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.

I found a few tutorials on how to create a local copy of an existing WordPress installation, but they were all very slightly off for someone using MAMP. I first got MAMP when I was learning how to install WordPress locally and since it works great, I didn’t want to install another local server environment.

Anyway, on to the instructions:

Exporting Your WordPress Database

1. Log in to phpMyAdmin through your host (usually in the cPanel). I use lunarpages so I’ll tell you how to get there on their site:
   <!–– Dave Hubler kindly left a comment on a slight difference for those using limedomains as their host. Thanks, broseph. ––>
   1. Log in by clicking the link in the header.
   2. Make sure you have the right hosting account selected in the drop-down menu and click Control Panel. If you have more than one hosting account, you’ll have to click the “Go to cPanel” button.
   3. Click on MySQL Databases among all the icons and scroll all the way to the bottom and click on the “phpMyAdmin” link.
2. Select the WordPress database from the sidebar on the left. Remember this database name for a future step.



3. Click the Export tab at the top, make sure everything is selected in the box on the left, the SQL radio button is selected, and the Data checkbox to the right is checked. Select the Save as file checkbox and click Go.

Importing Your WP Database into Your Local Copy

1. Download, install, and open MAMP if you haven’t already.
2. Using your FTP client, copy your site’s root folder to /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/
3. Go to the MAMP Start Page and click on phpMyAdmin.
   <!-- NOTE -->
   If for some reason MAMP didn’t start the servers and open the start page upon launch, do so now by clicking the buttons in the UI.
4. On the phpMyAdmin homepage there is an option to create a new database. Enter the database name from step 2 in Exporting Your WordPress Database and click Create.
5. Click on the new database in the sidebar on the left then choose the Import tab at the top.



6. Click Browse and select the database file you downloaded earlier. Click Go in the bottom left.

Setting Up Your Username and Password for Your Local Database

1. Go to the homepage of your local phpMyAdmin and choose Privileges from the MySQL column on the left.
2. Click Add a new User under the list of existing users.
3. Enter your username and password from the remote database.
   <!-- NOTE -->
   If you don’t remember your username and password, open your wp-config file and get the info there.
4. For Host, choose Local if the host in your wp-config file is localhost. Otherwise, choose Any.
5. Click Check All under Global privileges and click Go.

Setting the Proper URL

1. Go to the homepage of your local phpMyAdmin and choose your database from the column on the left.
2. Select Browse next to the table wp_options.



3. Find the option_name siteurl and click the corresponding edit link. Change the option_value to http://localhost:8888/root_folder_name and click Go.
   <!-- NOTE -->
   If using something other than MAMP, you’ll probably have to type http://localhost/root_folder_name



4. Find the option_name home and set the option_value to the same as you did for siteurl.

That should be it!

Make sure MAMP is running and check http://localhost:8888/root_folder_name (or http://localhost/root_folder_name) to see your local site.

Right now, I’m off to Jo’s Java to hang out with mi amiga, Bre.

I’m using LightWindow to display some of my work in my portfolio. LightWindow uses JavaScript, as does the method I used to display my latest tweet. I don’t really understand why, but whichever of the .js files was linked to last was the only one that would work. Speaking with my friend Joel led me to the solution.

I had to run the function jQuery.noConflict() and replace each $ with jQuery. It’s explained in more detail on the jQuery site, so if you’re still having trouble, I suggest looking there.

Here’s how my code looks now:

<script src="http://curtisblackwell.com/js/jquery-1.3.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">

	jQuery.noConflict();
		jQuery(function(){
			jQuery.getJSON('http://twitter.com/status/user_timeline/curtisblackwell.json?count=1&callback=?', function(data){
				jQuery.each(data, function(index, item){
					jQuery('#tweetscreen').append('<div id="tweetz"><p id="last-tweet">' + item.text + '<span id="blink">' + '|' + '</span>' + '</p></div>');
				});
			});
		});

</script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="/lightwindow/javascript/prototype.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/lightwindow/javascript/scriptaculous.js?load=effects"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/lightwindow/javascript/lightwindow.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/lightwindow/css/lightwindow.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />

<!-- EDIT -->
I have since linked to a javascript file so that my page validates, but the code is the same.