Category Archives: Wordpress

Finished The 100 Days Of Code Working On WordPress Stuff Now.

So I finished the 100 days of code challenge. I really learned a lot! Feeling really strong with my HTML5 and CSS3 still have a ways to go with my JavaScript knowledge. Still, getting around JavaScript pretty well now.

I decided to spend the next two months working on WordPress and OpenCart stuff. I created a custom theme using a YouTube tutorial. That was a learning experience. I really liked the way the design came out and it is exactly what I wanted for the site. I wanted a blog section and a photo gallery section and that was exactly what I created.

The Motorcycle Dude

Here is the Youtube video I used to create the WordPress theme.

I’m now experimenting with WordPress CSS styling and I’ll be looking into Elementor for designing WordPress websites.

New Banner & Background.

I’ll be doing some much needed work to the entire site soon. Doing the 100 Days of Code on Twitter I realized just how dated my design was. I now hate the old design so much, that I’m taking it down while I create a new one! I also thought it was time update the winter theme of the blog.

This is temporary. I was playing around with gIMP and it just felt sort of Easter timey, springy to me. I’ll probably change this up again shortly after Easter. I like the header graphic a lot. The background was just a quick edit in gIMP to try and match the header graphic.

I really like the way the header graphic came out. I wasn’t really trying for this, but it just sort of happened. I like when projects happen by accident sometimes.

This will probably be real temporary. I just wanted something to match the header. Did this real quick, I’ll have to play around with backgrounds when I have some more time.

May News Letter

Like the spring weather here in Western New York, I’m getting a late start on the May news letter and monthly update. Things have been real busy around here, and I’ve started building a portfolio, and cleaning up some of my blogs and designs.

First things first, I’d love to explain the current theme of the blog. I haven’t gone soft, I’m simply trying to bust out of my comfort zone. Being a d00d many of my designs have a darker theme, and also a more manly feel to them. I thought for spring I would try to force myself out of my comfort zone and create something with a softer more feminine feel to it. Thus we have pinkish purple flowers, with a floral theme. I may have went a bit overboard but it’s my first attempt at this type of designing. I’m going to be changing it up in June with a more summery theme that I haven’t really decided on yet. However, for the next several months I am going to be focusing on getting out of the comfort zone.

I’ve been adding blogs to my portfolio. Currently, I’m maintaining 4 on Blogger, 2 using WordPress, and I’ve been playing around on Tumblr. I don’t really know what to think about Tumblr, but with Yahoo purchasing the company earlier this year I think it’s going to be an up and coming platform in the future. For that reason I’ve been giving it a little bit more attention than I believe it really deserves. Currently here’s what my blogging portfolio looks like. If your bored and any of these topics interest you check em out.

Blogger Blogspot Blogs

Maintained for clients :
Helene’s Mostly Jewelry – Jewelry Blog

Hobby blogs by me :
Notes On Using Linux
My Amateur Photo
Mi Palabra Del Dia

WordPress Blogs

The Bitcoin Blog – Whole Site Currently Under Development.
The Design Blog – This blog that your currently reading.

Tumblr Blogs

Because Tumblr is a really different type of blogging service, I’ve been using it to mirror some of my current blogs. I try to post different information but also link the post from my other blogs to it. This has proven very effective in traffic generation. I think Tumblr really falls somewhere between social networking, or maybe social blogging. It’s a very different platform then the other services available. For example, users really can’t comment, only share posts. I’m going to be doing some more posts about blogging this month. I’ll be sure to add more information on Tumblr. For now here are the blog mirrors.

New Aeon Design – Sort of a mirror to this blog.
Mi Palabra Del Dia – Mirror to my learn Spanish blog on Blogger.

Staying with the busting out of my comfort zone theme. I tried my hand at a retro redesign. This was a really fun project for a customers news letter. I learned a lot with the design, and on my next attempt I’ll be changing more than a couple things, but I had fun designing it and the customer was happy.

The concept is to take some old public domain ad stock and recreate the design. I found the above image, cleaned it up a bit, added some text with a basic font to maintain the old style theme. I went with a bold sans-serif and some classic script for the business name. In the future I’d like to maybe add an additional font and make the business name more pronounced. The customer however loved it and that’s really all that matters.

So, that’s what I’ve been working on over here at New Aeon Design. This month, expect some posts about blogging and blog design. I plan to change up a bunch of stuff on the Blogger blogs, and I’d also like to talk a little about WordPress. You can also look forward to some social networking posts, tips, tricks, and what I’ve discovered.

With that said, thanks for checking out my blog portfolio, thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone following members, rss, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook (Just started nobody following yet, you could be the first !), Pinterest, and G+. Feel free to comment and ttys ! SEE YA !

Add A Twitter Feed To Your Blog Or Website.

I wanted to make my blogs, and websites a little more interactive, and also give people another way to interact with and or contact me. I decided on creating a twitter widget to put in the sidebars of my blogs, and also add to the front page of the website. The process was surprisingly easy. Here’s what you do.

If you don’t have a twitter account you want to go to twitter.com and create an account. O.K. we’ve got our account set up, now go to https://twitter.com/settings/widgets . If you’re not logged into your account, twitter will ask for your username and password and then it should open to a page that has a box that say widgets with a radio button that says “Create New”. Click on create new, and the next page that opens will be the configuration page. Put your @twiiterUserName where it asks for it, and then configure it. If you want replies to show up in your time line then uncheck that box, click whether you want your photo’s to auto-expand or not, adjust your height, theme color, enter your link color hex code or stick with the default, and click create widget. Thats it your done, when the next page loads, cut and paste the code into your blog or website and you’ll have a cool twitter feed, posting all of your updates in real time.

I placed the twitter feed on my Tumblr blog in the sidebar. It’s a custom theme I created so, you’ll have to read the Tumblr documentation to install it in yours. For Tumblr I basically just created another side box and pasted the code into it.

On my website, I did some rewriting of my css to make it responsive to both browsers and phone screens, and using the @media code the widget will even be omitted from smaller displays so the page still displays properly in most devices.

On this wordpress blog, using the 2012 theme, I just clicked on appearance, widgets, dragged a text box over to my sidebar, and pasted the code in the text box. It really couldn’t of been any simpler with wordpress and this is one of the reasons I’m really glad I decided to give WordPress a try. Between the website, Tumblr, and this WordPress blog, WordPress was hands down the easiest to install the widget in !

If you want to get a bit crazy with this project and really customize the heck out of the timeline and make it your own, you can check out the developers page here.

This was a really, easy, fun project, and I think it’s a great way to add a little interactivity to your blog or website. Any questions, please feel free to comment, or tweet it from the side bar. Thanks for reading and good luck !

Getting With The Winter Season

I wanted to do this way before the Winter Solstice but I just didn’t have time. The holiday season always gets hectic around here, and I just didn’t have time to blog, or even notice that the blog still had an autumn motif. Well, better late than never ! The Design Blog is now decorated for the winter months.

The snowflake tile was created in Gimp 2.8 as was the header graphic. The image for the header graphic was taken at a local park. I should of spent a little more time post processing and getting the snow a bit whiter but I didn’t. If it was for a customer I probably would of spent a little more time on it.

The cute little snowman rss icon was found here.

Feel free to use the snowflake tile for any of your design needs. If you use it and like it, although it’s not necessary a link back would be appreciated. I love leaving web freebies for you guys, and hope the links and free graphics help in your design work. Thanks for checking out The Design Blog.