Mike Van WinkleNew sites going live | Mike Van Winkle

New sites going live

Mike Van Winkle — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:10:49 +0000

I’m very happy to report two new projects going online. One is www.eightin08.com, another adaptation of Justin Tadlock’s Options theme. The other is www.friendsoffairness.com, which is, come to think of it, another adaptation of Justin Tadlock’s theme. Jeez, I wonder if there’s a message here!

Quick and easy WordPress magazine format

Mike Van Winkle — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:37:15 +0000

I am working with Texas Watchdog to set up a magazine style site. I have to give some props to Gabfire Design for putting together a very easy to use Magazine Style WordPress Theme. It has been very easy to customize and turns out to be about the best free option available. In addition to starting with Gabfire’s very functional design, I installed Mark Jaquith’s very handy Multiple Authors plugin. This plugin allows you to associate more than one author with a post, which is absolutely essential for a magazine site! The Texas Watchdog site is still a work in progress, but take a look.

Theme Update: OnStage Theme for Actors v1.1.0

Mike Van Winkle — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 14:10:30 +0000

So, my OnStage theme has only been out for a couple weeks and already I’m releasing a new version. What gives? Well it occurred to me that a few tweeks were needed. For one, the blog had no side bar which (a) prevented users from browsing archives and (b) eliminated the natural search juice that a sidebar provides. Also, I noticed that some users were not using the proper sized pictures for their frontpage gallery. This resulted in the smaller pictures aligning left and making the whole site look a little off kilter. I’ve now centered the home gallery so that, no matter what size image is used, the images will look nice.

The new version can be downloaded here.

Learning Flash

Mike Van Winkle — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:13:18 +0000

Well, I’ve spent the last two days buried in my computer teaching myself Flash. I should’ve done it years ago, but I was dreading the experience I knew was in front of me. It’s not that the program is rocket science. Anybody with a lot of desire and a little bit of patience can learn the basics. The frustrating part is learning all the silly mistakes. This morning, one file I was creating had a border showing on the left. I spent an hour playing with the background layer, the layer I thought was the culprit, only to discover that another layer was the real villain. Whenever you are a new program there are inevitable situations like these where you aren’t learning what to do with the program, so much as what not to do.

At any rate, below are my first flash ads. They aren’t Rembrant, but they’ll do for now.

OnStage Theme for Actors

Mike Van Winkle — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:13:32 +0000

So I am finally ready to release “On Stage,” a theme designed specifically for actors. Aesthetically, I wanted a very simple, yet elegant design that would allow the actor’s headshots to take the focus. I owe Brian Gardner some credit for this theme because the code is based on his Photopress design. This is my first publically released theme, so be gentle. I’ve tried to cross-check this among all the relevant browsers, but haven’t exhaustively done so. Please report any compatibility issue below.

Download Theme | Demo Theme

The theme is free to download, but I am happy to set it up for you for $200. If you are interested, drop me an email at mike@mikevanwinkle.com or call 708.289.3136.

Installation

In order to achieve the functionality necessary for a top-notch actor website, it was necessary to incorporate several awesome, and freely available, plugins. Since I did not design these plugins I cannot provide support for them. Also, it would be a good idea to check for more recent versions of these plugins before installing this them. However, I have included all necessary plugins in the theme download. Beware, updated plugins may affect the functionality of the theme.

Step 1: Download the theme pack and unzip the file. The file contains two folders, the theme folder (“onstage”) and the plugins folder (“plugins”)

Step 2: Upload the theme folder to your themes directory (wp-content/themes/). Then upload the CONTENTS of the plugins folder to your plugins directory (note: do not upload the folder itself, only the contents).

Step 3: Activate theme by going to your Dashboard>Designs menu within the wordpress administration interface.

Step 4: Activate the included plugins by going to your Plugins menu within the wordpress administration interface. Activate the “NextGEN Gallery,” “NextGEN Gallery Widget,” “Contact Form,” and “Limit Posts” plugins.

Step 5: You should now see a “Gallery” tab on your Dashboard menu. Click this tab and then click “Add Gallery.” Name your new gallery “Frontpage” so that it will be clear which gallery controls the front page.

Step 6: Upload the images you want shown on the front page into this gallery. You should resize your images to 690 x 400 (width x height)

Step 7: Go to your widgets menu (Dashboard>Designs>Widgets). Make sure the menu in the right-hand column is set to “Sidebar 1.” Then drag and drop the NextGEN Gallery Widget from the left-hand column onto the right-hand column. Click “edit” on the widget bar. !Leave the gallery title blank! Select the “Frontpage” gallery from the drop down menu and set the dimensions to match those of the images you uploaded (690 x 400). Click save changes.

Usage

The steps above describe how to use the headshot gallery on the frontpage. The front page will also display the latest post from the “Featured” category.

If you would like to use the blog function, create a new page and under the option for “Page Template” select “Blog.”

One note on using the gallery. By default the NextGEN Gallery crops photos into uniform square thumbnails. This means profile shots turn out as cropped mid-riff photos. You will need to change the default thumbnail settings if you do not want the system to crop profile photos. You can do this by going to Gallery>Options>Thumbnails and unchecking the box that says “Ignore the aspect ratio, no portrait thumbnails.” Also on this options page, I recommend changing the max dimensions of the thumnails to 150 x 150

Optional: Included in the theme pack are plugins for a secure contact form and resume builder. These are optional. I recommend using the contact form plugin, but the resume plugin may not fit the requires of a typical performance resume and so therefore may not be advised.

YesForIllinois.com

Mike Van Winkle — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:29:53 +0000

Yes for Illinois is a project of the Illinois Citizens Coalition. They asked me to help them develop a new web site at the beginning June. After trying several theme options, we finally settled on Justin Tadlock’s “Options.” It is flexible and easy to customize.