Got to feel a lot like Tobias Fünke last week when at the last minute I got called in to do some acting on a new Sorenson Squeeze commercial.

What do you think, should I take up acting/modeling full time?

Had a great WordPress Meetup tonight at SEO.com. I gave a short presentation about the WordPress loop, and how to integrate different content into theme templates.

During my presentation, I mentioned my secret weapon in WordPress theme design, and that is the WordPress Cheat Sheet. Great tool for designing, lots easier then digging through the WordPress codex.

Thanks to Ash Buckles and Thom Allen for also presenting and for all those that attended!

For the last year or so, I have been heavily invested into the WordPressMU platform. For those that are unaware, WordPressMU is similar to WordPress, but allows the creation and implementation of literally thousands of other blogs all under the same domain. This software is what powers blogging networks like WordPress.com, EduBlogs.org, and projects that I have built, like Petomundo!, Photo-Bloggers.com, and UrTur.

When you are building around the WordPress platform, you get the benefit of the thousands of beautiful themes, robust plugins, and dedicated community of the platform, but WordPressMU, sometimes you need a little more, and that is where WPMU.org fits in. WPMU.org, and its premium version Premium.WPMUDEV.org which I am happily paying member are priceless tools when developing around the WPMU platform. Here are some of the essential tools for building a WordPressMU community.

• The Support Forums – Great place to get help when you need. They are always quick with a response, and happy to help.
• Training Videos – When creating a blogging network, some people are going to need some help. These videos were such a help when people needed help on Petomundo!.
• Google Analytics for WordPressMU – Able to be used for site-wide analytics, and for individual blogs. Great tool.
• MailChimp Newsletter Integration – For a project that I haven’t announced yet… Able to rapidly manage users and create email marketing campaigns.
• Rebranding WordPressMU – Remove and modify all of the images and links to WordPress. Sometime you want it to be your own! Part of the beauty of using Open Source Software…
• Terms of Service – Simply shows a terms of service box during signup that must be agreed to during signup. Great simple plugin.
• WordPressMU Affiliate – Create your own affiliate tools via this great plugin. Have your users help you in developing membership.
• The Premium Themes – Beautiful WordPress and BuddyPress themes with enough customization options to keep anyone happy. The themes alone are worth the price of the membership alone.

If you are developing around WordPressMU, membership to this site shouldn’t even be question. Every tool in the box is worth an annual membership, especially considering the robust support given.

Well, it has been a while, but we are going to hold another WordPress meetup in two weeks. For those that haven’t been before, the format is pretty simple:

1. Show up
2. Mingle
3. Couple quick presentations
4. Share problems
5. Bask in a sense of childlike wonder about the intricacies of WordPress
6. Go home a better individual then you were before.

All corny jokes aside, these meetups are a great way to meet fellow bloggers, designers, developers, and social media types from the area.

At the October event, we are going to have a loose format where anyone can take the podium. If you have something that you would like to share, please leave a comment here proposing a 5-10 minute presentation. Proposed topics currently include:

Myself & Tyrel Kelsey: WordPress theme developement

Thom Allen: WordPress Backup and Recovery

Ash Buckles: WordPress SEO (Plugins/Permalinks/etc.)

Nate Bagley: WordPress in use for UVU school newspaper

Details

Thanks to Ash, we are having the event at the newly minted SEO.com. We have room for about sixty people, so tell your friends to come too.

• When: Wednesday Oct. 14 from 7-9 p.m.
• Where: 14870 S. Pony Express Road Ste. 100, just off Interstate 15 at the Draper/Bluffdale exit near the point of the mountain.
• What to bring: Bring your questions, your problems, something to share intellectually, and something on a plate to share physically. (i.e something delicious, perhaps cookies, crackers, seven-layer dip, etc.)

Please leave a comment here if you plan on coming so we can get a general count of who is going to be there.

Thanks and RT!

