Wordpress for Blackberry has arrived in public beta! Get the scoop here http://blackberry.wordpress.org/2009/07/07/wordpress-for-blackberry-beta/ and I’ll definitel give you my take on it as soon as I play around with it.

This post was proudly posted from my Curve 8900 using Wordpress for Blackberry! Awesome.

UPDATE: So I had some time to play around, and really there is nothing especially fantastic about the WP app for BB. It works like a bomb and does what you would need it to. Posting, uploading images and approving comments. Everything you Berry toting blog-nuts would need to keep up the momentum whilst globe-trotting.

I would like to see an interface improvement, and maybe get the guys at RIM to collaborate with the masters over at WordPress HQ to give us a smoother more well rounded interface and maybe some way that plugin authors can make their plugins available in the application for Blackberry.

I’m basing these requests and suggestions purely on one thing… The already awesome, bar-setting Facebook App for the BlackBerry. If you have a Blackberry and haven’t checked out the Facebook App yet then you should go cry in a corner and then get the scoop from here.

NextGEN Gallery took care of the images and Contact Form 7 made sure we had some nice forms with validation and some auto population. I also used the Redirection plugin to make sure the transition from old site to new was as seamless as possible. Oh and before I forget, All in One SEO Pack adds a special touch to keep the Web Marketing Guru busy.

I really have to give a big thank you to the developers of these plugins! They really make every  project of mine just a bit more professional and useable.

The latest project I worked on World Wide Creative was for a client called Greenside Golf (Golf Punk Magazine anyone?) and this site’s functionality seemed to be out of Wordpress’s reach. My initial reaction was that it could not be done but after some carefull investigation and homework I came across a little gem called Pods (insert harp sound here)

This is a truly amazing plugin that has opened up many doors with my Wordpress development strategy. I mean, you will have to check out their website for all the details but if you look at http://www.greensidegolfworld.com you will see that a lot of funtionality went into the website. Especially the Travel section that was built completely using the Pods plugin. This includes the filters to search content, faux categories and listing by various sort criteria. The most usefull function of Pods does not lie here but in the admin panel. Adding new content into a pod content typ is as easy as addin a page or a post, possibly even easier since the fields that appear on the add content screen are only relative to that specific content type. No longer do we have to teach our clients which hoops to jump through to get the “Add Post” screen to do something specific and say goodbye to custom fields as you know them. Pods add’s it’s own table structure to the Wordpress database. This does however come with some downsides off course since the default Wordpress conditional statements, that I rely on quite heavily, don’t work in Pods (depending on setup)

So there we have it, the options have just opened up with the new kid on the block. Please contact me if you wish to know a bit more about a specific section of the example site that I gave you or you can ask the plugin developers in their active forum (built using pods off course!)

Now as I mentioned before I struggle with IE6 on a regular basis but I have come to learn all the little tricks and hacks in the book to make them go away and whenever I can, I try to weed out the problems at a design level since a simple drop shadow in the wrong place can make my life a living hell!

I would like to know from you guys, what your thoughts are on the “Support for IE6″ dilemma and what you plan to do about it with IE8 so close on the horizon?
Personally I will continue to support the underdog since we compiled some interesting statistics that showed 26.84% of users spanning 50 Clients websites for the period of one month (Aug – Sep 2008) we using IE6. Thats almost a third of our traffic! Do you really want such a large percentage of your clients visitors to arrive at a crippled site?

I am going to leave you with that as a parting thought. Just remember that IE6 wont be around forever but I dont think forcing it out of the arena is the right way to go about it. Patience, I believe, is.

I can rant on forever about my “reasons” for getting the Berry instead of the coveted iPhone but I won’t. What I will say is that if everyone had one (a BlackBerry that is) we would never lose touch with anything or anyone. My Fiance, Bee, had one too and so do some of my friends and having the ability to just quickly fire up Blackberry Messenger and send a PIN message (Blackberry’s built in device-to-device instant messenger – Free) to see how her day is going instead of sending multiple SMS’s has definitely done wonders for my phone bill.

The handset is small and compact but funtional, it has a great little camera (3.2MP, auto focus, flash) and many awesome apps availible to keep you in tune with your social media network. Upload pics straight to Facebook or Flickr and get Twitter updates whenever.

Im not trying at all to poo-poo the iPhone but dont ask me why I didn’t get one just becasue you think it’s the beginning and end of the mobile revolution. It’s not.

We have some awesome ideas for “Missing” plugins that woud extend the funcionality of the Wordpress platform even further. This time round Shaun developed a plugin for a plugin! Thats right!

NextGEN Custom Fields is as Shaun describes it “…developed to add custom columns to the excellent and popular NextGEN Gallery plugin…” That about sums it up I think. If you are already running the awesome NextGen Gallery plugin on your Wordpress site and need to extend the functionality of the gallery by adding custom fields then this is the plugin for you. Especially since the addition of templating to this plugin has already opened up your options for creativity, now the ability to add custom input fields to your images will definitely raise the bar for other potential gallery plugin writers.

See the NextGEN Gallery and NextGEN Custom Fields in action on http://www.zaan.co.za/ (The site is still in development at the time of writing this post)

If you have any awesome ideas for a Wordpress Plugin let us know. We would love to hear your ideas!

I dont think my blog is going to be a big money spinner but at least keeping it up to date with my latest projects and doodles will save me the time of telling every new prospective client my life sory. So here goes!

I am a freelance web developer/desiger based in Cape Town and I am also full time employee at World Wide Creative where I build awesome websites!
I mostly collaborate with other freelancers who dont always have the time or skills to handle particular projects or clients. I absolutely love collaboration because it adds a dynamic to the project that one freelancer can never accomplish on his/her own. I am a competent designer and Im pretty salted in the CSS arena. I also make use of Wordpress as a blogging platform and a CMS. I have made this puppy jump through some hoops before.

So if you have a project that you are keen to collaborate on or you just need some help with your Wordpress site or template conversion, gimme a shout and we’ll work something out.

My design brief was for a simple clean site with easy access to the main functions of the site, shopping and talks. I played it safe in terms of design since I did not want to get too adventurous with a system that I am not very familiar with. There are also realistic time constraints when one spends design time to learn about the system youre designing for.

I enjoyed Drupal quite a bit and it has opened new doors with regards to what I can offer my clients. Im currently working on another Drupal project and will be using 6.x this time around.

Thanks again to Jonathan for his help during this project and if you are into childerns books, have a child or need to get in touch with your inner child, go check out Author Gary Hirson’s latest books!

This particular project had it’s own set of obstacles to overcome and Wordpress handled with grace! Some customization on the gallery was required but other than that nothing too difficult. I always develop my Wordpress sites so that my clients can easily update the site themselves. Often we as developers/designers forget that our clients are not as tech-savvy as we are. The Design Trade team  took to updating their site in no time and are still maintaining their products and other content themselves. Job well done!

Freda started off by providing us with the initial design direction and I took over from there creating all the pages for the client to sign off. After signoff I created XHTML/CSS templates of the pages and then together with Steve, I built the Wordpress backend using various plugins and custom scripts.

The interesting part was that I got to flex my Photography mucles a bit since the client also required photography for their website and print. A couple of early morning trips and viola, we had all he pics needed to dress the site nicely. Lizane provided art direction for the photography as well as filling the shoes of client liason.

This was a really interesting project with so many people collaborating and working towards a final product that tuned out pretty damn good. Rust en Vrede get a lot of requests through their website and Im sure they are quite pleased with the results.