BackSpaceStudios Blog

WordPress Theme Design Workshop at RMI - Recap

This past Saturday I ran another WordPress workshop at RMI ( Rich Media Institute ), it was great to see so many familiar faces, you know who you are This is the first in a series of workshops I’m running a RMI this year.  This weekend, Saturday Feb 14th 1-530pm, is WordPress Plugin Development ( register now ).

Other workshops to look forward to , WordPress 2.7 - all the ins and outs,  WordPress 2.7 Admin Skinning/Customization.

During the theme design workshop, we converted a static HTML+CSS web template, from styleshout.com, to a functional WordPress theme. There is still a little work to do to get it all working, you can downlaod here and feel free to feedback or ask questions.

Here’s the slide presentation from the workshop.

As promised here is a list of some great FREE Premium Theme sites, enjoy.
http://themeshaper.com/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/
http://www.wpsnap.com/
http://freethemelayouts.com/
http://www.styleshout.com
http://wpcandy.com/

…and for inspiration…
http://www.bestwebgallery.com
http://welovewp.com/

Posts from past workshops:
http://backspacestudios.com/blog/index.php/wordpress-25-workshop-at-rmi-recap/open-source/
http://backspacestudios.com/blog/index.php/vecta-lova-free-wordpress-theme/open-source/

BeatMaker Class - Awesome PHUG Workshop!

This past Tuesday PHUG hosted another great FREE PHUG Workshop at Seneca, Flash Media Server and BeatMaker. I won’t go into to much detail, you read the revieew over at the PHUG site, but I will mention the very cool Open Source Flash class that Dan Zen, presenter ( Sheridan Professor and Inventor ), demoed that night.

BeatMaker Class - Simple Access to Sound Frequencies
Inventor, Dan Zen, has built two wrapper classes that make accessing the Flash computeSpectrum functionality accessible to designers and easier for developers. The SoundBeat class sets up general spectrum analysis and the BeatMaker class extends the SoundBeat class to provide scale and / or alpha animations to sound.

Here is an example below, you can drag the flashing eyes around, also, watch the eyes careful when there is more base and less treble, very cool effect.

Download the files:
BeatMaker
UniqueBalls
Handout

WordPress Workshops - Theme Design and Plug-ins

After a very successful WordPress workshop at RMI (Rich Media Institute) back in November I have been asked back to run 2 more great WordPress workshops.

Feb 7th – WordPress Theme Design
In this workshop, we will show the process of taking an HTML & CSS designs and PhotoShop templates and converting them into a fully working WordPress theme. Along the way, we’ll look at the main aspects of WordPress theming, some best practices and a few tricks. WordPress 2.6 and 2.7 makes the whole process easier than ever, so get started making your WordPress site look not like a WordPress site!

To find out more and register

Feb 14th – WordPress Plug-ins
“Plug-ins can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine.” In this workshop we will cover the following areas, Extending WordPress, Customizing WordPress Plug-ins, Tips On Writing WordPress Plug-ins, Writing WordPress Plug-ins, and Essential WordPress Plug-ins. Plus, that isn’t enough, we will build a simple Flash plug-in by the end of the workshop that you can take with you!

To find out more and register

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)