When the e-mail composing window pops up you’ll see a link. Select and copy that link.

Now you can paste that link wherever you need to.

Paste the App Link Into Your Post With the WordPress App

In your page/post, place the cursor where you want the link to appear or select the word(s) that you would like to link to the app.

Find and press the link button. Paste the link into the link field and press Insert.

That’s it! All the code you need will appear in your post/page (which you can of course modify if you know a little bit of HTML). Have fun!

I suppose the Twitter team came to the realization that they had severed much of their users’ branding opportunity, and decided to rectify the matter. Whatever the case may be, I’d have to say it was a wise choice for them to reduce the width of the Twitter interface down to what it is now. I think it looks better, but even more importantly, it provides branding opportunity once again.

The image below details all the measurements I did in full, which leaves me with nothing left to write on this post. So… enjoy!

Ok I lied. Actually, I’m sharing the original Photoshop file I created for download. Yep! About 2 hours of production and it’s all yours. Use it, and if anyone else you know needs it, send them here to get it. That’s all I ask.

Download Twitter Template

joerhoney.com/downloads/twitter-template-by-joerhoney.psd

For a number of reasons, I recently decided to hit the reset button on my website (several of these reasons you can read about in my earlier post Dilemman). But the one reason that I’m taking up in this particular post, is that I found the design of my website took precedence over everything else. This was just plain bass-ackwards. I’ve done numerous make-overs on my website in the past, and as far back as I can remember, design was always my first and foremost concern. This time, I’m challenging myself to do the exact opposite.

However, one aspect of the design that I decided to make an exception for is typesetting and in my viewpoint that includes the font. I liked the font of WordPress’ current default theme Twenty Eleven, so I copied it.

I wanted to take advantage of WordPress’ native capabilities as much as possible. I also wanted my website to easily adapt to future technologies as they are evolving. So some of the things that I considered most important for my new theme included:

• A primary menu with drop-down submenus, manageable from the admin Menu page
• At least one widgetized area
• That it is built using currently supported HTML5 and is semantically correct
• That it maintains W3C validity throughout development

I also wanted to save time and start with the theme that was stripped down and didn’t have any CSS coding and already. I figured something like this had probably been developed by others already and I could probably find one it the WordPress theme installer. I looked and sure enough, there it was— Toolbox.

That’s pretty much outlines the beginning stage of my new WordPress theme. Stay tuned and I’ll continue to post progress updates as I keep my itchy design hand strapped to the chair.

In my recent campaign to start marketing myself properly I really took a thorough look at how my website presents and represents me and my services. At first, I considered the my custom WordPress theme (the design and certain aspects of how the website functions). I felt I didn’t really have time to build my own theme from scratch, and that I ought to get a head start with a good basic theme that I can customize later. Assuming the current WordPress default theme, TwentyEleven, would probably include all of WordPress’ latest features and serve as a good “basic” otherwise, I looked into that one first. I was impressed and I flew with it. Great! Much time saved– I didn’t even have to search around. It was even HTML5 with some CSS3. I made minimal changes to it and moved.

Then I started taking a look at improving my portfolio.

Challanges
I wanted/needed my portfolio to:

• Be semantically practical
• Be made with Unobtrusive javascript
• Use only jQuery (and plugins) for javascript
• Be Smartphone compatible
• Flip like the Photos app on iPhones (or at least display image collections the way Google Images does on iPhone)
• Link portfolio images to the relevant blog post where I would present the item (be it an illustration, website, etc.)
  OR allow comments on the image as well as a link in case I wanted to elaborate
• Show up in a feed based on a category as well as an overall feed for all portfolio images
• Look really cool
• Be built entirely with plugins since I don’t have a lot of time to figure out how to program all of this stuff

I tried for about a week to make it all work, and then I woke up. What was I think?! Nobody cares how pretty my online portfolio is. No, I still want to achieve all of that, but it’s not a high priority, right?

So I finally dropped that, realizing it was time to dig through my old posts and pages to see what could be reused, what could be recycled and what needed to be sent to the local land fill. As it turned out, I only had a small handful of posts that were any good. Only one of my posts (a recent one) presented actually production and almost all the rest of them were me trying to be the expert on a subject— providing no sources for any of it (don’t try this at home). The Internet is loaded with these basics on web development anyway. Why should I try to write it all over again?

Hence the bareness of my website and the probable delusion that I’m a rookie who has yet to begun blogging.

So please bare with me while I perform some excruciatingly needed improvements on my own website and I will try to share with you what exactly I am doing to it and why.

