Tag Archives: WordPress

WordPress 3.1 is Out! Upgrade!!!

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WordPress 3.1 is out! Upgrade! I’m so proud of being involved in this cycle. I was able to get involved in the UI Group and contribute this time around. If you’ve upgraded, go to your user and hit the blue admin theme! you’ll see my contribution: a fresh new light blue upgrade. :) I feel so privileged that I was able to work with the UI group to make this change. It feels so good to be able to contribute back to the incredible platform that I love so much.

blue admin

While there are many awesome new features in WordPress 3.1 (you can read the post from Matt here) one of my favorites is internal linking.

Here is an awesome video made by Jon Cave that illustrates the process.

Road to WordPress 3.1 from Jon on Vimeo.

Thank You to everyone who helps make WordPress better!!!
sara

CSS at WordCamp Phoenix

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I had a blast at WordCamp Phoenix this year! Here are my slides from my talk:

CSS Tricks for WordPress – WordCamp Phoenix

View more presentations from Sara Cannon.

I cant wait to go next year. The town of Chandler was incredible and all the people there were so awesome and talented. Just being around everyone was so inspiring! Check out other speaker’s slides here.

2010 – the year of WordPress

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2010 has been an incredible year. It had its ups and downs. some parts were really hard and others just joyous! I’ve met some incredible people this year and got plugged into a great community that surrounds the very platform that this blog (and my livelihood) is based on: WordPress. Its been quite the journey. I’ve stumbled into great opportunities that led me to go many places and meet many new friends.

1/8-9 – WordCamp Atlanta

(Post on my talk: WordPress and Your Brand)

5/1-2 – WordCamp San Francisco

(I just went to this one: Recap Post1, Post2)

8/20-22 – WordCamp Savannah

(Post on my talk: Customizing WordPress themes / Child Themes)

9/18-19 – WordCamp Birmingham

(Post on my talk: Beyond the System Font: Advanced Web Typography) Other Post

10/16-17 – WordCamp NYC

(Post on my talk: Typography and Your Theme)

In conclusion: 2010 rocked my WordPress world. Thank you to everyone who has mentored me and guided me in the word of WordPress. And, absolute special thanks to those who contribute in any way to the release and improvement of this incredible software. – sara

WordPress Mode + Coda

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I just have to say, this is incredible if you work in WordPress and use coda: http://pradador.com/code/coda/wordpressmode/
also, here are some WordPress clips for coda: http://coda-clips.com/category/wordpress
Thanks Dan!

Also, completely unrelated: this site is a great representation of responsive web design: http://hicksdesign.co.uk/
and I just love the colors and the awesome use of jQuery in this one: http://www.seattlesbest.com/

What are some sites you’ve been loving recently?
sara

For The Love of WordCamp / Speaking at WordCamp Phoenix

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Over the past year and a half, I’ve dived into the WordPress community and have attended/spoke at various WordCamps. I am just so thrilled to be a part of this incredible community and even more thrilled that I get to share what I have learned and learn from others who are sharing. Growing with WordPress can’t get better than this. The people that attend and speak at WordCamps are incredibly talented and I feel so blessed to meet, learn from, and help them in whatever way I can.

Some of these people I have gotten to know at various WordCamps over the past year and can truly call them my friends.  Thank You! You know who you are! I’m looking forward to making more friends in the years to come in this incredible community.

If you haven’t been to a WordCamp, you should go. Talk to the people around you – see what they are working on. You might could help them with a problem and they might could help you. I guarantee you wont regret it. Also, If I happen to be there, say hi to me! ;)

WordCamp Phoenix

This January I get the awesome privilege of not only attending but speaking at WordCamp Phoenix. There is an absolutely incredible lineup of speakers and an awesome all-day design track. (I almost cried when I heard about this!) I can not wait. I will be speaking on CSS Tips. Come out to my talk if you are going! Here’s the general lowdown:

CSS Tips

You’ve installed WordPress, everything is working how you want it to, you might have installed a custom theme or even your own theme, and now you’re looking for something to either really make it stand out, or professionally refined. I have some CSS tips for you. From the real simple to the intense – designers and developers of all levels will walk away with something they can use. Here are some general topics we will be covering:

- CSS and WordPress
We all absolutely love WordPress – that’s why we are here. (if you don’t, come see me after) In this segment, we’ll take a look at some CSS tips that directly apply to the use of our incredible platform. We’ll be looking at different ways to refine the front end -  take a peek at some great WordPress site examples and inspiration – and go over some practical demos.

- CSS3
CSS3 is here and it can not be ignored! Yes we want some consistency in our site across all browsers, but there’s nothing wrong with taking a wonderful design that works everywhere and adding in some subtle CSS3 pizazz. What a treat for users with updated browsers! We’ll also address some tips on “faking it” in older browsers and fallback.

- Simple Takeaways
Think you know everything? We’ll blast through simple CSS takeaways. You’ll  probably end up using something in this list, or be reminded of things that you already know but are not currently utilizing.


