While WordPress 3.0 still hasn’t been officially released, the Beta releases have been available for testing for awhile now. A new feature that is getting a lot of press is the menus option. In this post, I’ll demonstrate how this new functionality works. I think you’ll agree that it has significant potential (see the video at the end of the post). In my second post in this series, I’ll delve into the code and show how to make modifications to the display of the menus, using CSS and jQuery.

To follow along, you’ll need to download WordPress 3.o. You can visit the WordPress development blog to find a link to the latest Beta, and soon version 3.0 will be released officially. WordPress.org provides excellent installation documentation if you need help installing.

(more…)

“Wow how time flies! Remember way back in 2003, when the company decided we needed a fantastic website, with all of the latest bells and whistles? Well we did it, and it served us quite well at first. But it is showing its age now though, isn’t it? I guess it’s time to call the designers and developers and make some changes….”

Does this scenario sound familiar? It’s sometimes hard to believe, but given the rapid speed of Internet growth, the cutting edge technology that companies worked so hard to implement just a few years ago is now outdated and insufficient.  I’ve been working with many companies that are coming to this realization, and an unfortunate trend has appeared. These companies, sadly are completely determined to keep using their 3rd party vendors and service providers.

(more…)

Holiday Lights Display

As the holidays fast approach, millions of us are pulling decorations out of the attic, grabbing extension cords and untangling the lights. Last weekend I set up the tree, put lights outside, and put candle lights in each of my windows. It certainly looked nice and festive, but I quickly dreaded having to plug and unplug each set of lights every day.

Fortunately, I had a solution! Using X10 automation modules, my windows computer and about 30 minutes of effort, my lights now turn on and off automatically every day!  This post details the steps I took to accomplish this, and provides some resources so you can set up a similar solution yourself.

(more…)