January 2013

January 27, 2013

How HGTV Helps You Be a Better Developer

There is a right way to do webdev stuff – usually several “right ways” – and many more wrong ways. Knowing the difference between the two is what separates the newbies and the seasoned veterans and why experience commands a higher price.

A reader left this comment on the article above a couple of months ago to illustrate this point:

Back in the 80’s in New York this building had a huge steam plant that was failing every day. The new college educated “engineers” could not get a handle on it. So, in desperation they finally called the retired plumber who was there when it was installed and had maintained it for 30 years, never having a problem with it, ever. He comes in takes a look at it and leaves.

Ten minutes later he comes back with a hammer. Looks at it again then wails the crap out of it with one hit. The plant comes to life and runs like new. He whips out his billing book and gives the new guys a bill for $1000.00 dollars. The kid is like, “wow that’s a little high for 15 minutes of work.”

The old man takes the bill back and then gives it back. This time itemized, $10 for the hammer and $990 for knowing where to use it.

So, in the spirit of being that retired plumber who know where to use his hammer, let’s look at two things HGTV has taught me about bidding/quoting.

Look in the attic before you tear stuff up

How many times have we seen Hillary on Love It Or List It want to tear down walls or re-do a basement only to have Fergis or Eddie tell her there is a load-bearing wall or utilities running down the wall that need to be re-routed. I get so frustrated for the homeowners when she does that.

When I am asked to make page templates or add a slider (basically things that are more than CSS edits), I ask for a login to the dashboard and FTP to “take a look in the attic.” Sometimes I’ll find that there are 40 plugins running or there’s no custom post type (CPT) for things that should be, so they’re instead using multiple categories per post to use as a filter for content in various locations.

The bigger the mess, the higher the cost. If the budget is immovable, then something has to go or we have to wait until there’s enough budget. I have a “do no harm” policy, so I don’t just head in and cram a square peg in a round hole just to make it work for the time-being. It gets done right or it gets done less or it gets done later.

Leave contingency room in your budget

What we like about Jonathan Scott in Property Brothers in our house is that we’ve never seen him go over budget. He does a good job with the inspection and prices everything out carefully as “the dev” in his contractor world of wood and construction materials.

If a project looks like it should be a market price of $350, plan on some issues. Don’t leave yourself doing $500 worth of work for $350 and don’t you dare do all of the work and then send an invoice for $500 without discussing it first. Personally, I don’t bump my budget once progress has started unless it’s a huge deal that is generally wrapped around a scope change.

So, if you think it’s going to be $350, then budget it at $500. If it takes less time and it was truly a fair market price at $500, that’s gravy. If it was due to contingency room and it went so smooth it would be debatable in your own mind if it’s worth $500, then discount it. That way, you don’t lose anything and they win a better price and a better image of you. It’s called win-win-win.

January 14, 2013

Changing the Genesis Minimum 2.0 Banner Image – GMIE

Introducing Genesis Minimum Images Extended – GMIE

One of the first things I fell in love with in the new Minimum 2.0 child theme was the large banner image on the homepage. Then I was sold on using it more and more (I’m running it on 2 of my own sites) when I saw the banner was also on the single post pages.

Pinterest's shortcoming Then I noticed an issue with it that affects the social media sharing (hi, Pinterest) and the grid loop or archive settings when displaying the featured images I was creating. When there is only one featured image assigned to a post or page, regardless of them thumbnail sizes that can be created, aspect ratio is often king. Pinterest (unlike Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn) doesn’t even allow you to scroll to another image, so you’re stuck with the original image AND aspect ratio of the featured image.

Most great things people use come out of having a need or want and finding a solution. This is my solution to this dilemma. Never having written or published a plugin before, I sought out the teaching help of Nick Croft, Robert Neu, and Brandon Kraft to release Genesis Minimum Images Extended, known by us as GMIE. Even the legendary Bill Erickson contributed some assistance with portions of code that included his work with Custom Metaboxes (CMB).

How it works

It’s rather simple (and we have an update to some tiny improvements in the next day or two). We’re all familiar with featured images for posts/pages, right? Well, the stock use of that in Minimum 2.0 is to also make that into the banner image below the header in single posts and pages. To fit the 1600px width of the theme’s CSS, that calls for a 600px tall image.

