Perhaps that’s one reason that my ham radio blog is the #1 ham radio blog on Google. That is to say, when you type “ham radio blog” or “amateur radio blog” into Google, I come up #1. (btw, I’m also #1 on Bing.)

I sometimes can’t believe it, but I also get paid to blog. I blog under my own byline on oscilloscopes for EDN at scopes.edn.com, as well as on commercial building for Commercial Building Products. I’m also “ghost-blogging” for another electronics company.

And, if that’s not enough, I also do WordPress development work. Along with a graphics designer, I’ve developed custom themes, custom widgets, and custom plugins. I’ve even developed a plugin–Membership Database–that’s available via WordPress.Org.

As you can see, I love to blog, and I believe that I can help you be a better blogger. Whether it’s help developing your blog content, coaching on what and how to write blog posts, or custom WordPress development work, I can help you. Email me at dan@danromanchik.com or phone me at 734-930-6564.

One of the websites I’m currently working on uses WordPress as a content-management system, and the theme I’m using is a cusomization of the Thesis theme. (I’m not particularly enthralled with Thesis, but the client is, and what the client wants, the client gets.)

The client did not want to allow comments on pages, but also did not like the text, “Comments on this entry are not allowed” that appeared on those pages. So, the question was  how to make that text disappear? Unfortunately, you can’t just change a setting to make this happen.

At first, I thought I might actually have to change the code. The solution turned out to be a lot simpler, though.

In looking at the HTML source, I noted that that particular text was in a <div> with the class “comments_closed”.  So, all I had to do was to add the following line to custom.css:

.comments_closed {visibility: hidden;}

and, POOF!, the text disappeared.

After my experience creating a custom widget, I felt emboldened to try creating a custom plug-in. This website is for a membership organization, and they wanted to have a database-driven membership directory on the website. Among other things, they also wanted to be able to use this database to keep track of which members had paid their dues and which members were in arrears.

Adding a table to the database to do this was easy enough, as was creating a few screens to allow them to add, edit, and delete members. After I had done that, though, it occurred to me that the right way to do this would be to create a custom plug-in.

This proved not to be as big a chore as I thought it might be. With this custom plug-in, the organization will now be able to administer this database after logging in as an administrator and selecting options from a top-level menu.

After we release this website, I plan to do a little more development work on this plug-in and release it to the WordPress community. Some of the work that I need to do is to figure out how to allow users to specify what fields they want in the members table and then how to get the plug-in to create the table in the database. Then, the plug-in will have to be able to automagically create the forms for adding and editing the table entries.

None of this is rocket science, though. I just have to learn how to do it, then do it.

I’m happy to report that this is not so with WordPress. I Googled “custom wordpress widgets” and found the article “Creating Custom WordPress Widgets” by Darren Hoyt. About ten minutes later, I had a custom widget working on my custom theme.

Thanks, Darren!

Mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access devices worldwide by 2013, according to a new forecast by research firm Gartner.

That’s an even more aggressive outlook than Morgan Stanley’s projection that the mobile Web will outstrip the desktop Web in five years.
Gartner estimates the combined installed base of smartphones and browser-equipped enhanced phones will surpass 1.82 billion units by 2013, eclipsing the total of 1.78 billion PCs by then.

But the firm warns that many sites still are not optimized for the mobile Web, even though cell users expect to make fewer clicks on their phones than on a PC. To successfully expand into mobile, publishers will have to reformat sites from the small form-factor of handheld devices.

This is why one of my goals this year is to learn how to program the iPhone.

At the Web 2.0 Summit, Morgan Stanley’s Mary Meeker did a presentation of the economic and technology trends she’s been following. Her presentation this year spent a lot of time looking at mobile trends. Mobile, apparently, is the next “computer cycle” (think Mainframe, Mini, PC, Internet).

It’s time to learn some new skills, and it looks like learning how to program the iPhone is what I need to do.

There are moves, however to kill off IE6 once and for all. A recent article in IEEE Spectrum, “We Come to Bury IE6,” makes the case that companies are holding back their scientists and engineers from getting full value from the Web by forcing them to use outdated Web browsers. They also point out that running IE6 can actually be a security risk because it’s the browser that hackers love to hack.

The article also links to the website, IE6 No More. This website includes code that developers can use to alert users that they’re using an out-of-date browser. It also includes a page that discusses why corporations should upgrade.

Enough’s enough. Let’s move on.

The number of Indian PHP developers has been growing at a large pace in the last few years, when compared to other countries. A few years ago, India was just one of the top ten countries with more PHP developers. Now India is number 2 and is almost surpassing United States, which is still number 1.

This article presents a reflection about why this growth happened just in the latest years, as well what it means for the PHP world.

Using the first approach, you could get something wildly creative, but the risk is that you get something that’s completely off-base, too. Using the second approach you’re more likely to get something that you can use, but it takes a lot of work on your part to give the freelancer the direction he or she needs.

The worst-case is when the freelancer is put in a situation somewhere between the two. That is, he or she is not given much direction yet expected to produce something that pleases the client. This rarely happens because the client doesn’t really know what he wants until he sees what you’ve produced.

That’s why I always try to work with a client before taking on a project to define the project as much as possible. If we can do that upfront, then both of us will be happy when the project is complete.