Just wanted to invite everyone to the Utah Open Source Conference that is being held October 8-10th at the Miller Campus of the Salt Lake Community College in Sandy, Utah. I have been asked to present on BuddyPress, the robust social networking plugin for WordPressMU. The session that I am runnong is a Birds of a Feather, meaning that it will be an open presentation, so I am hoping to have an open discussion on usability and implementation. If you are looking to implement BuddyPress, or want to see how I have used it on a few sites, drop in. Lots to learn about.

Utah Open Source Conference Website

BuddyPress Presentation

Details:

October 08, 1:45 pm

Room 123 (Map)

This was originally posted on ClearSkys.net, but it seems that Barry is going to be shutting down the site. So, that it lives on, I am posting it here. Of note, this is the plugin that I had in mind when I designed that Daring Inspiration WordPress theme.

Any visitors, or subscribers, to John Grubers’ Daring Fireball blog will notice how he uses the post titles as direct links to the sites and information that he refers to within the posts body.

Earlier today WP Recipes posted a quick tutorial on how to set this up on your site (based on work by Vlad Grubman) by adding some code to your themes functions.php file and then changing all the permalink calls within the theme to use the new permalink code instead of the standard WordPress loop function the_permalink().

Whilst this is a perfectly workable solution, it is dependent on modifying your themes functions.php file and all of the pages that include the WordPress loop every time you switch themes (which if you are anything like me, is quite often).

I have modified the code into a small plugin, that when activated, will replace the standard permalink with an external URL without any need to modify your sites theme. I’ve also added an extra filter so that it will replace the permalinks within your RSS feed as well.

The code for the plugin can be found below, and can be downloaded from here: Eternal Permalink. To install, just change the .txt to .php and upload to wp-content/plugins.

`

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Enable External Permalinks
Plugin URI: http://jakespurlock.com/2009/09/how-to-point-your-post-permalink-to-an-external-site/
Description: This plugin will allow you to change the post permalink for your posts/pages to an external sites URL
Author: Barry at clearskys.net
Version: 0.1
Author URI: http://blog.clearskys.net/
*/

function cs_external_permalink($permalink) {
global $post;

$thePostID = $post->ID;
$post_id = get_post($thePostID);
$title = $post_id->post_title;

$post_keys = array(); $post_val  = array();
$post_keys = get_post_custom_keys($thePostID);

if (!empty($post_keys)) {
foreach ($post_keys as $pkey) {
if ($pkey=='url1' || $pkey=='title_url' || $pkey=='url_title'  || $pkey=='external') {
$post_val = get_post_custom_values($pkey);
}
}
if (empty($post_val)) {
$link = $permalink;
} else {
$link = $post_val[0];
}
} else {
$link = $permalink;
}

return $link;

}

add_filter('the_permalink','cs_external_permalink');
add_filter('the_permalink_rss','cs_external_permalink');

?>

`

To switch a post from using the standard permalink to an external one, you simply add a custom field to the post with a key of url1, title_url, url_title or external. The value of the custom field should be the complete URL you want to link to (including http:// ).

Just wanted to post my presentation from tonights event so that if any one wanted the slides, they would be available. These slides were largely borrowed from lead BuddyPress developer Andy Peatling. (Thanks!)

Social Media Club of Salt Lake City: All About WordPress (PDF)

Just wanted to pitch the Social Media Club of Salt Lake City’s September get together. Thom Allen, Joseph Scott and I will be presenting on WordPress, BuddyPress, and a host of other blogging tools and applications. From their site:

Many of us are past the question: To blog, or not to blog.

We know there’s value in blogging.Some of us have used WordPress, Moveable Type, TypePad or Blogger. Perhaps all of us already have a favorite blogging platform.

For our September Social Media Club of Salt Lake City meeting, we’re focusing on WordPress. We think it’s one of the more popular blogging tools. We have structured the program so there’s something for everyone regardless of your WordPress familiarity.

