I imagine I’ll do something else with my photo blog that runs on Posterous – just not sure what. I’m happy to have tighter control over my content, functionality and presentation with this option though.
One of them was to rebuild this site using WordPress’ 3.0’s custom post types and HTML 5, plus develop a mobile theme. Well, you’re looking at that site. Thanks for the awesome work of the Automattic theme team, I’ve got a new site, coded with HTML5 and mobile ready, with responsive design.
About the New Site
I created the site with Duster as a parent theme, harnessing many of WordPress’ most recent and powerful features. Duster comes HTML5 ready and includes CSS 3 responsive design media queries. It proved to be a great starting point. Other people that deserve credit for inspiration:
The new site brings marked improvements over my old site. I used a child theme, took advantage of WordPress templates and used custom post types and taxonomies.
I learned a ton, and hope to do a couple tutorials in the future.
Another year has rolled on by, and like many others, I keep thinking where I’ve been.
With technology moving so quickly, bringing with it many new applications to try and fresh techniques to learn, I wanted to make some goals for the new year. Resolutions? You could call them that.
Recode this site using WordPress’ 3.0’s custom post types and HTML 5, plus develop a mobile theme.
Complete a project in Drupal, Joomla or another CMS.
Blog more.
Learn more PHP.
Four simple goals, so we’ll see how they go throughout the year… What’s on your list?
Social media for non-profits and small organizations can be daunting.
How do you convince your co-workers it’s worth it? How do you approach creating content? What are some best practices for Facebook and Twitter?
Casey Golden, Bethany Stevens and I tried to answer some of those questions today. Casey is the founder and managing partner of the Small Act Network, a creative agency specializing in social media and software for non-profits. Bethany is faculty member and policy analyst at the Center for Leadership in Disability at Georgia State University.
We had a great audience, and lots of participation. See my talking points below – embedded from my Scribd account. You might find some of the information helpful as you and/or your organization dives into social media.
When I ran cross country in high school, my teammates and I would often walk the course before a big race.
It made for good preparation. We could identify any trouble spots ahead of time, and it allowed us to plan how each particular course might affect our running style. I didn’t like doing it though. I appreciate preparation, but to me, walking the course took some of the fun out of the race. You knew once hundreds of other runners poured onto the course with you, those turns and bumps would be different. Most of your careful planning could prove useless rather quickly. Sometimes, you just have to embrace the unknown.
New Beginnings
I’ve done just that for the past few months and weeks. A year ago, I left my full-time job as a copywriter with a great company in one of the worst economies in decades to pursue a dream: I wanted to learn how to tell stories in a new way and I wanted to earn my master’s degree. I always thought I would pursue creative writing further, but I shifted focus once I found the perfect program. I graduated in May with my master’s degree in interactive media from Elon University, and have been searching for a job ever since.
A week ago, I loaded up a U-Haul truck, said goodbye to some dear friends in North Carolina and moved to Alexandria, Virginia, hoping to land a job in the Washington, D.C., area. That leap of faith worked. I accepted a job with The Arc of the United States as its new Online Marketing Specialist. The Arc promotes and protects the human rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and actively supports their full inclusion and participation in the community throughout their lifetimes. I’ll be managing the organization’s online presence to help further its mission. I’m thrilled to be working for the public good and helping the talented team there give a voice to those who may not otherwise be heard.
I’m excited that my new career opportunity will build on the varied skill set I already have, and allow me to expand my knowledge into new media further in all sorts of ways. If you follow this blog or my Twitter account, don’t expect too much to change. I’m still interested in all the same things, especially telling stories with technology and creating online content. And I’m so happy that my own story has taken this turn toward something new and exciting. Sometimes, you have to embrace the unknown and run the race.
If you enjoy reading what I write here, I encourage you to check out Journalism Lives. Steve and I worked together really well during grad school at Elon, and have big plans and hopes for the site.
I’ll also say this: even though Journalism Lives will focus on the news industry, I won’t stop writing about it in this space. I plan to continue exploring multimedia journalism and other types of storytelling with technology here. Journalism isn’t the only field facing a massive evolution, so the more we entertain problems and questions from anywhere and everywhere, the sooner we be able to craft innovative solutions and answers.
That’s why I believe a blog like Journalism Lives can hold value for anyone interested in how people access online information. Our blog, like this one, is likely to draw inspiration from many different sources.
Things have been kind of quiet around here. Man, I hate it when blog posts start that way. However, there’s good reason for the silence…
New Look
You’ll notice a brand new site design! I just completed the final tweaks yesterday, and wanted to make the official announcement.
WordPress powers the back-end, and I used Shape by Ian Stewart as a starting point for the custom theme that you see. If you’re looking for a place to dive into WordPress, WordPress theming and more, check out Ian’s site, Themeshaper and its forums. You can learn a lot by browsing around the site.
Before the redesign, I used Ian’s Thematic to power my site. However, when I decided to create a new site, I wanted to learn more about WordPress theming from scratch, rather than starting with a WordPress theme framework. Shape, this tutorial by Ian, and a few other resources helped me learn a ton.
I hope you enjoy the new site as much I enjoyed creating it.
I’ll be attending FutureWeb 2010 tomorrow and Friday, creating a short documentary about the future of the web. Be sure to follow my learning journal and Twitter profile for live updates. Also, be sure to follow the Twitter hash tag: #FutureWeb 2010.
