Matt Ryan

A journey lugging aspirations and experiences, tools and ideals.

WordPress

DKC Developer Collective Website Pilot Program Kickoff

DKC Developer Collective Website Pilot Program Kickoff

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I had an amazing experience this weekend. On Saturday I was fortunate to serve as a mentor to a group of students from the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf (PSD) as they learned how to build their own WordPress websites from scratch. I was assisting Andy Stitt who was the technical lead on this pilot project being coordinated by Shireen Hafeez, founder of Deaf Kids Code. The DKC Developer Collective enables the kids to work with some local grassroots businesses in need of a website. The PSD kids are going to build them. It will be a semester long project which will help the students cultivate developer skills and implement design thinking

Launching the DKC DEVELOPER COLLECTIVE! So grateful to have the local community involvement. — Deaf Kids Code (@deafkidscode) February 16, 2019

An Amazing Experience

I have never been involved with this type of service project, and to be honest, I was a bit terrified. The pilot project had kicked off early in the day on Saturday, with the students, teachers, Collective representatives and project mentors, myself excluded, meeting with a local business who was also participating. The business is going to permit the students to build them a new ecommerce website. The students met with the business for a couple of hours.

I wish I had been able to join them, but I was leading a group of WordPress enthusiasts in a discussion on Atomic Blocks for the Block Editor – a fab block plugin – at a meeting of the Philadelphia Area Computer Society in Willow Grove, PA.

I arrived at PSD about 1pm and was introduced to the group as one of the WordPress ‘experts’ who would be working along with them. As I introduced myself to the group, the ASL interpreter signed my comments for the students, the student leaders, and a couple of members of the PSD Board. It was a humbling experience. Watching the signing, experiencing the kids signing back, asking questions. They looked nervous too, but as soon as one of the students suggested that I looked very wise (thanks to my long white beard – that’s me in the picture over there), we had a little giggling, the ice was broken and we were off.

wise expert circled

Andy had prepared a program so that we could help the students build the new WordPress websites using an online IDE – codeanywhere.com – since the kids were going to be using Chromebooks for the project, or so we thought.

When we walked into the technology classroom we found about a dozen Dell laptops running Windows 7. UGH. All the connections to the internet were going to be via classroom wifi so on online development process may get a bit bogged down with everyone accessing the ‘net at the same time.

Let’s go with Plan B and have the students load up Local By Flywheel (LBF) and create the website. This will give them a feel for editing the websites in a local environment that they may be a little more comfortable with. Lunch was just about ready so while the students headed off to grab some pizza, Andy and I got the LBF download started. Oops. This many laptops downloading a 500 MB file is going to take some time. We left it running and headed off to lunch.

It turns out these laptops aren’t used regularly, which means they aren’t updated regularly. And that means that halfway into the download, while Andy and I are having a slice of pizza and getting to know the students a bit better, Windows decides its time to update itself and reboots automatically. Noooooooooo! UGH times 2.

There goes our downloads. We gotta start this all over again. This time we find a network cable and each in turn, connect the laptops to the one network port and complete the downloads. Whew. All done.

We then instruct the students to kick off the Local install. It’s moving along well, until . . .

Hmmm. Remember I said Windows 7? Turns out the included drivers on the Windows 7 box do not support the version of VirtualBox needed to run LBF. UGH3.

Plan C

Let’s go back to an online IDE and forget the whole LBF scenario for now.

poppy life smiling poop logo

Poopy.life to the rescue! Andy walked the kids through the initial setup; I became his mouse-man running the keyboard while he described what the students were to do. Together we worked with each student, and the translator, to help the students set up WordPress, update it to the latest release (5.0.3), and then load up the Twenty-Seventeen theme to work with the Customizer. We chose Twenty Seventeen since if offers a much better out of the box visual experience for new sites, and we needed to get something exciting and fun in front of these kids. Quickly.

