Category Meta

Meta stuff.

Side Projects and Blog Posts

By Monday, November 3, 2014 0 Meta The Ostrich Website Permalink 1

In a previous post I described my workflow for side projects in general. I wrote that throughout the project I publish blog posts describing my thoughts, plans, progress, etc.

In this post I describe in further detail the technicalities of side-project-related blog posts. I explain my guidelines and considerations for some of the common blog posts that accompany side projects. I also describe how I use WordPress features and plugins to generate project index pages and lists of active and archived projects. These features include custom fields, page hierarchies, and queries, with a couple of plugins and template modifications.

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Escaping Shortcodes In WordPress Posts

By Sunday, October 26, 2014 0 Meta , , Permalink 0

WordPress shortcodes are an easy way to embed dynamic content in WordPress posts. But sometimes I want to write about using shortcodes. To display the verbatim shortcode text in a post, without having WordPress parse it, it must be escaped.

Escaping a shortcode is easy. Just double the enclosing square brackets.

For instance, to display [gallery] in a post, write [[gallery]].

For short codes with start and end tags, only double the first and last brackets: [[shortcode]...[/shortcode]].

It worths noting that currently the escaping will occur only if the shortcode is active. Escaping a disabled shortcode will result a doubling brackets in the output: [[fakeshortcode]] remains [[fakeshortcode]]…

This is true for WordPress 4.0, but is recognized as a bug. So if it’s fixed sometime in the future, and the above example contains a single bracket – let me know in the comments so I can fix this 🙂 .

Choosing Hosting Service for The Ostrich Website

By Monday, October 20, 2014 1 Meta , The Ostrich Website Permalink 0

To start a new website, I need to choose a hosting service provider. This is the fourth milestone in The Ostrich website project roadmap. This post is a project progress report, summarizing the completion of the milestone.

The expected outcome, from the roadmap: Hosting plan purchased; Mock instance of chosen content platform installed.

I eventually chose HostGator. Read on for more details on the options I explored.

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The Ostrich Website Design

By Monday, October 13, 2014 0 Meta The Ostrich Website Permalink 0

I want my new website to look good. Personally, I have poor aesthetic sense, but I do appreciate a well-designed product. So I need to get a solid design for my site. This is the third milestone in The Ostrich website project roadmap. This post is a project progress report, summarizing the completion of the milestone.

If you’re reading this on my site, you can see the resulting design. I think it looks good. The components of the design you see here are:

  1. Branding & WordPress design by Gootte.
  2. WordPress theme based on BuzzBlog Theme. The theme was customized to my branding as part of the Gootte design project.
  3. Components of the site design used throughout external platforms. Social network pages and profiles, newsletter template, etc.

Read on for some more details on the design process.

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Researching Content Platforms for The Ostrich Website

By Monday, October 6, 2014 2 Meta The Ostrich Website Permalink 0

To start a new website, I need to decide what content platform I am going to use. This is the second milestone in The Ostrich website project roadmap. This post is a project progress report, summarizing the completion of the milestone.

The outcome, as probably apparent if you’re reading this on my blog, is WordPress.

I experimented a little with SquareSpace, before deciding to return to WordPress. Read on to learn why.

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The Ostrich Website Branding Decisions

By Monday, September 29, 2014 0 Meta , The Ostrich Website Permalink 0

Making decisions regarding my new website branding is the first milestone in The Ostrich website project roadmap. This post is a project progress report, summarizing the completion of the milestone.

The outcomes, as apparent if you’re reading this on my blog, are:

  1. I decided to move away from the old itamaro.com branding.
  2. The new site name is The Ostrich.
  3. New site tagline: Break; Build; Repeat;.
  4. Domain for new site: ostricher.com. Being also my last name, I already own it. So, hurray!
  5. Social network branded account / profiles / pages created:
    1. Facebook page “The Ostrich” with address Ostrich.IO (The.Ostrich wasn’t available..).
    2. Google+ page “The Ostrich” with address Ostricher.IO + Google+ community The Ostrich (I’m not sure what’s the difference though).
    3. Twitter account “The Ostrich” with handle @OstricherIO.
    4. Quora blog at theostrich.quora.com (not sure what I’ll do with it).
    5. Tumblr account at ostricherio.tumblr.com (not sure what I’ll do with it).
    6. Reddit account as ostrichio (yet again, not sure what I’ll do with it).
    7. Pinterest account as ostrichio (…again…).
    8. StumbleUpon account as ostrichio (..guess what..).
    9. GitHub organization at github.com/theostrichio (though I’m not sure how to use it along my personal account..).

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The Ostrich Website Project: Intro and Goals

By Tuesday, September 9, 2014 0 Meta The Ostrich Website Permalink 1

If you are reading these lines, you probably know what The Ostrich website is. It’s my personal and professional website and blog, and I hope you enjoy it! 🙂

For me, it is also one of my ongoing side projects. Like other side projects, it comes with a workflow, and accompanying blog posts. I realize this case may suffer a bit from self-reference, but I like being meta.

This post is an introduction to The Ostrich Website project. In this post I define high-level outcomes and goals for this project.

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