Hello, my name is Ninja
Awesome T from Goodie Two Sleeves.
Testing out my theme-switching Wordpress plugin
I’m working on a Wordpress plugin that allows you to switch themes on a per-post or per-page basis. That’s why this page looks different, I’m trying the plugin out here before releasing it.
The idea is that you upload a new theme into the usual Wordpress theme directory. You can use this theme for a single Post, a single Page or more of either. You specify which Posts/Pages are to use a theme other than the WP default by using a Custom Field. All you have to do is enter the theme’s name in the Custom Field value and the theme of that name will be used for the Post/Page it’s entered on.
I’m fairly sure there will be something like this out there already but when I tried to find a theme switcher all I could find was plugins that switched the whole theme.
From now on I’m just doing it
One of my goals for 2010 is to just do it. I released Squareleaf this year and it taught me a few things:
- It doesn’t pay to be a perfectionist – All websites have bugs, you just haven’t found them yet. A few were found in Squareleaf in the first few weeks, I was disappointed, and while it may have driven away some potential sign-ups it was ultimately a good thing. I got emailed by people to tell me what was going wrong and this meant they actually gave a shit enough to send an email. Cool. If I was still looking for perfection with Squareleaf it would still not be released. As it is, it’s out there with a couple of bug fixes and some new features, 400+ users and some good suggestions from them for new features.
- Release early and release often – Get it out there. See what people think, get feedback from people who will use it. See if you have an audience and how big it is going to be. Stop worrying about the details – most of the time people don’t care.
- The hardest step is the first one – The biggest hurdle is releasing something for the first time. Is it going to be shit? Will people hate it? I was bricking it when I released Squareleaf and emailed some friends and colleagues to ask them to check it out. It’s better to try and to fail than to not try at all.
So, from now on I’m not going to waste time worrying about perfecting the small details. I’m not going waste time wondering if an idea will work – if an idea for an app/product/service/whatever doesn’t require any serious time or money investment then I’m just going for it. Suck it and see.
I released two apps last year and carried on my two blogs. In 2010 I want to be putting out a lot more than that.
There’s always so many reasons not to do something – next year, forget the reasons and just do it.
Squareleaf gets different text sizes and remembers password
I’ve made a couple of changes to Squareleaf.
It now lets you create notes with different text sizes. Useful for emphasising your really important notes.
I’ve also added a “I’ve forgot my password” option on the Login page. Something I totally forgot about in the first release and a few people have mentioned it.
Squareleaf is a simple and intuitive virtual whiteboard, complete with all the sticky notes you’ll ever need. Unlike the real thing, our notes don’t fall off all of the time.
How much search engine traffic is just bookmarking?
I was thinking the other day about the types of searches I do in search-engines. Even though I have a lot of bookmarks saved in Firefox I still use Google to go to a lot of sites even when I know the URL.
If I want to go to Amazon.co.uk or Play.com, I won’t type the URL in I’ll just type “Amazon” or “Play” into Google and then click on the top result, which I know is the one I want without even looking because I’ve done this search hundreds of times before.
Now, I guess you’d say I was a Firefox power-user – I know how to install plugins and extensions, I use Ubiquity, I use Greasemonkey and I use shortcuts. And still I don’t use it properly and I abuse Google because I’m too lazy to type full URLs.
So what about non-techy users? I’ve watched my Wife browsing and she does this too. Even though I’ve put toolbar bookmarks for Facebook and HSBC on for her, she’ll still Google them. She’ll even click on an Adwords advert to get to a site, that’s not only a waste of search-engine’s time, it’s also costing someone some money. The amount of search-engine traffic that is just bookmarking must be huge.
How could browsers stop this from happening? Google Chrome has the New Tab page that show screenshots of the eight most used sites, but that page isn’t the default home page and how many people will change their home? How many people even know what a home page is? Firefox has a plugin that is similar, but again, how many non web-savvy users are gonna install it?
Maybe browsers could intercept search-engine requests for domain names and just GET the domain instead? Interestingly, if you type “Amazon” into the Firefox URL bar it takes you straight to the site, whereas doing that in Chrome does a search in Google. Maybe the default start page for Firefox should not be Google, but should be a smart input like the URL bar.
Perhaps the bookmarking traffic just doesn’t matter to Google et al. All those pointless clicks on Adwords will matter to the publisher though.
The Investment Banker and The Mexican Fisherman
An investment banker stood at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The banker complimented the fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The fisherman replied, “Only a little while.”
The banker then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish?
The fisherman said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.
The banker then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.”
The investor scoffed, “I am an Ivy League MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, and eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats.
“ The investor continued, “And instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would then sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution! You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The fisherman asked, “But how long will this all take?”
To which the banker replied, “Perhaps 15 to 20 years.”
“But what then?” asked the fisherman.
The banker laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions!”
“Millions. Okay, then what?” wondered the fisherman.
To which the investment banker replied, “Then you would retire. You could move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”
Ask the right question
Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
- Harold Whitman
Squareleaf: Online notes, to-do list, organiser and more
Squareleaf lets you keep to-do lists, organise projects, manage your stuff, brainstorm designs, run Scrums and just about anything else you need a sticky-note for.
It’s an online whiteboard and sticky-note system. It’s also dead simple to use.
I built Squareleaf to scratch my own itch. I’ve been using online to-do lists for a while but the usual list style is frustrating because you have to click-to-edit, then click-to-rearrange and then click-to-save. We do Agile software development at work and we have a whiteboard a post-it notes to manage the scrums – I wanted something like that for my to-do lists and Squareleaf is the result.
I have a bunch of cool stuff planned for Squareleaf over the coming months. Check it out if you use to-do lists or you manage your stuff online – I’d love to know what you think of it.
Rounded CSS corners in IE with no images and no Javascript.
Rounded corners are supported in Firefox and Safari using each browser’s custom CSS properties. IE doesn’t have one of those, so adding rounded corners to IE isn’t that easy.
The CSS3 spec does include a border-radius property, you can wait several years until all browsers support CSS3 and use that.
Or you can use this awesome solution from Benogle.com – it uses several DIVs with differing margins to produce the rounding effect. Really clever idea and is much simpler and quicker than using either Javascript or images.
Squareleaf
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