Who wants a 600px tall image pushing down their valuable content? That’s fine for the homepage like a big banner (like I’m using now), but not for posts. I quickly started shrinking the banner images to 350px on down to 250px. That was making for awkward slivers of images on the homepage grid loop, blog index page, and in Pinterest (see above).

My only solution at the time was to disable the images in the blog index and homepage. That made my content very plain until people arrived at my posts. I didn’t like that.

No longer is that the solution with GMIE. Now you can select another image to be used for the banner and you can make it any wonky aspect ratio you want and still keep a beautiful featured image for social media and the other uses Genesis has for featured images, such as the featured widgets and more. Just treat it like you would the featured image function and it’ll automatically appear below your header.

Why don’t you give it a try on your own Minimum 2.0 sites/projects and see how you like it?

January 11, 2013

The Answer Is Simple

The answer is simple.

It’s the question that is tough.

Sometimes life is a lot like Jeopardy: the answer is staring you in the face, but you need to come up with the question. Sort of, though it’s more like needing to pick the right question that leads to the answer and dig/shovel/build your way to the answer. You will make mistakes along the way.

For example

I’m a pretty pretty crazy busy dude most of the time, especially when we have a foster kid in the house. Days are filled with interruptions no matter whether the office door is closed and I’ve got music jamming in my headphones. I usually feel the brush of air come over my arm before I’m visually aware of anyone.

My answer is simple: I’ve decided (committed) to continue to earn the same or more money while being a better (more available) foster dad and structure my workday around my most productive times.

The questions were from this selection:

When should I start my day?
Should I go for a walk every day like I know I should?
Should I do a quick lunch and snack or a long, big lunch?
Will I be more productive if I drink a Mt. Dew after lunch or take a nap and then work?
Should I stop at 5pm and decompress or work until 6pm to work longer?

I’m working on building my way to the answer by writing these articles, compiling an ebook, writing a plugin, curating content for my followers on Twitter and Google+, and building real relationships with my fellow developers, clients, and potential clients.

Everyone is a potential friend. Everyone is a potential client. When you’re lucky, you get both in the same package, like with my friend, Phil Gerbyshak (@philgerb). Do right by yourself and introduce yourself to him. He’ll give you plenty of questions if you ask him nicely.

Look at your answer and figure out how you’re going to get there. Don’t be a stranger – fill us in on your answers, questions, and paths.

January 9, 2013

Thoughts on Competition Among WordPress Developers

One of the observations I’ve made in the past 5 years as a WordPress developer is that there appears to be very little competition among those who directly interface with clients to provide services. Theme houses and plugins are in a very stiff and sometimes hostile battle for marketshare, in stark contrast to service providers.

This topic has been on my mind for a number of months as I’ve been consistently amazed and humbled by the openness of WordPress experts to freely help others on Twitter. We share code, jump in for a quick diagnostic, and even share pricing and work/life balance tips. At the forefront of the open model are Andrew Norcross (@norcross), Remkus de Vries (@DeFries), Brian Gardner (@bgardner), Nathan Rice (@nathanrice), Gil – Flashing Cursor (@flashingcursor), Bill Erickson (@billerickson), Jared Atchison (@jaredatch), and Carrie Dils (@cdils). More recently, Nick Croft (@Nick_theGeek), Brandon Kraft (@Kraft), and Robert Neu (@RealFATMedia) have made themselves into some of my newest besties – we’re even working on a new Genesis plugin for release soon.

WordPress community gone wrong

Just last week, one of my new friends mentioned above, Carrie Dils, wrote an article with a title that immediately made me wish I’d posted this when I put it in drafts as an idea. After reading it, we have differing angles and her situation is a real bummer for the WP community in her area. Go read it and we’ll continue the discussion: The Shocking Truth: I’m Not Your Competition.

