Categories
Package/plugin/module WordPress

WordPress: Plugin Development

In making the conversion from Movable Type to WordPress, I had need and desire to create an assortment of plugins. Since my priorities were to convert various other of my sites prior to creating this newest techblog of mine, I haven’t been able to make said plugins available to others. Now that the site is more or less ready for prime time, I find myself with a bit of a backlog of plugins to unveil.

The complete list of the plugins I have developed is available at coffee2code WP Plugins page, which will be kept updated. It’ll link to more in-depth plugin-specific pages that will actually be specially formatted weblog entries, which too will be kept updated.

Feel free to peruse, use, and offer me feedback!

Categories
Site

The look of coffee2code

I’ve decided to keep the design of the site fairly simple. I’ve used the stock WordPress CSS file, wp-layout.css, as the basis for the layout, partly out of desire to get to the meat of things and not fuss over the design, and partly because I wanted to familiarize myself with as much of WP as possible. Most of my changes have been related to colors, font size, and letter spacing (-1px letter spacing, who likes that??).

Categories
Installation/configuration User WordPress

Conversion from Movable Type to WordPress

I’ve converted Movable Type to WordPress four times now (two sites, initially converted for evaluation purposes, then converted for real). Here’s the essense of what I did, the customizations I made, and what I encountered:

Continue reading “Conversion from Movable Type to WordPress”
Categories
Installation/configuration User WordPress

Installation of WordPress

Here’s the fully enumerated steps undertaken to install WordPress.

Continue reading “Installation of WordPress”
Categories
Site

Getting started: Purpose

The purpose of coffee2code.com is to act as a repository for all the tech-related information I’d like to keep a record of for future reference. I intend to post handy code snippets, newly learned information, links to documentation, help sites, news, etc. I also intend to document various procedures I perform (namely: application installations, code modifications, application configurations, etc).

Perhaps a better idea of how I foresee the site is to explain the category system I hope to employ. For each post, I expect to apply at least three categories, one from each of three groups:

  • Primary Subject:
    The primary subject matter of the post, chosen from among one of three sub-groups:

    • Applications: Apache, Firefox, GIMP, MySQL, WordPress, etc
    • Operating Systems/Windowing Environments: FreeBSD, KDE, Mac, etc
    • Programming Languages: C, C++, CSS, HTML, PHP, SQL, TCL, etc
  • Resource Type:
    The post is itself, or links to, what sort of resource?
    Community, Discussion, Documentation, Help, Hack, Idea, Module/plugin, News, Rant, Tip
  • Resource Audience:
    The post, or what it links to, is intended for what sort of audience?
    Developers or Users

Maybe none of that makes sense to anyone but me. Then again, I don’t expect anyone else looking to make sense of it.

Categories
WordPress

Switching from Movable Type to WordPress

The recent flap over the release of Movable Type 3.0D and the associated license agreement had caused me to pause and reflect on my usage and satisfaction with MT, and in so doing to consider alternatives. And for me, what I saw different from when I first shopped around for weblog software three years ago was that a wider variety of applications are now available. After a review of many of them, I decided to go with WordPress.

Cons of MT: open code but not open source; PERL-coded; static pages required inordinate amount of time for rebuilds, new post posting, and comment posting; stagnated for years with regards to the number of new features; a pain to customize the code to my liking.

But, it was free enough. Not any longer, not after I’ve seen the alternative.

Pros of WP: open source (GPL); PHP-coded; zippy performance; active and friendly user and development community, with regular participation of the core developers; a vital and growing user and developer base; easy to use, easy to customize; interface is more to my liking.

For some reason WordPress has me fired up in a variety of ways. Maybe I’m picking up on some of the energetic vibe of the WP community. I’ve already begun converting some of my weblogs over to WP and plan to finish converting them all soon. I started this site, a tech link and info weblog, in part because, unlike my time as a user of MT, I am keen on contributing to the development of the weblogging application.