BackSpaceStudios Blog

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)

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:

Videos from WordCamp Toronto 2008

Just came across this video of my presenation from WCT 08. Thanks to newmediaMike for posting this and all the other videos from the conference. You can view the rest here.

WordCamp Toronto 2008 - Making the Most of Plug-ins with Brendan Sera-Shriar from Mark Wood on Vimeo.

WordCamp Toronto ‘08 - Day One

It’s about 3/4 into day 1 at WordCamp Toronto 2008, and the momentum and excitement is outstanding. It’s the first WordCamp I’ve been too, and it’s great to see faces from all over North America, all the way from Waterloo, Ottawa and even Vegas!

Joseph Thornley kicked off the day with a great presentation called ‘Blogging as a Cornerstone of Social Media’, emphasizing the need for companies and organizations of all kinds to be involved in establishing a community around themselves, their products, services. It was a great presentation that showed the transition between what the web was about 1995, to what it has evolutionized into now, as we approach the end of 2008.

We also had the opportunity to hear from Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress. We had the chance to view what was going on at WordPress, what changes were being made and what we should look forward to for WordPress 2.7!

It’s been a great day so far, and stay tuned to BackSpace for more on what’s going on at WordCamp 2008!!