DCP Partners

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WordCamp OC

I'm attending WordCamp Orange County 2011 I’ve just completed registration for WordCamp O.C. – which will be held at Chapman University in Orange, CA on May 14th.  WordCamp is a day-long gathering of WordPress designers, developers, integrators, bloggers, and devotees – where ideas, methods, and all sorts of creative things are discussed.  I attended the WordCamp in LA last fall, which proved to be invaluable for me.

If you’re in SoCal and have any interest in developing on the WordPress open-source CMS platform – you should try to attend. Time to get your geek on.

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This isn’t your father’s WordPress

It wasn’t all that long ago that I looked at WordPress as a service for those that had lots of spare time on their hands and whiled-away the hours transcribing their every thought into their blogs. I suspect that same opinion was held by ‘serious’ content management system (CMS) users and developers. When I re-launched the DCP news-site about 5 years ago, we used Joomla – which was (and still is) one of the better-supported CMSs around.

While Joomla, Drupal and others are still fine CMSs – which we develop around and support (to varying degrees) … WordPress has become my de-facto standard when developing new CMS sites. This is especially true when my client is more interested in running their business and less interested in managing their CMS. Recent advances in the WordPress foundation have made it easier for developers to extend and ‘hook’ into the core of the system … resulting in an explosion of new plugins that provide enhancements to the WordPress core feature-set. The add-on functionality that the “Pods” plugin provides in the way of customized database applications opens the door to sophisticated WordPress-based applications. (More on the upcoming Pods 2.0 here)

WordPress 3.1 was released this week and, while I’ve been running the release candidates from RC3 forward, I’m excited about the possibilities I see for this system.  We’re able to produce high-quality, easy-to-use, easier-to-maintain solutions for our clients in less time – resulting in better productivity and value for everyone.

If you’re interested in upgrading your present static website to a client-driven CMS-based site – let’s talk about your application.  We’re finding that there are few things we can’t do with this platform.

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CMS for ASP.NET

While the vast majority of my time is spent in the LINUX and OS/X world, I recognize that there’s a huge number of sites that use Microsoft IIS and ASP.NET for their web delivery platform. One of the things I’ve found missing for the IIS/ASP.NET environment has been a flexible, cost-effective, and reliable Content Management System (CMS) … with the emphasis on COST-EFFECTIVE. Many of these systems have placed themselves out of the reach of most small businesses.

I believe we’ve found an application that fills that hole and provides a strong, flexible package that can serve the needs of those users that *must* use IIS/ASP.NET (for one reason or another). We’re evaluating the package now and will let you know more about it here, once we’re satisfied.

Stay tuned ….

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Tag It!

One of the more interesting things I’ve seen from Microsoft recently is the Microsoft Tag technology – which they claim will “Connect Real Life and the Digital World”.  Its actually a pretty cool type of ‘bar code’ that can be easily read by your mobile phone – from a computer display, hard copy, photo, or any other medium-resolution display device.  Once you’ve downloaded the (free) Tag Reader application to your mobile device – simply point the phone’s camera at the tag and you’ll have instant access to the website, text file, or vCard (contact information) associated with the tag.

While the technology is quite young and its impossible to predict how ubiquitous these tags will become …. the concept is interesting and the cost is nearly nothing to implement

.  I’ve recently implemented a tag for a client which we hope will drive traffic to a new mobile portal for their organization’s site.   There isn’t enough data yet to know if its working – but we’ll keep a close eye on the stats to see if this is something to pursue further.

You can download the Microsoft Tag Reader application by browsing to http://gettag.mobi on your mobile phone browser.   Its available for most ‘smart’ phones for free.   Once you’ve downloaded and installed the app – give our Pacific Crest Mobile tag a try.  I’ll be interested in your feedback.

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WordCamp L.A.

I’ve just returned from WordCamp L.A. – which was a day-long conference for WordPress developers, administrators, and users.  It was a great opportunity to network with a wide audience of WordPress professionals – all focused on getting the most out of this powerful content management system.

We learned quite a few new tricks … all of-which I’m itching to try out in the sandbox server.  The most exciting news from the conference is that WordPress is very-much alive – with lots of active development going on and a strong developer community that is finding ways to collaborate and make the WP foundation even more powerful.

This isn’t your grandfather’s WordPress people!

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iPhone 3G and iOS4

If you’re iPhone 3G user like me that hasn’t jumped on the opportunity to upgrade your iPhone to the latest model, but have taken advantage of the free iOS4 upgrade …. you’ve probably noticed that your performance has taken a serious hit. There are a couple of things you can do that may help keep things running:

  • Do a “hard restart” of the device by pressing the ‘Power’ and ‘Home’ buttons at the same time, until you see the Apple logo.  Let the phone complete the boot process – then do it again, to reboot a second time.  This reboot process will clear memory, without removing your content and applications.
  • Close Safari windows that are open.  Each Safari window consumes memory, which is not released until you close ALL windows by pressing the red ‘X’ in the upper left corner of the window, then “Done”.  Press the ‘Home’ button to close Safari and return to the main screen.
  • Its always a good idea to ensure that your iPhone has some workspace available.  Remove applications and content (movies, music, etc) that are not being used.

I did this bit of housekeeping and found that my 3G iPhone performed much better with iOS4.