It’s not like we didn’t already lose the room when the poppy.life icon filled the front of the room from the projector. Hearing-enabled or not, ‘poopy’ is always going to bring a smile and giggle to a kids face.

I worked with a couple of the students helping them to change the site name, the site tagline, tweak the colors of the fonts, all very easily handled in the Customizer. I had never thought of the Customizer as an ADA-focused tool, but in this environment, the users appeared to be right at home.

Mac vs PC? Still?

The proverbial Mac vs PC discussion came up, as I am a PC-to-the-core type of guy, having been at this stuff since the 70’s or so, and Andy, while a good 20 years my junior, has a definite tendency to the cooler Mac, as did almost all of the students. I had a conversation, via the interpreter, with one of the kids about my preferences and we left it agreeing to disagree.

I’ll have to say, working with a group of hearing-impared kids really made me think about what I was saying and how I was saying it so that it could be interpreted accurately. Did I mention that I know no ASL, at all. By the end of the day, I did learn the sign for clapping. One point for the old guy.

Time For Woo

We decided to have the students search for, download and install WooCommerce. After all, this was going to be an ecommerce site selling hard goods. Let’s do this.

Comparing the plugins to the apps on their phones enabled them to get the concept in terms they are comfortable with. We were able to get the plugin installed and activated. Working with the WooCommerce setup wizard, well, let’s say is wasn’t as smooth. Too many detail fields were required from the students which brought up the issues of whether or not to use their names and addresses, or the school address, what email address, did they have to be valid, and so on.

We did get through the setup and got to the point where the students were entering their first product. Anything they could think of. With varying degrees of success, they were able to see their product on the front end of the website.

Wrap Up

We were closing in on 4p and it was time to wrap up. Shrieen offered a heartwarming thank you to everyone in attendance and talked about the high level project plan. The students are going to work on the project with the expectation of showing the live site to the business owners sometime mid-MArch. Comcast will be assisting with that unveiling of the websites.

Andy and I are committed to meeting with the students virtually, using Skype or Google Hangouts, for 2 hours each Wednesday afternoon until launch .

This weekend, as I stood in the middle of the kitchen during the lunch break, I was amazed by the number of conversations that were taking place in the small room. These students were so animated, so engaged. Hands flying through the signing to each other, adults and kids alike. Hearing and non-hearing actively engaged.

These Kids Are Engaged

Little did I realize at that point, how engaged these students would be with the technology project. It was an experience like none I’ve ever had. These kids were eating up everything Andy and I were saying. They were asking us awesome questions, given this was their first experience with website.

While LBF was downloading, the first question that was thrown at us was ‘How does this compare to Wix?’. Andy and I looked at each other. Really, this is what they’re hitting us with first? How about something a little more debatable? Wow, this is going to be a tough crowd. They will push us, and hopefully, we will push them forward.

I’m already looking forward to the first Wednesday check-in call.

Stay tuned.

  • Setting up site on Local.
  • “Is this correct?”
  • “I can do this”.
  • Old wise guy rules.
WordCamp Lehigh Vally 2018

WordCamp Lehigh Vally 2018

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matt ryan ready to speak on security at wordcamp lehigh valley 2018

This weekend I had the opportunity to speak at the 3rd occasion of the WordCamp Lehigh Valley. My topic, WordPress Security, was directed to those new, or not-so-new, to managing or creating their own websites in WordPress. I have attended the two previous Lehigh Valley WordCamps, and the event is growing every year. It is organized and managed by good people who provide an exciting conference.

Below are a couple of tweets related to my presentation. Once the video of my talk is published on wordpress.tv I’ll update this post with the link.

 

Link to slides

 

Photo credit: WordCamp Lehigh Vally website – Carol Bell / cbell7153.

I’m In The Right Place

I’m In The Right Place

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I celebrated my birthday yesterday. Another one in the books. It was different somehow. Working as a freelancer, from a home office, gives me plenty of opportunity for quiet reflection, especially at this time of year when business activity seems to slow.

