WordPress’ Thelonoius update, is something interesting. The once playful attitude of the blog software turned semi-cms is now making a turn into a big new world. With addition of taxonomies, custom menus and now custom post types, the once blog synonymous system is looking like its fellow Opensource juggernaut Drupal.

Good things come to those who love to wait for great improvements. I hope that this upgrade doesn’t foreshadow a negative change in the WordPress community.

Z

This will be the first in a short series about knowing your development environment and how to make it your bitch! Now I know some of you designers out there, and you know who you are, have not a clue about where to begin when creating virtual instances on your Apache environment. You just downloaded MAMP and suddenly you think that somehow that is enough. Save me your BS encrusted psycho babel about how this is information that only the server wizards need to know. Even if you never become completely proficient in this area, it is worth breaking your install to test these tools and become more fluent in the ways of the Terminal, or shell to the UNIX crowd.

Today we start with MAMP and move to the TERMINAL. In the next article I will go over some cool commands for GIT and SVN as well as setting different editor applications to run in your TERMINAL.

Quick sob story, a few months back I forced my machine into corrupted library purgatory and had only the Install Disks and Terminal access at my command. At 3 in the morning I faced the obliteration of months of work due to my lack of diligence keeping back-ups. After examining the TERMINAL and asking it for simple information like if it could read my file library, I found that I could copy files from my dying drive to the portable entirely in command line.

TERMINAL

Simple commands that you will use day in and day out:

• cd — change directory
• ls -al — list all items in a table that shows ownership and permissions alphabetically ascending
• [control key] + [C key] — cancel the command that you just entered
• sudo ‘command’ — tell the system to overwrite all permissions and authenticate yourself as the admin
• ln -s /path/to/item/you/are/linkingto ‘nameofalias’ — make a relative link to something, can be a folder or a file
• rm -rf ‘filename’ — remove anything with the file name

Another neat thing in TERMINAL is the built in auto-complete feature. When entering in a path or a filename, you need to only enter up to the last unique character and then press TAB to complete the name. (eg /pa TAB results in /path/ or something like that) Also, pressing the UP or DOWN key on your keyboard will cycle through the commands you have used, super handy if you are using a lot of the same ones over and over.

MYSQL

First you need to create the database and user that will be associated with that database in your MAMP phpMyAdmin interface. Then you need to import some data. For smaller db’s you can easily accomplish this through the same web interface but for larger databases (anything over 3mb) you will need to do this entirely from command line. Crack open the terminal and run this command:

mysql -u dbuser -p yourdbname < /path/to/backup.sql

What this command does is tell mysql to use the specified database “-p ‘yourdbname’ ” and associated user “-p ‘dbuser’ ” and import the backup sql file that you have pointed it to.

Freelance has a lot of interesting barriers to overcome. First you have to find a client, then you must determine what the scope of work will be, then you must determine the price for your work and when all is said and done you have to COLLECT!

It seems like, even when you agree to something with your client,  you may encounter some last minute changes in schedule that weren’t apart of the original deal. Namely, they don’t want to finish paying you because they think that they don’t need to pay you for your work. They don’t remember negotiating your rate, or asking you to perform the work in an unreasonably short amount of time. I’m almost convinced that they don’t care. They used you for what they wanted to accomplish and now suddenly they want out of the deal.

No matter how fairly you have treated someone, they want to take their guarantee back.

So here is how everything happened;

1. A gentleman asked me to create a WordPress theme in one day for a client of his
2. He agrees, after many back and forth conversations, to the price for the work
3. I complete the work that I could do, and even generated artwork to complete the design
4. I am on call as a consultant modifying theme settings and php templates
5. I send the final payment for the other half of what the total job was priced
6. Customer says that he is waiting for his client to pay him
7. I politely tell him that this is not my problem
8. He doesn’t agree

From my perspective, if you have hired me to do something and you agree to pay a certain price then it doesn’t matter to me what other arrangements you have regarding the same project. I am willing to go a little bit for people, but if you have agreed to pay me for my time, you had better follow through without any condition attached.

I will keep you posted as to whether or not he actually follows through.

Thanks for letting me complain a bit,

Zach “the unpaid” Freelancer

A godfather to the ideas of digital communication and information surfing is Marshall McLuhan. While I was studying communications in college I found myself totally enthralled by McLuhan’s book “The Medium is The Mesage.” After watching him debate other intellectuals of his time it was clear that his premise would be an important thing to review and study as someone who wants to communicate online.

