A little news and some reviews and…

Note: This post is over 2 years old. You may want to check later in this blog to see if there is new information.

I’m working on a new Wordpress theme for the site. I originally began with K2 as a base and started modifying from there, but there ended up being so many mods that I eventually scrapped it and started coding from scratch. I’m on my third revision of the code and my second complete design overhaul. I set up a local testing server on my laptop and copied my wordpress database onto it. So now I can play with the blog to my hearts content without ruining the live version. It’s very handy. If you’re running OS X you can set the same system up by downloading PHP5 and mySQL binaries and editing your httpd.conf and hosts files. It gets a little complex if you don’t know unix at all, but that’s a tutorial that’s already out there on the net. Here’s a good start. I’ve learned a couple of interesting things about wordpress hacking in the last couple of days as well. I’m planning a tutorial once I finish my new theme. It’s not going to be a K2 or anything like that, but it should at least be something I can be proud of. And this redesign is going to kill me… I’m being way too much of a perfectionist. Oh well, hopefully it will lead to good things in the end.

In the meantime, I’ve discovered an RSS reader for OS X that I really, really like. It’s called Vienna. And it’s open source! Check it out, and tell ‘em Brett sent’ya. Just kidding. They don’t know me from Adam.

I’ve also had my sensibilities further offended by press releases and keynote addresses by Bill Gates. I’ve jumped into quite a few IE7 discussions as of late, and don’t feel like posting another bitch session on the blog. Just jump over to Digg or Technorati and punch in IE7 to find out what the web development community thinks. There are a lot of good things being said about the new browser. It’s fundamentally broken, though, so read a little deeper if you have to.

My wife has instituted a no-blogging-after-she-comes-home-from-work policy so that we can spend more quality time together. She’ll be home in about 10 minutes, so I’ll see you all tomorrow ;-).

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  1. Stuart Maxwell 08.25.06 / 2am

    Brett — Have you heard about MAMP? (http://www.mamp.info/en/home/) It stands for Mac, Apache, MySQL, PHP. Basically, you download the package, drag the folder into Applications (or wherever), start the servers and Bingo! Instant web development environment. No mucking about with configuration, just start it and go. The latest version includes PHP5. I use it for all my Wordpress development. And it’s free! Sweetness.

  2. brett 08.25.06 / 5am

    Sweet. I used to use WAMP (Windows) but didn’t know there was a package for Mac. Thanks for the tip!