If anyone has any particular tip that they would like me to include in my presentation, send them my way! Also, Thank you to the wonderful organizers at WCPHX as well as the sponsors! I can’t wait.

A Website That Gives Back – Nonstop Advocates

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(post syndicated from a post I wrote at scoutbrand.com)

Christian & Small decided to do something special as a holiday gift to their clients this year. Instead of sending a traditional gift such as wine or a gift basket, they decided to give a gift that’s true to their mission of being “Nonstop Advocates” for the community. We designed a card to mail to their clients that contained a unique code. We created a special website, NonstopAdvocates.com, where the code can be entered to direct a gift to one of the three charities. The gift is then made in the client’s name. The website features dynamically updating totals to show the real-time impact of the gifts. Clients can check back often at NonstopAdvocates.com to see the progress. This was a very rewarding project for Scout to be involved with. On a technical note: we used WordPress to power the site and PHP/MySQL to power the forms and code validation.

Clients choose what charities Christian & Small will donate to as their gift.

Clients get to read about the charities that they are choosing from and decide to give.

Clients will enter the code that they were mailed in this form.

Thank You Page

Nonstop Advocates also features what different Attorneys at Christian & Small are doing in the community. Keep checking in to read more about what they are doing as time goes on.

The Tools I Tend To Use

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Weather you are a carpenter, a chef, or a graphic designer, everyone has different tools that they use to work with. Here is a list of what I use / find to be helpful in what I do in my daily work routine. (In No Particular Order)

Web Development:

  • WordPress (CMS/Platform)
  • Coda (development)
  • Versions (for SVN communication)
  • Parallels (for browser testing)
  • Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator (graphics)
  • Firebug (for css debugging)
  • Typekit (for webfonts)
  • Linotype Font Explorer (for computer fonts)
  • Lighthouse (for bug tracking)
  • Beanstalk (for external SVN repositories)
  • Harvest (for time tracking)

Communication:

  • Thunderbird (work email)
  • Skype (conversations with peers)
  • Colloqy (for IRC Chanel group discussions)
  • Cloud App (for screen shot and layout sharing)
  • Skitch (for quick image references)

Other:

  • Rdio (for music)
  • Airfoil (for air-tunes synchronization)
  • Keynote (for presentations)

What are some of the tools you use? Would love to hear about what you find to be useful and helpful no matter what the function. :)

Slides from WordCamp NYC “Typography and Your Theme”

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Thanks to everyone who came out to my session at WordCamp NYC! I’ve uploaded my slides to slideshare for you to view. Please feel free to leave comments or even just let me know what your favorite webfont is!

Type in your WordPress Themes by Sara Cannon WordCamp NYC

View more presentations from Sara Cannon.

Speaking at WordCamp NYC!

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WordCampNYC – Oct 16-17I’m so excited for WordCamp NYC this weekend! There are going to be so many talented people there it is almost overwhelming! I feel so honored to be speaking amongst this incredible lineup. If you’re going, come see me speak about Typography and Your Theme. If you live in NYC or just want to come to these other incredible sessions: All you need to do is Register for WCNYC today. Make sure to find me and tell me hello! :) Here is my session description:

Typography and Your Theme:

Believe it or not, generally WordPress sites are made up mostly of typography. This makes the relationship that these typographical elements have to each other very important. The New WordPress 3.0 default theme Twenty Ten has incredible typographical elements. In this talk I will be using a child of Twenty Ten as an example of customizing the theme’s typography. I will be going over how to plan these typographical elements out, their style and color, how to make a site/brand guideline for your Twenty Ten child theme to keep consistency, what different services to look at for your non-system fonts, typographical CSS tips and tricks, and how to account for every little detail and make sure no type element goes un-styled!

Targeting Your Fonts in Firefox on Windows

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Well, you can use this trick for just about anything in your CSS really. It just so happens that at a certain small weight, Museo Sans really crunches on Windows XP Firefox. Weather or not we can target specifically XP I’m not sure yet.. (if anyone knows chime in!) But we can target all Firefox’s on all Window’s Machines. So here is how you do it…

1. Make a css file called ff.css and put this code in there:


@-moz-document url-prefix(){
#hackery {
font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
}

Now that you’ve made your little hack document…

2. fill up in between the moz brackets with whatever selectors you are trying to change.

3. call your new ff style sheet in your header.php like so:


<?php if (strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], "Windows", 0) !== FALSE) { ?>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all" href=&quot;ff.css" />
<?php } ?>

voila! Firefox targeted on only windows!

You can now fix your fonts and go from this: (crunchy liberation serif to georgia italic)

to this:

To target Window XP in particular (note that this would not cover versions before that), this should work.

<?php
if ( false !== stripos( $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'Windows NT 5.1' )
|| false !== stripos( $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'Windows XP' ) ) :
?>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all" href="ff.css" />
<?php endif; ?>