The idea that my words, images, videos and websites would become a medium by which others learn and interact with me would be something that McLuhan would adopt if he were alive today. It’s amazing to think that McLuhan advocated TV’s in the class room and discussed the idea that in a few years books would be an antiquated form of research and reference because visual learning is so much faster and effective. I personally don’t think that we will ever eliminate books as a form of communication or record keeping. The instability of digital memory is far to great to ever totally eliminate paper records of information.

Reading this book is a good way for designers and developers to get an honest idea of what this communication medium should be doing.

Let me know what you think,

Zach “attack” Meyer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan

Attention followers of our blog, we moved!

On Friday September 11th we had an opportunity to finally start transitioning away from the old single page site and allow WordPress to do all of the heavy lifting from now on. Or at least until something flashier and faster comes along to replace it.

There is sort of a strange paradigm in web development and design, you have time to work for everyone accept yourself. This issue often causes company websites to sort of languish in a mire of never progressive soup. Great examples of people who don’t upgrade and don’t really care are cameronmoll and happycog. Both represent amazing minds in the web community and neither one has really changed the theme of their websites in well over 3 years.

This constant self-deprecation can be a sweet kiss of death for many companies. I can personally attest to my constant busy-ness as being the primary cause for my lack of change to the core site. I sincerely wish that I had more time to develop the ideas that have to a slightly more inviting polish. But perhaps my recent move from spineless entrepreneur to full-time web wrangler will grant me some real time to brush my site up.

The other part of the web that is always chasing me is the feeling that my best work is done for clients and not for me. It always feels like my concepts for other people are more well rounded than what I end up assembling for myself. I know that I have a hundred good ideas a day but they are always for others. Perhaps it is my future to be a muse for others and never for myself.

Thank you all for coming by and reading my white noise from time to time.

We recently finished production on 2 new websites. They are now launched and swimming in the wild.

Joynt Search Marketing – http://joyntsearchmarketing.com

Zach Meyer, website designer and co-owner of cognizant-design.com has finished a new design for joyntsearchmarketing.com. The new website design is focused on the concept of design following functionality. The design is clean and seamless. There is plenty of room to focus on the main attraction, which is the content. Many blog designs today are overcrowded and the designers are clearly trying to incorporate too much which ends up distracting the reader from the content.

With this design, the reader is guided through the content with minimal interruption. At the bottom, they are greeted with options to contact the blog owner and read additional posts. This frees the reader from having to scroll back to the top for additional information. Beautiful font selections, and complimentary colors help make the site esthetically pleasing and warm.

10 Thousand Things – http://10kthings.com

Developed on WordPress, this design and layout was designed to include a mini form in the column as well as a home page that would serve up decent CTAs that can be managed by the client. Dave Winget is another member of the extended Cog family and has a lot to offer in the ways of full featured web marketing services. He has a great library of resources, including us , that he calls upon from project to project. He has a great blog too.

If any of you know who I am and what I usually say, I try to maintain some decent levels of class and sophistication while expressing my opinion or view about a particular subject because I know what backlash is, however, today I will allow myself to be rather unrestrained. Today I shall be attacking the loud voice of supposed web designers who are bitching about the difficulties of designing for Drupal or any other CMS that exists. This is the movement of the future

Things to know about me, I am not the God’s gift to webdesign, I am not a PHP developer by trade, I do not claim to be the last word in any of the advances to technology, but I have been using these CMS platforms for about 4 years and I think I have a reasonable idea about what is possible and how you let the medium be your guide when working in web. Plus after I am done bitching I will attach some resources for you.

I have been designing and developing in the web for quite some time now and I don’t think that there is any reason for anyone who wants to start, or has started, to ever wince at the thought of using the tools that are available to them. Having been in the middle of several debates and pushes to change the standards for various parts of Drupal, I have heard this unified cry from the “designers” that PHP is scary and that they should have to worry about it. STFUYFB! I started out with the chicken-shit designer method of copying pasting and re-wrapping existing code in divs to get it to my bidding, and it worked. My level of impact was really low at that time but then I began to copy functions and edit them to get the results that I wanted. From that moment on the dynamics of what I was doing changed. There was no longer a fear that the white screen would kill all my work.

Of course you won’t know everything to start with. But you can go about learning these things in a way that is tailored to your style. I like videos and hands on tutorial instruction. The more I physically perform an action the more I connect that action with its purpose. Some of my friends just read through the books and they totally get how to accomplish these things. Different strokes for different folks. But saying that you can’t understand or learn something means that either you are incompetent or you refuse to allow yourself to learn.