We have a healthy WordPress community some places, most places

I also muse about it when I visit a developer site from the business card I’m handed at an event or social and I can’t help but think of the old HTML sites we used to make 8-10 years ago. It seems that there is a client for everyone, even those in the business who aren’t anywhere near current in their designs or premium themes and code (like a static site with a WP blog created in 2012 – because we all realized WordPress is a true CMS in 2007). I don’t needlessly have to link to them to shame them – we’ve all seen portfolios that make us wonder how they are feeding their families.

I think back to how I started without a portfolio and look at what crap I used to do compared to my current offerings and wonder how anyone hired me in 2009. Some peoples’ portfolios look like that today because they are just starting out as I did nearly 4 years ago. Conferences and Meetups bring on a combination of “you’re not my competition” and “wow, I’m not worthy to be called a WP dev.” I personally struggle between those two emotions – one is prideful and one isn’t valuing myself enough.

The worst thing you can do for your self-esteem is to compare yourself to others with more experience and talent.

My wife reminds me of this at least once per month when I show her a tweet, comment, or e-mail from someone I respect and admire where they give me kudos or validate something I’m doing. “That’s nice, but you know you worked hard to get to where you are and you know you deserve everything,” is her typical response to such petty notifications that “I’ve made it” because of a little validation.

Constantly improve, learn, and ask questions

We, as WordPress developers, and especially Genesis developers, are a community. I’ve never encountered a professional community so willing to help, give advice, give entire blueprints to their business, and more. Can you imagine a real estate agent telling someone all of their best hard-learned tips to a rookie who just hung out his shingle? If it happens, it’s not often.

Over the past year, I’ve tried more and more to learn the coding jobs that I had to hire @norcross to do for me. He’d do a job and I’d read the code.

I’d get another job, try his code, edit it around to suit the client’s wishes, and still hire him to fix my crap.

This happened job after job for the end of 2011 and the first 3 quarters of 2012. Then I figured out some major pieces of missing learning that prevented me from looking at code made in one instance an bending it to my will in another instance.

Be confident in your own abilities

I just outed myself as sucking at code. Not exactly – I suck at programming pure PHP and combining with jQuery and other extreme uses of CSS that I can try for 5 hours and not get the results an expert can in 20 minutes. Rather than beat myself up for a day (I’ll give it a good college try for 1-3 hours if it’s brand new or I think I should be able to make it work), I hire someone who will do a better, faster job than I can and still work on other stuff at the same time as that’s going on. I turned my 80% wasted work into only 20% wasted and eliminated 80% of my coding anxiety.

My strengths are in being utterly straightforward, no matter the cost to us (you’d be surprised how willing people are to work out a plan when you’re honest as early as possible), being admittedly too quick to respond to e-mails, and striving for complete trust in the process and and in my ability to get the job done, done right, on budget, and on time.

That’s all people want: a good product and good service. Give them anything excellent above that and just good across the board and you’ll have a client for life. More on that later…

What do you struggle with? How can I help you as I’ve been helped by so many to get me to where I am today?

Community contributions

Edward Caissie: I’m in … here’s a link: http://edwardcaissie.com/2013/01/you-are-the-competition-i-want/

January 4, 2013

Introducing the Success Concept of Win-Win-Win

Satisfaction A win-win situation is as good as it gets, right? The world-renowned Stephen Covey (7 Habits of Highly Effective People) states that Habit 4 is to think “win-win.” Who am I to argue with him? I don’t know, but that’s not success in my book. I strive for a win-win-win situation.

I take issue with that habit being some gold standard in the business world. I’m not saying that a win-win situation is bad — not at all — I’m simply saying that there is yet a higher calling for your habits that includes the element of contributing to something greater than yourself.

Win-win-win > win-win

In win-win, the relationship is symbiotic in a sense that both people win out of whatever relationship or transaction just took place. That’s fine and good, but is it noble. When you look at it closer, it’s selfish. It’s either:

I want you to win so I can win or
I want to win and you can win, too

I’m not here — existing — so I can win. Newsflash: you aren’t, either. When all is said and done in your career and life, are you going to mourn that you didn’t win enough or that others didn’t because you didn’t? No! You’re going to hope you made a difference in the lives of others. A legacy of caring, not winning.