The development projects were all caught up, support issues had been dealt with for the moment, so I had time to read a few of the blogs I follow. There were a number of year-end wrap ups, and a few really good how-to posts. The year-end wraps caught most of my attention. You see, I am coming to the end of my first year as a full-time WordPress developer and small business owner.

In previous years I was able to look back and see how things went as a part-time freelancer. Those two years are marked with an asterisk (*), you know, the indicator to check the footnotes.   They had some other form of income, either from a part-time job, or most recently, from another full-time gig that ended abruptly with the Friday-end-of-day-can-you-stop-in-my-office-before-you-leave-im. “We’ve decided to go in a different direction….”. Oh, please, spare me the BS!

While the income as a freelance business owner has no-way come close to the income I earned in corporate America, the intangible benefits have far exceeded my expectations.

Visited my doctor this past week for my 6-month check-in. Blood pressure and that bad cholesterol stuff are both way down. First time in more than 7 years. Now THAT’s an accomplishment to be proud of. I think I can count that as some sort of money in the bank, right?

I categorize that as a symbol of one of the soft benefits of my new chapter. I’m more relaxed, I think, and I have slowed down. I like to think that decisions I make are more thought out and less knee-jerk. I’ve learned to step back from potentially tense situations (aka questionable communications with clients, friends, family) to add space for thinking.

I can’t control how things will turn out. I can’t change things that have occurred. I CAN affect how I react to things right now. I can live in this moment and be present  to what I am experiencing and how I react to it.

After all, isn’t that what it’s all about? Being present to the situation we find ourselves in, engaging with it, and making the next right decision on how to proceed with it.

I’m going through the process of looking back on my business year. I think that I have positively impacted a number of small businesses by building new business websites for them, or helping them to maintain their existing small business website. Revenue has definitely increased from the previous year; albeit a little short of where I had projected. Time to re-think marketing and prospecting activities.

I have met a number of awesome people this past year. Some I have been able to teach something to, but many more I have been able to learn from. I attended 5 WordCamps and 12 WordPress meetups. I made presentations three times at meetups and volunteered at the Philly WordCamp. Being the’local guy’ I even helped coordinate a multi-national gathering of #genesiswp folks at the inaugural WordCamp US in Philadelphia earlier this month. Now THAT was cool.

So, as long as I’m willing and able to learn something new, I think I’m in the right place. This place, this moment, right now.

Onward and upward.

WordPress 4.3 – Oh The Things You Can Do

WordPress 4.3 – Oh The Things You Can Do

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I upgraded this website today to the latest release of WordPress. That is version 4.3, code-named “Billie” after the famous jazz singer Billie Holiday. You can read the back story about the name and the rest of the new features here. It’s a cool read.

WordPress 4.3! Oh, the things you can do with this release…

It WILL increase your happiness. There’s so many reasons to upgrade to the new release, but the thing I’m most jazzed about are the updates that come to life in the post editing screen. Oh baby! I love keyboard shortcuts. I have from my early days of MS-DOS (yes, I did say MS-DOS, you do the math). I always go to the keyboard shortcuts whenever I get a new app to use. I’m so much more efficient when I can rely on the keyboard, as opposed to the mouse/touchscreen/trackpad/<insert fav GUI device here>, when trying to do almost anything on the PC.  Maybe it’s different on a MAC, but I don’t know; I live in the Windows world.

Back to WP 4.3 … the content editor, that’s the big empty box you usually see when you are adding a new page or post, now has really cool SHORT, shortcuts, that work, and are so helpful.

