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A love note to WordCamp
I got the opportunity to hit up WordCamp Grand Rapids a few weeks back. Shane and Peter are great at convincing people to tackle new and exciting things that push your comfort zone a bit, for me that means getting out into the community more. I must admit, I’m not much of a conference guy. I’m not naturally a mingler which is the key skill for conference attendance. Mingling, and expectation management. I went to SXSW Interactive a few years ago expecting to be inspired by the myriad of people presenting on fascinating topics. I found a weeklong bacchanal populated primarily by junior advertising account execs. Don’t get me wrong, fun was had in abundance but I left feeling a little uninspired. The speaker/sponsor shindig the night before the event was delightful, everyone exceedingly pleasant and friendly. There are people … Continue reading
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WP Patterns
I had a blast at WordCamp Grand Rapids. The event was incredibly well organized, the crowd was delightful, and the speakers blew me away with their brilliance. I rambled for 42 minutes, and people were kind enough to smile sweetly during the whole thing. Links of stuff referenced in the slides themeforest.net paravelinc.com/ northface.com patagonia.com chesterzoo.org/ nest.com/ googleventures.com/ gigaom.com housecreative.co.uk trentwalton.com/ thegreatdiscontent.com/ editer.com/ planetpropaganda.com theworkcycle.com/ jasonmiller.us/ journal.gregorywood.co.uk/
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Update: WordPress Post Editor for Balsamiq
I believe deeply in creating intentional experiences. For WordPress plugins, a lot of that is figuring out the best ux pattern for the workflow. Some people like to work directly in the code, which has a lot of advantages. Others like to pull out a pencil and doodle on a napkin. Personally, I like to work in an app called Balsamiq. When WordPress 3.0 came out I built templates for The Post Edit Admin Loop, The Comment Edit Loop and The Post Editor for Balsamiq. WordPress has continued to evolve and the admin has changed in a number of ways. Here is the post editor updated for WordPress 3.4.1. Let me know if I missed any panels or details! Download bbml file (had to zip).
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Help Us Help WordPress
This is a personal request from your users, a rallying cry from a compatriot. I personally love WordPress. I make my living from it. The average user, though, couldn’t care less about it. They just want to run their business, tell their family history, organize their church, share their photos or live their life online with a minimum of impedance. In its evolution from simple blogging tool to CMS, framework and software ecosystem, WordPress is losing its way. It needs us to help bring it back and cultivate simple genius. My agency married WordPress in 2007. We’d been dating for a number of years but were still seeing others: some serious flirtation with Joomla, a blind date with Drupal, a summer romance with CMSMS, even a steady five-year stint with a custom CMS that we lovingly named Rocinante (after Don … Continue reading
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Define I Have Donated = True
As a website developer working on large scale WordPress projects I often think… Wouldn’t it be lovely if I could just turn off the donation nag for plugin X? As a plugin developer working on a heap of free plugins, I often think… Wouldn’t it be lovely if people actually donated to these plugins? Tonight it dawned on me that it’s high time to start a standard for these problems. Here’s what I’m proposing: In my plugins, I’m going to start adding a donation nag / marketing space, but I’m going to wrap it in a check for a constant that you can add in your wp-config.php file to hide my nag. It’s just enough effort that you really have to think about the fact that you’re hiding a donation link so maybe you’ll actually donate. But this offers an … Continue reading
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The Art & Science of WordPress Premium
I had the chance to present at WordCamp Seattle 2012 on the art and science of running a premium WordPress business. This was by far the hardest talk to birth I have ever worked on. I was blessed and able to parlay the opportunity into a number of awesome discussions with major players in the industry. The Capitalist in the Co-Op: The Art & Science of the Premium WordPress Business View more presentations from Shane Pearlman If I had to boil the talk down it would come to this. Most people who use WordPress don’t really care about WordPress. They just want their website to work. Therein lies a huge opportunity. Right now, the bulk of the offering in the plugin repo and among free (and even many paid) themes is Caveat Emptor. It might work. But it might suck. … Continue reading
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The WordPress VIP Workshop
I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to join some of the most advanced and influential WordPress community this week. The 2012 WordPress VIP workshop in Napa was a really interesting and inspiring event. I think it was well worth the money. I had been really wondering what to expect. I had thought that we might guide the agenda through some sort of collaborative process. Maybe even setting it when we arrived. I was surprised to learn upon my arrival that the schedule was in fact a fixed agenda. The Scene The receptionist asked us if we’d like some wine while we signed in before shuttling us to our room in one of the shinny new cars provided by their sponsor, Audi. I think Andy Skelton said it best when he pointed out that The Carneros Inn, where we were … Continue reading
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10 minute preview of Freelance 101
I will be speaking at How Design’s Creative Freelancer Conference in June 2012. A few weeks ago I gave a 10 minute interview touching on the key topics I plan to cover during my talk. Check out the interview at Creative Freelancer Blog. Talk: Planning for the First Year of Freelance I started freelancing full time out of necessity during the dot bomb in 2001. There were no blogs on freelancing, no conferences, but I was deeply blessed to find a mentor who helped me avoid the worst mistakes my first year. While you shouldn’t get paralysis by analysis (just get started), certain key tips often make the difference between navigating a successful freelance career and a lot of sleepless nights. Whether you are dreaming about freelancing or in the thick of bootstrapping, be practical and be intentional about running … Continue reading
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What Should I Charge?
The most common question I get when speaking to new, and even experienced, freelancers is “What should I charge?” How should I set my rate? Hourly or Fixed? How much will I make this year? I have a formula I use to raise or lower my rate, as well as some key strategies you can use to set up a good game plan. The key is to be intentional and strategic. This talk was given at International Freelancers Day 2011.
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Oops, Where Is That 60k?
“Your income is directionally proportional to the problems you solve.” Want to make more money? Solve bigger problems. It took me 5 years to realize that applies to my business even more than to the problems I solve for my customers. What are the biggest problems in your business? Are you out of time? Team unreliable? Can’t seem close the right deals? For over 5 years straight our income doubled. I can tie each of those growth spurts to internal operational decisions. Working on our business as well as our products & services has proved the most profitable expenditure of time and resources we have made. We improved and systematized project management. We standardized our approach to certain projects. We set actual goals. We identified and propagated culture intentionally. Each of these paid off handsomely. Work on Your Business: Tracking … Continue reading
