BackSpaceStudios Blog

BackSpaceStudios/Seneca Logo Design Contest

ONLY 5 MORE DAYS LEFT TO VOTE! CONTEST ENDS DECEMBER 12 !

Some if you already know that I am a part-time teacher at Seneca College in various different new media programs. This semester I have been teaching a class in Design Fundamentals for the MFD (Media Fundamentals) program. In our last class the students had to create a logo design for 1 of 3 fictitious companies; sporting wear, cosmetic, and travel. They where giving roughly 3hours to complete this assignment using only Adobe Illustrator.

Just for fun, I made a last minute decision to run a contest for the best logo design.

We received almost 60 entries from 2 classes! Below are the finalists (Chosen by PHUG board members). The winner will receive a cash prize and books.

The vote is in your hands!

Vecta Lova FREE WordPress Theme

This past weekend (Saturday Nov 15th) I did a WordPress workshop at RMI (Rich Media Institute), one of the ares we covered was converted CSS themes into WordPress themes. I used a free example I downloaded from Styleshout.com called VectorLover.

I decided to keep working on it and complete covert as a functional WP Theme, so here it is (vectalova1.0.zip). Do to copyright issues I will not be releasing this theme on Wordpress.org.

On a side note, James Walker, Drupal God, did a workshop at PHUG a few weeks back on Drupal Theming in an Hour. James used the same theme in his workshop and decided to continue working on it to release a Drupal Version. You can download the drupal version here.

Please report any bugs in this theme by replying to this post. Thanks!

WordPress 2.5 Workshop at RMI - Recap

Success! Yesterdays workshop was a full house, despite the terrible weather ;(

As promised, I have converted my presentation to a pdf for download. I have also included here my “Essential Plug-ins” list from my presentation Making the most of Plug’ins at WordCamp Toronto this year.

For those who want more I am planning on running two more WP sessions in 2009, WordPress Theming - from CSS/Photoshop to WP, and WP Plug-in Development - Plug-in design and development from the ground up.

Essential Plug-in List
Ad Rotator - http://kpumuk.info/projects/wordpress-plugins/ad-rotator
Advanced Random Post - http://www.danielesalamina.it/advanced-random-post
AFD Admin Theme - http://aenonfiredesign.com/blog/afd-wordpress2-admin-theme
Akismet - http://akismet.com/
All in One SEO Pack - http://semperfiwebdesign.com
Article Templates - http://www.bin-co.com/tools/wordpress/plugins/article_templates
Audio player - http://www.1pixelout.net/code/audio-player-wordpress-plugin
Blogroll Page - http://www.byte-me.org
Different Posts Per Page - http://www.maxblogpress.com/plugins/dppp
Disable WordPress Core Update - http://lud.icro.us/disable-wordpress-core-update
Executable PHP widget - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/php-code-widget
Kimili Flash Embed - http://www.kimili.com/plugins/kml_flashembed
Lightbox 2 - http://www.stimuli.ca/lightbox
Maintenance Mode - http://sw-guide.de/wordpress/plugins/maintenance-mode/
myStatus - http://eightface.com/code/wp-mystatus
NextGEN Gallery - http://alexrabe.boelinger.com/?page_id=80
p2pConverter - http://www.briandgoad.com/blog/p2pConverter
Post2pdf - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/post2pdf
PXS Mail Form - http://www.phrixus.co.uk/pxsmail
QuickTime Embed - http://www.channel-ai.com/blog/plugins/quicktime-embed
Random Featured Post - http://www.mydollarplan.com/random-featured-post-plugin
Riffly  Video/Audio Comments - http://riffly.com
Role Manager - http://www.im-web-gefunden.de/wordpress-plugins/role-manager
Widget Logic - http://freakytrigger.co.uk/wordpress-setup
WordPress Database Backup - http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup
Wordpress Download Monitor - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/download-monitor
WP Cache  - http://mnm.uib.es/gallir/wp-cache-2
WP e-commerce - http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce
WP Polls - http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php
WP SpamFree - http://www.hybrid6.com/webgeek/plugins/wp-spamfree
WP-Sticky - http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php
WP Shopping Cart - http://www.instinct.co.nz

Files and Resources
Download Presentation
Vector Lover CSS Theme (original) - Just for fun I am going to continue to work on this and release it as a WP theme
Notepad++ (recommended code editor)

WordPress Workshop at the Rich Media Institute

October and and November have been busy months for speaking - but I’m very excited about my workshop tomorow at RMI (Rich Media Institute) on WordPress 2.5…a full 8 hour workshop starting at 10am!

“A Full day of WordPress2.5, focused on design and development. We’ll cover the essentials of setup, installation, and management. We’ll learn how to build custom themes using CSS, PHP, and image
architecture. We’ll also jump into custom code and template files, best practices for design and management, integrating Flash, and how to build and install WP and custom plug-ins.”

In preparation for this workshop I have been going through the huge list of links I have collected over the years, condensing and compiling to create, what I hope is the ultimate list of Wp resources.

Here’s a sneak peak:

General Resources
http://codex.wordpress.org/Working_with_WordPress#WordPress_Features
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy
http://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_Tags
http://codex.wordpress.org/Templates
http://codex.wordpress.org/Customizing_Your_Sidebar
http://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/graphicalcss/
http://www.ndesign-studio.com
http://www.webdesignerwall.com
http://bloggingsquared.com
http://automattic.com
http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk
http://www.webappers.com
http://www.wppotential.com
http://themes.wordpress.net/
http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress/themes
http://www.wpthemesfree.com/
http://www.h4×3d.com/themes
http://www.mygreencorner.com/freewordpressthemes.php
http://mtekk.weblogs.us/code/
http://www.bloggingsquared.com/
http://www.straas.com
http://www.45royale.com/
http://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/

I will upload my presentation and files after Saturday. I am also hoping to run a a few more workshops in the new year, WordPress Theme development and WordPress Plug-in Development.

Open Source Design Presentation at FSOSS 2008

The good and the bad…This morning I woke up with the flu, how nice on the day of our big presentation. It was a bit of struggle getting through but we did, and successfully to a full house!

BackSpaceStudios presented “Open Source Design” - Exploring the world of Open Source Design, looking at what designers are doing with open source tools like gimp, inkscape, and blender3d. We also look at how designers get creative with interface design using various designer friendly open source languages like CSS, PHP, JS, and more.

We also had the opportunity to sit down with members of Mozilla, Linux, IBM, and other leaders from the Open Source Community to discuss how PHUG is making an impact online and offline. Everyone was really exited about our FREE Workshops, DEV Days, and WordCamp Toronto 2008. This will be a good year for PHUG!

We have uploaded our presentation here!

Some pics of our presentation: