Rinsefirst

Ever since I had window’s vista, I felt that I was out of luck when it came to computer games. Every game I installed would start up, show the mouse for half a second (with a black screen), then minimize. If I tried to un-minimize, the game would just go through the same cycle… Making it impossible to play the game.

It started with monopoly from McDonalds, and then continued with World of Warcraft, Neverwinter Nights, Sim City 4, etc.

I started reading the forums on various sites, and I did find 1 solution that always worked: If the game had a windowed mode, use it. So that’s what I did for the games that had it… But for those games that didn’t, I was still feeling screwed.

Well today, I found a more solution that seems to work in all cases on my stupid windows vista machine.

It seems, if I disable my second monitor, and undock/close pidgin (yes, I have to do both from what I can tell) the game works fine. It seems the docked pidgin likes to kick me out of the game, as does the second monitor. Very strange problem.. but hey, at least now I can play me some Sim City 4 (or more liking Neverwinter Nights).

I’ve never actually taken the time to write my own pluging for wordpress. I have thought about it a few times, but I’ve never had the need to.

See wordpress uses one of my favorite rewrite rules that checks to see if a file exists, and if it does, it acknowledges the fact it does, and doesn’t try to take over. So in the past, when I needed something customized, I would simply create a php file of my own, and bypass wordpress all together. It the down and dirty solution to adding pages to a site without needing to integrate it with wordpress. So the need for writing a plugin has never really been there.

Well today, I decided that some code I was writing deserved to be made into a plugin. I’m presently coding up the module for my wedding website that will allow people to RSVP. There is probably already a module out there for doing this kind of thing, but I didn’t find one in the 5 minutes I looked for one that could do everything I wanted…

That said, it’s time to get started. I’m hoping to document the process here in a series of blog posts (if I don’t get to lazy). The code will most likely be finished within an hour or two of this blog post, but my lessons probably won’t be online for awhile longer (I’ll delay each post as I write it to provide daily content for the blog… After all, no one wants to read this stuff all at once right?)

So let’s begin… Hello world time!

Getting Started

It’s really easy to get Wordpress to recognize that you have a plugin you want it to play with. You simpy have to put a file with some of the “right” information, into the right folder… So let’s do it. Here it is laid down in step by step instructions.

1. Create a php file. Name it something resonable and make sure it ends with .php.
2. At the start of that file, insert the following lines of code, modifying it with your details (obviously):
   
< ?php
/*
Plugin Name: OurVows RSVP
Plugin URI: http://www.ourvows.net
Description: A Private Plugin for RSVPing on our wedding website
Version: .50
Author: Justin Gehring
Author URI: http://www.rinsefirst.com/
*/

   
3. Save and upload the php file to your “wp-content/plugins/” folder
4. Open up web browser and load up your wordpress admin panel.
5. Goto the “Plugins” section of the Wordpress admin panel. There you should see a line for your newly created plugin that looks like this:
   

Congratulations! You just created your first Wordpress plugin. It does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! But hey, at least its in the list of plugin’s right. Next post, we’ll talk about how you actually go about getting it to display information to the page.

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly an a decision can be made without thinking it all the way through… For example… It’s not all that uncommon for me to do something for a client (against my advice), and then have that client realize a day later that they hadn’t listened to what I said was going to be a problem, and sure enough, now need it undone. People lose focus on who they are trying to serve to quickly, and very quickly begin serving themselves.

Case in point:  Creative.

If you haven’t heard the story… Creative came down hard on one of it’s forum members for distributing drivers he created/modified to improve the usability of Creative’s sound cards in Vista. Basically, he figured out a way to re-enable all the features that were available in XP that were not yet available in the Vista drivers… And to put it a little more in perspective… Creative has done next to nothing to get these features back into Vista (Their vista driver has been crap for well over a year now). In any case… When they came down on the guy, and he was forced to pull the driver, the backlash from the community was huge.

In less than 3 days, the news about what Creative had done hit Slashdot, Engadget, Fark, and a dozen other technology blogs. Their forums now have almost 1000 messages telling Creative how “dissappointed” they are in Creative’s decision. Talk about negative press…. In fact, now the people are starting to organize to sue Creative for false advertising the features available in Vista.

Creative has already started the spin control by posting a forum message saying they plan on reversing their decision.. However, it’s to late… With a full weekend of minimal action, they’ve done enough damage to their name with one stupid decision, that there going to have to do something more than just “reversing” the decision to make this right with their customers.

In any case, if your ever in business, always try to remember that the customers really do come first… Maybe not singular, but if you have 1000’s of customers with the same problem, it really is in your best interest to not do something that hurts all of them, and would be much better to help them instead.

Just got this in my email after doing 3 months of nothing but running a very tiny computer application:

Thank you for participating in the Windows Feedback Program! 

This message is to notify you that your 3 months participation term has completed, and we are getting ready to ship your product.  Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery.  You will receive another email from us when shipments have gone out.

Your product selection:

Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007

Woot! Free Full Version of Microsoft Office 2007…

That is all!

With hosting and a domain name out of the way, I’m now actually moving on to building the blog.

To do this, I am going to be using Wordpress’s free blogging software. It’s the same software that is powering rinsefirst, ourvows, shatteredcube, bananamonkey, and graceified at this point. It’s quick, it’s painless, and best of all, it’s open source.

In most cases, I would have to go the long way, which is to say: I would have to download wordpress from the wordpress site, and then proceed to follow it’s installation instructions to get it all online. The whole process takes about 30 minutes that way. However, I’m a sucker for speed and time savers… So like all good hosts, Westhost, has a 1-click install of wordpress. Simply tell it what you want your username and password to be and Wha-la the default wordpress install is setup.

So depending on when you read this, you can now go see my fresh install of wordpress over at the new domain by clicking here: http://www.websolguy.com/. There isn’t much to look at (unless your reading this post and the site has already been live a month), but hey, odds are your reading it now…

Hey doesn’t it look a lot like Shatteredcube? hmmm….

Blogging To The Money Status:

• Non-Time Cost So Far: $127.03
  • .com Domain from www.GoDaddy.com
    with promo code Oyh3 to get it for 7.15
  • Westhost webhosting for a year (9.99/month for 12 months): $119.88
• Amount Made: $0.00
• Net: -$7.15

Every good blog needs a host.

There are plenty of options here, each with it’s own upsides and downsides.

For example, I could go with a “hosted” blog solution… You know, something that anyone can sign up for free of charge. Something like Wordpress.com or Blogger.com. In theory this would be fine, except, most of the “free” blog hosting sites are out to monetize your site on their behalf… Thereby, not allowing you to make money. That said, that doesn’t seem like the right solution for me… Instead, I’m going to go the self hosted route, and because I must play by my own spending rules, I will put down the total I paid and not just how much it would cost me for this month (because the fact of the matter is, this is going to be a longer experiment than a month).

In any case, here’s what I did. I went with the hosting company I have been recommending to my clients ever since the previous host I had been recommending went south. Their name: Westhost. You can find them here:
http://affiliates.westhost.com/z/55/CD970/

They are a VPS solution, they can support multiple sites, and they allow me to recompile php to my hearts content. They also have 1-click installs of Wordpress which should save me a little bit of time in getting going with the site… But more on Wordpress later.

In any case, I opened my hosting account, and have my domain from Godaddy successfully pointed at Westhost (oh, if your doing this yourself, Westhost’s 9.99/month package comes with a free domain, so you can skip over the Godaddy step if you would like).  Now on to building the site. C’ya All tomorrow!

Blogging To The Money Status:

• Non-Time Cost So Far: $127.03
  • .com Domain from www.GoDaddy.com
    with promo code Oyh3 to get it for 7.15
  • Westhost webhosting for a year (9.99/month for 12 months): $119.88
• Amount Made: $0.00
• Net: -$7.15