About WordPress

First of all, thank you to Joseph Scott — an Automatic employee and WordPress programmer who’s official title is bug exorcist — who has agreed to put together September’s program. You know you’ll learn valuable information when one of the software programmers is our lead presenter.

Networking will begin at 6 p.m. and our program at 6:30 p.m. Joseph will provide an introduction to WordPress, its history and where it is today.

WordPress Breakout Sessions – Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced

Around 6:45 p.m. we’ll break-out into smaller sessions to focus on WordPress in more depth. The three breakout sessions will be geared toward WordPress beginners, intermediate and advanced users.

Thank you to two very talented bloggers in their own right, Thom Allen and Jake Spurlock, who will lead the beginner and intermediate breakout sessions, respectively. Joseph will lead the discussion in the advanced user group.

Jake’s session will also include an overview of BuddyPress, a comprehensive social networking tool which can be installed as a WordPress plugin.

Breakout concepts will include discussion items like:

• Why you should use WordPress
• How to most effectively install and customize WordPress
• The best URL structure for searchSEO optimization of your WordPress blog
• Plugins for WordPress
• 10 steps to installing and setting up a customized WordPress blog

Breakout sessions will go until approximately 7:30 p.m. or whenever we decide to quit.

Details

Date: September 17, 2009

Time: 6 to 8 p.m.

Place: University of Utah | Fine Arts Auditorium with breakout sessions at the neighboring BEHS Building, Rooms 106-108 | map it parking instructions included in map link

Special thanks to Andy Thompson in the University of Utah’s Marketing and Communications department for arranging for our meeting space.

RSVP: on Eventbrite

Twitter hashtag: #smcslc

To learn more about our presenters, please visit their respective sites:

Joseph Scott

Jake Spurlock

Thom Allen

via Sept. 17 meeting: All About WordPress | SMC of SLC .

FYI, I am headed into the semi remote backcountry of Yosemite California today. Going to be hiking this thing:

I will be back on Monday, September 7th. See ya soon!

So, in the last few weeks, I have been doing a lot of WordPress theme development. When I see something cool on the web, I want to implement it a new a cool way. Skulls is basically the end result of some tinkering on the web. Here are some of the methods that I used in this theme.

1. Font Replacement

I read a great article on CameronMoll.com called Exploring Cufón, a sIFR alternative for font embedding. Cufón is this rad javascript library that will exchange text with a font resides on your server. A friend of mine, Tyrel Kelsey showed me an example on a site that he designed using the script, and from there, I was set. Immediately, I  knew that I wanted to create a grungy WordPress theme that I could use this on.

2. Fixed Footer

Nothing terribly revolutionary, but after staring at Facebook everyday, I wanted to put a persistent footer, that would have a couple of quick links in it. To create a fixed footer, simple add the following code to your div.

Make sure to add some bottom-margin to whatever div is going to be above it. You want to make sure you do that, so when you scroll to the bottom, you can see all of your content.

#footer {
margin:auto;
position:fixed;
margin:auto;
left:0;
bottom:0;
height:40px;
width:100%;
background:#242424;
z-index:1999;
}

There are a couple of issues that in IE6 (Go figure…) But they can be resolved by adding this:

* html #footer {
top:expression(eval(document.compatMode && document.compatMode=='CSS1Compat') ? documentElement.scrollTop +(documentElement.clientHeight-this.clientHeight) : document.body.scrollTop +(document.body.clientHeight-this.clientHeight));
position:absolute;
}

3. SUPER-ULTRA-RAD GRAPHICS

I mentioned already the font replacement. I found some cool vector packs that had some skull designs in them. The post headers have a banner that overlays the other divs due to some negative margins. One thing to be aware of, if you follow a similar design, is to make sure that links have the coverage that they might need. I had them squeezed a lot tighter, but it was hard to click on the post links.

So, all in all, I think that it turned out to be a pretty cool theme. Not for everyone, but I think that someone will get a kick out of it.

Demo

Download