I finished up a new website this weekend. I’m quite proud of this one. This was my first project with professionally-written copy and it makes a huge difference in the overall quality.

The site was built using WordPress (of course), and the theme (East Baisley, get it? it’s a portmanteau of East Bay and paisley…) uses custom fields for taglines and sidebar colors.

To someone who hasn’t dealt with this problem before, this issue probably seems pretty intimidating (at least I think it did to me when I first got it). However, this is most likely a simple fix.

Arriving at the Problem

First, let’s talk about how I came about this problem today so you can avoid it in the future.

To speed things up, I like to keep a copy of the most recent version of WordPress on my computer with a few modifications. One thing I modify is the wp-config.php file; here are some of the changes:

/** MY CHANGES **/

// creates fewer database queries, thus improving performance
define('WP_HOME', 'http://URL.com');
define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://URL.com');

This will screw things up if I don’t replace 'http://URL.com' with the correct URL. More specifically, I get the “clear your old database tables first” message from WordPress. This is what happened today when I transferred a theme from my server to a client’s.

The Solution

<!-- EDIT -->
Quickest and easiest way in the comments. I haven’t tested it yet, but I know and trust the source.

1. Log in to phpMyAdmin (or other database management tool).

   You should be able to find phpMyAdmin in the control panel of your hosting account.

   With lunarpages, you need to click on MySQL Databases and scroll to the very bottom and click the phpMyAdmin link.

   With AT&T, you get to the control panel by adding /ControlPanel/ to the end of your URL.

   1. Once you log in, click on databases in the left column.
   2. If you haven’t already enabled MySQL, click MySQL under databases,
   3. create a password,
   4. and click the enable button on the right.
   5. Right beneath MySQL, click phpMyAdmin
   6. and enable it by clicking the button on the right.
   7. Then click the link that reads “Administer MySQL with phpMyAdmin.” Log in and you’ll be in phpMyAdmin.

   
   
   

   I haven’t had to do this with any other hosts so if you need help, contact your host, leave a comment, or send me an email and I’ll do my best to help you figure it out.

2. After logging in, you should be on a page that has a sidebar on the left with a list of all your databases. Click on the name of the database from which you need to clear tables.



<!-- I’m pretty sure this next step is irreversible, so make sure you’re on the right database -->

3. Now you just need to select all the tables that begin with the “wp_” prefix and choose “Drop” from the drop-down menu.
4. Make sure your wp-config.php file has all the correct information in it, and go to http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php/.

You should be good to go now. If you’re still having trouble, leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do. Also, if you have anything to add, feel free to do so in the comments.

Anyway… I’ve been wanting to design some sci-fi stuff for a while, and I finally did something. It’s a spread based on a quote from 2010.

<!-- WARNING: This is debatably a spoiler -->
It reveals the meaning of a line from the movie.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

I designed a WordPress site for Will Boyd’s campaign for senate. It was a fun process. Learned a smidge about PHP and integrated Chris Coyier’s AnythingSlider. I realize I could’ve used a lighter slider, but I don’t know enough about jQuery to make many changes to appearance, and I couldn’t find a different one that I liked. I also used custom fields for the first time outside of experimentation.

Head over and score my submission (with a 5 of course)! You may even decide to check the boxes “I’d buy it as a tee!” and “I’d buy it as a print!”. Then leave a comment about how much you love it. All of these things will better my chances of winning the contest, which would be great for my resumé and bank account.

This is much cleaner and hopefully much more appealing to the masses than my old one, while still retaining some of my own interest.

I “wrote my own code” for the contact form. I really just followed a basic tutorial and made some slight modifications… I don’t even remember what the mods were, it was a while back (my convenience store job saps the life out of me). I’m fairly certain I’ll want to redo it in the near future since it doesn’t provide much help to the user who doesn’t fare well with technology.

The random image script used on the portfolio page came from some code by Matt Mullenweg.

I’ll be surprised, albeit pleasantly, if there are no bugs. That being said let me know if you find any, or if you have any other suggestions. What do you think of the forms? Are the inputs too confusing? It’s kind of a pain to get the focus on the inputs in the contact form in IE… I almost want to not do anything about it to punish anyone using IE, but I need some work and you just never know from whom it may come.

Also, what do you think of the presentation of my work? The web design page could use some mods, but I need to get some stuff up and running before I can do much with it. Some of the sites are no longer available so I need to make some WordPress themes out of ‘em and put ‘em on here for download.

In short, this is the new look of the site, I’d love to hear what you think, and I hope you’ll check back for the new stuff I’m planning on doing in the (hopefully) near future.

<!-- EDIT -->
I just found a bug! Be on the lookout.

ascetic is a template theme I designed a little while back to speed up my design process. I’ve only used it half a time since creating it, so it’s listed as beta and i’ll update it as I use it more.

Features:

• Widget ready
• IE .png fix
• Separate IE stylesheet (blank since the theme is intended for development use and would have to be completely redone anyway)
• Google code to make lesser versions of IE behave more like IE 8
• Update message for any version IE version less than 8

I appreciate any feedback/advice you may have.

Download ascetic.

I needed an outlet for all of the horror movie intake I had last spring when I co-founded Horror Movie Monday with my friend Chase. I decided to play with Illustrator and make a bunch of icons for some applications that I frequently use (and for CandyBar since it was part of the inspiration).

Count them; 1, 2, 3! I just love counting them!

Anyway, without further ado, here they are (available in 3 formats):

1. .icns (.zip 1.4 MB)
2. .app (.zip 1.4 MB)
3. .png (.zip 892 KB)

The Cream-Filling

There are icons for the following programs in each download:

• Coda
• Finder
• Firefox
• InDesign
• iTunes
• Candybar
• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• Adium
• VLC

In case you don’t know which to download…

.icns is for Apple only (as far as I know), .apps were created using IconDroplet so that the images could be copied and pasted manually using Get Info, and the .pngs are so that they can be formatted other ways.

p.s. I tried to save the collection as an iContainer for all you CandyBar users, but for some reason it would only save two icons in the collection. if you know what the problem is, let me know.

Please ignore the animated .gif… One of those things you just have to give in to the client on… though this is the least obtrusive animated .gif I’ve ever seen.

I’ve gone on the trip twice so I had some personal experience to bring to this project. A big part of the trip is a 48-hour experience in which students fast in solitude with nothing but the clothes on their backs, a half-inch foam mat, a sheet of plastic (not quite big enough to completely shield from rain), and a page of the Bible. At the end of the experience, students are encouraged to create a circle of stones as sort of a personal monument.

The time I enjoyed most on the trip was at the end of each night when we would sit in a circle around a fire and just talk.

I drew on these two components of the trip to create this logo (and badge):

The only thing I don’t really like about it is the raised bar on the As, but they’re not too bad. That was one of the clients’ ideas to make them seem more like mountains.