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» Thursday Dailies

• Adobe has announced that they are going to have a screencast showcasing the upcoming Creative Suite 4 on the 23rd September. It’s a free signup so Signup Now!
   
• If you’re like me and like WordPress and install it for a lot of clients, you will be interesting in this article over at WP-Candy on Five Ways to Familiarize Clients with WordPress. It might be a pretty simple content management system but can look very daunting at a first look. The ideas are really good and will work for anyone who install WordPress for clients.
   
• I’ve you’re at Photoshop World right now in Las Vegas, you are probably right in the opening keynote and viewing something cool. Hopefully all of us who can’t be there will hear about some of the cool things really soon and as soon as I do, I’ll post the stuff right up here.
   
• Yesterday when I posted about my ten favorites iPhone apps and I wrote about some bugs in Homeworkr. Now after I get an email from the creator of the app asking about the bugs so that he could fix them. I just wanted to acknowledge that they are keen on hearing from you if you have any bugs or feature requests for the app.

That’s it for now, hopefully I’ll be able to post up some Photoshop World news later.

» First September News

 

Today is the beginning of the autumn with September 1st arriving. For all of you US readers, have a great extended weekend with Labor Day today, for all others like me who are in countries where this is a normal Monday, have a great Monday! Here are the news:

• Since we are coming into a new month you might want a new wallpaper calendar. You can find them at a lot of places and in the bonus podcast episode for today, I show you how to create one of your own in Photoshop! I like the ones that David duChemin releases when it comes to photography and for design — there are none better than the ones that Smashing Magazine is putting up.
   
• It’s Photoshop World week this week which is going to mean that there’ll be cool things! For those of you fortunate people that will be able to go there. Unfortunately I’m not going to be there this year either but I’ll be blogging about the goodness that is coming from there of course.
   
• There’s a cool Adobe AIR app being written right now which will when finished with testing be undoubtedly great! It’s an app that allows you to moderate your WordPress comments from your dashboard. The app is currently in closed beta stages but here’s a sneak peak.
   
• The day wouldn’t be complete without a Photography tip from the Strobist. It’s on how to use a flash creatively to light up a forest shoot.Check it out, it’ll not only show you a good technique, but also show you some great works of art.

» Using WordPress as content management system

WordPress is not just a blogging platform even though many do seem to think so. In fact there are a lot more sites that are powered using WordPress than you’d initially think, some that you’d never even imagine being WordPress sites. The fact is that using WordPress as a CMS system as not as hard at all as it’s equipped (along with plugins) to handle it really well.

» Tuesday News Stuff

Here’s what’s up this Tuesday:

• I’m going to start today by apologizing for the podcast being late. I had some archiving troubles on the podcast host site and thus I couldn’t upload any new episode (it is going to be fixed by tomorrow though). Look for a new episode coming tomorrow!
   
• Over at Copyblogger they ran a very interesting article called Are you Trustworthy today. It’s a pretty good article that talks about gaining your readers trust which is vital to any blogger who are looking to survive. A good read.
   
• WP Candy has a lot of different goodies and articles about WordPress and the latest today is about Frameworks, Child Themes, Filters and Hooks. It’s a pretty extensive article but it brings up a lot of good things and tips when designing for WordPress and how you can be helped using certain elements using the Thematic framework.
   
•  The iPhone has been out for a bit now and although there are quite a lot of applications in the business category of the AppStore, there are no big names released yet. Over at CIO.com they speculate in why.

Finally before we end for this news post I want to make a shout out to a buddy, Dave (known to some as PhotoshopDB). He and his wife had a very cute little baby this weekend! Congratulations guys!

» It’s the Monday news!

Here’s the Monday news (apart from that schools back again for me):

• First off WordPress 2.6.1 was released at the end of last week. It’s mainly a bug fix update but is recommended nonetheless for all users. Get it from WordPress.org!
   
• Secondly, I know my episode of the podcast is just a little bit late right now. I’m going to record the episode right after this blog post is finished and then post it up for y’all! Trying my best to get it up tonight!
   
• It’s PhotoWalk week! It’s this Saturday the 23rd August. The Scott Kelby Worldwide PhotoWalk! I’m hosting one here in beautiful Gothenburg, Sweden and well, all I can say is that it’s coming up really quickly, so, there are still a few spots left over here last time I looked. If any of you reading this are going to my walk, then you should look out for an email tomorrow with contact information and more detailed location info. Please check your emails for that soon.
   
• Over at WP-Candy today they had a ncie article talking with the subject, "Does WordPress Scare your clients?". It was a very interesting read and is very true indeed. It’s well worth the time to read through.
   
• As a final note, I hate spam. They are filling up more than usual right now and even though I’ve got a good spam filter, they get in the junk mail which gets large and emptied very frequently. SPAM sucks and doesn’t do anyone any good!