Ugly Garland is no longer an excuse, bitches! Every CMS starts with the ugliest pre-installed theme that could be possibly packaged with it for 2 reasons; 1. This is what the developers were using while developing and or 2. The developers didn’t have a designer to create a decent starter theme with. All complaints about Drupal’s boxiness to me is white noise. As designers, we (you and I) have the power to create something that can be free and airy or cramped and claustrophobic. Your art style, be it minimalist or texture crazy, can work in any arena. Our responsibility is to create something that fits the purpose and medium it will be presented in.

If you design for print, you need to know what can be accomplished and how to use the press/paper/inks/etc to accomplish it. Know your tools or start learning about them so that you can create the results that you want. Don’t blame the medium for your lack of understanding. (X)HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP are now the foundations for open source web-design and development. If you don’t have any concept of what these things are or even a vague idea of how they work together to create a website, then you either need to find out about it or STOP DESIGNING FOR THE WEB. You arrogant lazy assholes that keep saying how much you don’t like webdesign because its too restrictive, please stop bidding against me. You are using up my creative air and its really annoying.

Sure, there are many things that can become better and in the case of the open source world, it is the designers and developers that dictate that change. Voice your opinion and help create solutions. The web is full of bitching.

As for your growth here are some basic things to consider;

Design Resources: 960grid, webdesignledger, smashingmagazine, tutsplus, drupal, wordpress, alistapart, w3schools

If you are ready to take of that summer dress and get on board with the rest of us;

Development Resources: drupal api, wordpress codex, PHP

Best of luck.

Zach “attack”

MIT Campus, Cambridge Mass. The time is 2:00pm and the delay of hardware issues is hindering our presenter, Ben , @i3iviivi, on Resource Description Framework(s) or RDFa.

So far the highlight of our Design for Drupal event for me is this very topic. The idea categories and mark up can be just as importnat as the information inside of it. This is not Micro-Format. This information mapping system that will define for computers and search engines what data is being read.

Definitively creating definitions for intelligent search, that creates relationships between data and the people that publish it. Having this sort of definition set will make information (webpages) act more like mini databases and make the people who publish information more responsible for what they do. Or at least, that is the intent. Some might look at this as a way to pry open the door to ambiguity or user privacy.

EVOC a module, for Drupal, that was developed to create the relationship of data on your website to standards in RDF that are already defined on the web. openspring.org Originally, Drupal had been designed output both RSS and RDFa content.

FUZZ is a Firefox plug in that will display the available RFDa info from a page that has RDF meta information embedded.

Here is a link to Ben’s Session at D4D.

http://agaric.com/rdfa

the Wiki for RDFa

interesting thoughts about the future of data. Zach

Moving a website can be simple, but often the thing I find most troubling is the thing that I am most afraid of dealing with. Like 301 re-directs. There seem to be very few constants about dealing with the beautifully documented and clear examples of how to create “a” 301 re-direct in the LAMP environment.

Anyone new to this process please learn from my mistakes. I do all of my work from the MAMP perspective, so my inexperience with certain tools often leads to issues. Everything about the file transfer and relocation of source worked out just fine but as I began adding redirects to the htaccess file the server would send me 500 Internal Error screens.

Panicked and unsure of what I had done wrong, I began a long stretch of testing and experimenting with different combination(s) of re-direct formats to solve the error. One such resource was the ndesign-studio site. After a night of testing the issue that I couldn’t seem to overcome was simply this; if I add more than one redirect line at a time to the htaccess file before updating it on the site, there would be an error. No matter if the formatting was identical from line to line. In a fit of desperate frustration, I entered all of the redirects one at a time to eliminate the error screens.

This morning I asked DataBoy as well as my good friend Seth Gerard about this, and both of them suggested that using the standard application TextEdit was the issue. Apparently, it was not inserting the proper line break character so the server was reading one long line and then grinding to a halt.  Both of them suggested that by merely changing the editor that I was using, this issue should not appear again. TextMate entered the conversation but I think that I will continue to use Coda and stop relying on the simple text editor to do all those little dirty jobs.

Note for future web people, don’t use TextEditor to adjust your redirects, or you will have some trouble.

Zach

Truly going to need more monkeys

Yes. I’m supposed to be sleeping. I may be nocturnal by nature, but a “day job” is just that!

No, I’m not supposed to be blogging when I have work to be done. No, I shouldn’t have to do work after midnight. But I do!