Stay tuned…

Test: CSS2

Score: 3.36

Proficiency Level: Proficient (2.51 – 3.50)

The candidate has mastered the basic concepts of CSS2, including:

• Generated Content
• Text

The candidate demonstrates a clear understanding of intermediate CSS2 concepts, such as:

• Syntax
• Selectors
• Layout
• Markup

The candidate may have some knowledge of more advanced CSS2 concepts such as:

• Values
• Media Types

At the Proficient level, the candidate will be capable of working on most projects involving CSS2 with minimal assistance. However, the candidate will probably require more assistance with advanced concepts.

Percentile Comparisons

The percentile score indicates how well the candidate scored relative to other candidates in the comparison population indicated by the score.

Time Summary:
Time Taken (mm:ss): 43:52
Started on:  4/6/11 1:15 PM
Completed on: 4/7/11 2:09 AM

Test: HTML 4.0

Score: 3.56

Proficiency Level: Advanced (3.51 – 4.50)

The candidate has mastered the basic concepts of HTML 4.0 (Forms, Components, Links, Tables) and intermediate HTML 4.0 concepts (Style Sheets, Lists, Advanced HTML, Text). The candidate is likely proficient with more advanced HTML 4.0 concepts such as:

• Document Information
• Images
• Page Structure
• Browsers

At the Advanced level, the candidate will be capable of working on projects involving HTML 4.0 and will be capable of mentoring others on most projects in this area.

Percentile Comparisons

The percentile score indicates how well the candidate scored relative to other candidates in the comparison population indicated by the score.

Time Summary:
Time Taken (mm:ss): 51:35
Started on: 4/7/11 2:09 AM
Completed on: 4/7/11 3:02 AM

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity and honor to redesign their international headquarter website, cchrint.org. This is the web front CCHR International updates the most, from the latest patient abuse busts to new petitions to sign, from pharmaceutical frauds exposed to new bills passed against such acts as uninformed consent or child-screening in schools without parental approval.

Before

Here is what cchrint.org used to look like:

With a new background and header, and a little color coordination on the blues, the Deputy Executive Director was very pleased with the results. Naturally, several mockups were submitted before getting to this final point in the design and the logo and background images had to be just right. Then an additional request was made to fit a YouTube video spot next to a much smaller feature slideshow (smart move).

This was done with Photoshop, CSS and a little bit of HTML cleanup. I hope to have the opportunity someday to finish this redesign with an improved menu, and a better standard look for the websites images, headers, etc. But I’m very glad for being able to help provide the professional web-front that is suitable for Citizens Commission on Human Rights.

WordPress, although it can be manipulated into something entirely different, is primarily made for blogging. As a freelancer, I like it because it’s easy for my clients to grasp when I issue them an account they can log in and manage their content with. As a theme developer, I like it because it’s easy to modify the output (the code that the brower translates into a page). Moreover, the administrator can edit the theme right within WordPress, bypassing the need to FTP files to the server (this works for me since I work in straight code anyway). Plug-ins (what you call WordPress’s add-ons) can also be edited from within WordPress. Another big plus is how easy it is to install any of the plethora of themes and plug-ins available at wordpress.org, built by other WordPress developers. No need to FTP them either— just browse them from within WordPress and click “Install”.

Drupal is primarily a content management system and a very flexible one at that. It comes loaded with features that can be turned on such as comments, a contact form page, even a forum. You can easily turn these features off if you don’t need them, so they won’t take up any load time. User management is extremely detailed. The modules (what you call Drupal’s add-ons) submitted to the Drupal website by contributors are monitored and only published if they pass certain standards, so there aren’t so many to sift through to find the right ones for your needs. Drupal is very logically organized all around, not just in a way that is ideal for blogging.

Now reverse all those positive comments to negative and reverse which application I was referring to in each. In other words, the good things I mentioned above about WordPress, Drupal lacks and vise versa. They can be made to come very close, but you have to put the time and work into finding the right add-ons and installing them in order to acheive this.

The moral is, use the application that works best for your website needs. No web application is perfect or better than all the rest. It just depends on what you need the website to do. For blogging, I highly recommend WordPress. For content and/or user management or anything as complicated as a shopping cart or more, I recommend Drupal.

This becomes helpful in at least two ways.

1. Guestimating element sizes. When you want to determine a good size for an image, box or some other element, you can often get it right or very close in the first try. This comes with practice.
2. Spotting numbers in code which specify/control the pixels of an element. Be it html, css, javascript or even more advanced web languages, the width and height of an image, box etc. are often specified to establish some form of control over it. This is easier to recognize when you’re familiar with pixels.

So although it can seem difficult to have an intuition with pixels, it is very useful and actually tends to come naturally over time.