That’s it for today!

» Monday Stuff

It’s another Monday, it’s another start of the week. I have a lot of things to share with you this week and It’s gonna be a really cool week. One of them is of course the artist interview as every week (and I’m not yet going to give away who it is). I’ve also got an article or two planned as well as some new tutorials! But let’s get started with some Monday Stuff!

• I do a lot of work with the WordPress publishing system and I really do like it. Obviously there are things I like to see in it, but overall it’s really really good and powerful. I do recommend it as a good and light cms + blog system. However it can be a daunting task to learn to customize any new script which is why I’m going to send you over to a series called Designing for WordPress by Chris Coyier at CSS-Tricks!
   
• Since I’m going to be working with moving computers around a lot today I’m going to give you a tip or two there to make it easier. They may seem obvious, but so many don’t practise it. Tidy the cables up. Especially good in small areas where it’s much nicer to have some cable foldings to put them in to minimise mess and possible outage. Also, if you’re opening the computer to do any replacement, make sure to both pull out the plug and set the switch to 0. Also use a special bracelet to ground yourself. 
   
• Finally, I’m going to leave you with a podcast or two today. First off, go and check out my Creative Suite Tips and Tricks podcast for tutorials, weekly, on the entire creative suite. Then if you are a photographer, go and check out the Image Doctors from the Nikonians Talk Radio. 

» Blogging about mobile WordPress blogging

I know, I know. It is a somewhat corny blog title but that’s the best I could do at this hour. So anyway, I wrote two blog posts earlier today. One from the WordPress native iPhone App and one from the mobile WPhone plugin for WordPress. I had my complaints on the app that it can’t do pages and comments but while working with both for a while today and discussing it with Terry White, I’ve found my way which I think I’ll be using them.

There is just no better way right now to make blog posts on the iPhone than from the native app itself. It can post pictures (sadly you can’t choose where in the post they appear) and you can manage the posts far more easily. Sadly you can’t input hyperlinks or any text formatting in either of them which is a bummer.

The interface of the mobile plugin is really good for being a plugin and it is the best solution for editing comments, pages and users. You know, the extra bit on your blog. However the posting of posts is just noway near the advanced (under the circumstances yes) way the app does it. Now, I’m not saying there is not room for improvement. I like many want links, text formatting and a lot more. Yet I feel the app has a more positive feel to it and is the future for the editing.

Right now though, I can see myself sticking with both. I’m definitely going to use the app for all blog posts I do and if I need to do anything else, the mobile version of the control panel is a good step in the right direction and something easy to use for that. It just takes a little reassessment of what I thought would be in it to see that it is really good. I thought at least that comments would be there though and it is definitely (along with formatting) something that could well make use in the app.

» Blogging from the iPhone 2

As another way of blogging from the iPhone, we have the plugin called WPhone. Sure it can’t do hyperlinks (neither can the app) but it has the benefit of being able to do more. For example you can write pages and manage comments and plugins from the interface. As if that wasn’t it, being safari and web based, you can just turn it around and you will get the vertical keyboard that you just can’t in the app that makes typing fly. A bummer though is that you can’t get any images…

Granted neither is this one perfect by I don’t know yet which one I like the most…

» Blogging from the iPhone 1

So, this is the first blog post that I am making from my iPhone. This post is using the WordPress app now available in the app store.

I don’t fancy this app that much as I had expected too because it just let’s me post posts and not pages or see comments etc.

I’m doing this as a comparative review between this app and a free (which this also is) plugin that gives a full interface. Next post from that…

» My top 5 list of WordPress Plugins

There are quite a few plugins that this site couldn’t live without and that I’m really glad exist. I’m going to share my top list of WordPress plugins, big or small doesn’t matter here so even if they do just one little thing, it might be a thing that I really like and makes running the site much easier.

cformsII
This is really one of these big and glorious plugins that does make your life easier as well. cforms is the plugin powering the contact form on the site and it is really a truly amazing free plugin. It lets you manage the forms you need (how many you need) and with ease style them and insert more complex features.

All in One SEO Pack
This plugin is the reciept for google sucess. I’m really serious. If you have a WordPress blog and you want more control over description and keywords on your post, this one is for you.

StatPress
The master of statistics on your blog I really say this is. StatPress collects visitor information including all the detailed fun stuff you’d want to see as well as the simple visitor and referrer stats. Just choose the way you want to view it, StatPress collects it all for you in any case!

Plugin Central
This is a really different but cool plugin. It lets you quickly and easily install plugins from your dashboard without needing to download files to your computer and upload through FTP. It’s a really fast way to install new plugins. I just wish it had the ability to remove them also if needed.

Dean’s FCKEditor for WordPress
This plugin replaces the default WordPress editor with the lot more advanced FCK Editor! It works like a charm and makes posting a lot more feature rich.