Author Archives: Jamie

WordPress Developer Pub Night

By Jamie | Published: July 3, 2009

Tuesday July 7th, 2009 will be the first Ottawa WordPress Developers Pub Night. Location and time are subject to interest from the community. Current theory is a start time of 8pm at Shoeless Joe’s at 3049 Carling Ave which has cheap wing night on Tues and very nice booths.

The two best ways to let them know you’re interested in attending are either post a comment on their blog or follow and tweet to them on Twitter – @wdgo. I know there are more than a few people in Ottawa who use Wordpress for great things including myself. I look forward to meeting them for a few pints to talk about what we would all like to give / get from a community developer group for our platform of choice.

Posted in Wordpress | 2 Comments

Template – Frequently Asked Questions

By Jamie | Published: July 1, 2009

Want to create a Frequently Asked Questions category template for your Wordpress site? This tutorial covers everything from installing ICE, template design with video, step-by-step instructions and code.

Posted in ICE | 12 Comments

ICE v1.2 now available

By Jamie | Published: June 16, 2009

I have updated Idealien Category Enhancements to support the recent release of Wordpress 2.8. In addition to support for 2.8, this update includes support for child themes / theme frameworks. Find out all about it in this release note post.

Posted in ICE | 5 Comments

Getting social with Virtual Eyesee – Part 3

By Jamie | Published: June 7, 2009

In the third and final part of an interview with Natasha, we discuss ways the Canadian government has / can / should invest in the concepts and technologies of Social Media over the next 12 – 18 months.

Posted in Social Media | 4 Comments

Feature Prioritization for ICE v1.2

By Jamie | Published: June 4, 2009

The first version of ICE was released to support Wordpress 2.6 (2.6.2 to be exact). After a few weeks of fighting an authentication issue on the SVN repository for plugins, I started to share it via the Wordpress plugin gallery on Oct 18, 2009. Since that time almost 800 people have downloaded it and almost 2,000 visits have been logged to my site looking to learn more about it. It was also recently featured as one of 40 exceptional “CMS Enabling” Wordpress plugins by Noupe.

I have been slowly adding more features / functionality to ICE and hope to release an update within 1 – 2 weeks of the pending release of Wordpress 2.8. The following is a list of items which are already either implemented or on track to be for that timeframe.

Posted in ICE | Tagged , | 2 Comments

I will never try to build a perfect website again!

By Jamie | Published: June 4, 2009

In exploring the approach to development I had for my own website, I recognized that I was serially redesigning it and proverbially spinning my wheels. The unfortunate part of this vicious cycle is that it was all manufactured by me – the site, the content and perception that the obstacles were insurmountable. So last weekend I decided to leverage what I could from my existing efforts (css, images, javascript) and start fresh building on top of a strong theme framework base – Thematic. I did so with a new approach to the design, development and writing for the site. In this post, I explain why for my own personal sites / projects I have come to the conclusion that I will never try to build a perfect website again.

Posted in Process | Tagged | Leave a comment

Getting social with Virtual Eyesee – Part 2

By Jamie | Published: June 3, 2009

In the second part of an interview with Natasha, we discuss examples of companies using social media effectively and how individuals can do the same to boost their own career.

Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Getting social with Virtual Eyesee – Part 1

By Jamie | Published: May 31, 2009

A broad ranging interview on all things social media with Natasha D’Souza, the founder of Virtual EyeSee which is a Social Media consulting agency serving North America. First up, exactly what is social media?

Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A wonderful Wired Wednesday

By Jamie | Published: May 28, 2009

A summary of the newest / most recent networking events for entrepreneurs and geeks in Ottawa. Plus re-capping what I’ve been up to lately since it obviously hasn’t been blogging.

Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Introducing ICE V1.1

By Jamie | Published: February 1, 2009

This first release of Idealien Category Enhancements (ICE) allows you to manage category templates as easily as you manage page templates. Select which template applies to a category through the post > categories menu using file names that make sense, not category ID numbers. Now any views of the category (or sub-categories) will render the according to the category template selected. Posts in a given category can also use a category-based template. Read this post for complete installation and configuration instructions.

Posted in ICE | 15 Comments