Cool Heading Style Shortcuts

Content Editor Style SelectorNo more clicking up to that ”Paragraph’ box to select the heading I want to use.  The heading for this paragraph … I just kept typing to add it. Finished the previous paragraph, hit “Enter” followed by two “#”, the words “Cool ….” and, voila, it turned into a Heading 2 format style.  Be still my twitching fingers. Sorry “Anker Vertical Mouse”. We’ll being seeing less of each other from now on. You want it to be Heading 1 style … you know … the biggest one that looks great for top of page headings. Just hit one # and keep typing. You have a Heading 1 style.  Works for three, four, five or 6 # in a row. All the heading styles, literally at your fingertips.

Lists, Lists and More Lists

I am a list lover. I use Evernote for everything. Lots and lots of lists in Evernote. Constantly hitting the Ctrl + Shift + B sequence to make bullet lists. I missed that when writing in WordPress. I could copy my EN list into WP, but, well you’ve seen what happens to formatted text when you drop it in to the content editor. It always seems  a frustrating game of chance for me. I never know what I’m going to get and it always involves deleting end of line characters, adding a new “Enter” character, rinse and repeat.

But now, in WordPress 4.3, I can keep writing. Start that line with a “-“, and as you type through to the end of line, “YES”, a bullet list item appears! Life is good. Simplicity flows over and around me. I hear the sound of ocean waves caressing the beach, so zen-like. Okay, maybe it’s not THAT great, but it is pretty damn cool.

Blockquotes Too

I’ll be honest. I don’t do much with blockquotes. The first three, yes three, websites I put up for clients had blockquotes interspersed in the content pages to emphasize, well, quotes.  Know what? During the site acceptance review, ALL three of the clients came back telling me I had a typo in all the quotes. No right quotation mark. It’s indented. Looks out-of-place.

Really?

So that’s why I stay away from them unless the client SPECIFICALLY SAID THEY WANTED IT.

But when I do get to use them, starting the block of text with a ‘>’ is just about as cool as sliced bread. Auto-formatted just like my style sheet says. No selecting, clicking, adding new lines. Just keep typing and it appears!

WordPress 4.3 Keyboard Shortcut Help ButtonHit the little ? button in the editor menu bar to get the full listing of shortcuts. I’m sure you will learn something new.

More Changes Under The Hood

There’s quite a bit more stuff in there too. Easy to add site icons and favicons. I guess I don’t have to use that custom code snippet any more. Clients can now change that at will. An easy way to add menu items right from the Customizer. While I haven’t’ used it much yet, I do anticipate it streamlining my website setup workflow. And that is a good thing.

I think one of the most important under the cover items is the update that forces strong passwords. I am a true believer in strong passwords. My LastPass vault has just over 500 unique passwords in it, all 12 characters or longer, in the most obtuse arraignments ever. I could never remember them all, or even 2 of them for that matter. A password manager is a must. Forcing users to use strong passwords will be an inconvenience, for a while, until they figure out how to work with it. It is just one of those things you need to deal with.

Good Overview

wpbeginner.com did a great overview of this update, and broke it all down to very simple ideas for implementation. Go check out their blog post on what’s new with WordPress 4.3.

I’ll be updating the rest of my sites, and client sites, over the next few days. Can’t say enough good stuff about this.

Need Some Help

Cap Web Solutions, my alter-ego, can help you update your WordPress website to this latest release. Reach out, even if you just have some questions, they/we/I can help.

Until next time.

All the best.

WordPress Maintenance Release 4.2.3

WordPress Maintenance Release 4.2.3

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It was announced on wordpress.org on July 23 that version 4.2.3 of WordPress was released. Being a point release, in most instances this update will be automatically applied to your site. However, if you have automatic point release updates turned off, be sure to manually apply this update. The wordpress.org post provides instructions for the process.

It is a security release addressing problems in WordPress versions 4.2.2 and earlier where a cross-site scripting vulnerability was uncovered. This XSS vulnerability, could allow users with the Contributor or Author role to compromise a site.

Here is a link to the post on WordPress.org.

WP Tavern, one of my favorite go-to sources for breaking news in the world of WordPress, offers another great perspective on this release by Sarah Gooding. Check out her post here.