Win-win-win is about caring

The 3rd win is about one (or both) of you being in a position to then spark another win-win with such success that it also becomes a win-win-win that spreads yet again. Sometimes these situations take months or years to unfold, but you must be aware of possibilities lest you squelch them.

An example

A personal example to help illustrate this concept comes to mind quite easily.

Some of you may know, since it’s in my Twitter bio and “life happens” from time to time and client work just has to wait a day or so, that we are foster parents. Foster parenting is a perfect win-win-win that works this way:

the child or children have a safe, loving home while they stay with us
we are enriched in spirit, patience, humor, and compassion for having a placement stay with us
hopefully, years later, our foster children will grow up to be pillars of their communities and patient, loving adults – many foster or adopted children grow up to be foster or adoptive parents themselves.

In that example, we don’t foster so we are enriched. It’s mind-blowingly difficult many days and heartbreaking others. We do it for them now and for their future selves — the third “win.”

Seek out that third “win”

You only have so much time, energy, and money at your disposal. You must choose what you’ll do every day and I will posit that those who think long-term and think in terms of the third “win” are the most fulfilled and successful people you’ll ever meet.

Who do you know who is constantly going after the third “win” or what other examples do you have to help others find their conduit into others’ success?

January 2, 2013

The Genesis Framework Is the Only WordPress Theme You Need

StudioPress - Genesis — image credit: studiopress.com/features/

I’ve been using Genesis since its inception in February, 2010. I honestly can’t remember if I was part of the beta testing, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find an old beta copy in my WordPress archives. For the next 18 months, I alternated projects between Genesis and another theme framework, as well as another couple of really good theme houses who made themes that more or less fit what particular clients wanted. Then I stopped jumping around cold turkey.

Why I cut down to one theme

Well, going all in on Genesis is one framework, but many, many child themes. Now I switch between modifying a child theme that already looks great but needs some customization for a client or starting with a blank slate. I’ve decided to concentrate on just the Genesis framework for several reasons:

The global network of support is unparalleled. My fellow preferred developers work together to solve problems, help each other, and even help with a project when someone is too booked to take a new project.
Since it’s the biggest player on the market, everyone who makes products that integrate into themes, they account for Genesis and support any issues that come up better with sites running on Genesis. People also write plugins and snippets specifically for Genesis, knowing a lot of people will use them.
I know the site will last through many WordPress and Genesis updates without a major overhaul to any modifications.
I can reuse most of the code I create or collect from the community of Genesis devs on many sites without creating code from scratch or heavily modifying it to work in a new environment.

Studies have shown that your greatest gains in life will come from improving your strengths, not your weaknesses. So, instead of becoming good at all themes/frameworks, I’m concentrating everything into one platform with one set of rules and putting them all on one host. For the same reason I chose to only use WordPress in 2006, I have chosen to only use Genesis.

Why Genesis instead of another framework

With those good reasons to consolidate efforts into one framework, I had to choose between frameworks. I’d been using both Genesis and Thesis in 2010 for a few months, choosing Thesis for blog-centric sites and Genesis for sites with a homepage because of the child themes with great homepages already framed. It didn’t take long for me to realize that wasn’t as efficient as using one exclusively, especially when it came to later support.

Once a Thesis site had been up for a few months after I’d made my shift to Genesis, it would take me a good 5-15 minutes to get my bearings of where certain settings were, differences in hooks, and some things that were so different that I made the suggestion on more than one occasion to convert to Genesis (which most clients happily did). On my server with 55 WordPress installs and counting, only 2 of them are not Genesis sites.

I can copy/paste functions like a beast when there is an improvement I’ve learned that I want everyone to have. I know where in stylesheets to find modifications I’ve made. With well over a dozen very good Genesis-specific plugins that add tremendous power and flexibility, I have no desire to work with any other code.

I literally shudder when I read some code in other themes, even some premium themes.

What do you use?

I know I’m not alone as a StudioPress/Genesis-only developer. What I don’t know is how many of there you are – I’d love to follow you on Twitter or Google+ if I’m not already (you can also find my personal Google+, but I use it mostly for photography). Do you still switch between themes to meet a functionality purpose or do you bend a framework to your will?