing – if you get a popular theme then you catch a lot of interest and it can be relentless.
Another thing is that the emails ranged from very polite request (which were a pleasure) for help to incredibly rude and sometimes insulting demands (that got ignored) for help. There’s no accounting for the way some folks behave!
I’m not sure what the ideal solution is. You could just say up front that there is no support. I’m not sure this is the best option if you want a good reputation, though. Maybe you could charge for support from the beginning. In my experience this will see off most support requests. Like I said I’m not sure what the solution is, but it’s something you ought to think about before releasing any themes into the wild.
I suppose, you got to learn to cope with it the best way you can and not feel guilty about it.
Good luck out there.
Hello World
by on Monday, October 05, 2009, 5:50pm - 5 Comments
General
Hello. Is there anybody out there?
There hasn’t been a post here for a while so I thought it was about time I fixed that situation. I’ve been intending to dust off the blog after what has turned into months of inactivity for a while now but other things kept me busy.
The first job has been to address the vulnerabilities found in WordPress and upgrade to the latest version. All seemed to go well and everything still works (I think). WordPress just goes from strength to strength, doesn’t it?
Comments are enabled again but only for posts under 90 days old. I’ve set them turn off automatically for anything over the 90 days to try and can some of the spam. Here’s hoping.
The contact page is back and the plugin updated, so that it now works! Hopefully. It looks a mess, but I’ll get to fix that soon. (edit – fixed now.)
Finally, all the other plugins have now been updated and surprisingly everything seems to work. 
Ok that’s all for now folks. Catch you again soon.
Confused about where to begin?
Get the low down from ainsliejohnson.com
- Most Popular
- Featured Articles