Boagworld Boos & Podcast

Paul Boag creates a nice mix between his boos and his seasonal podcast. The boos are frequent, usually at least one or two per week, and each lasts a few minutes. They’re quite topical and informative. They range from issues of human behavior to in-depth development practice.

His seasonal show is themed and thought out in advance. The last season was all about the redesign of boagworld.com, which I highly enjoyed. His next season is coming up, and I recommend it for anyone out there that works with the web. I’m probably biased toward these shows because Paul Boag runs a development company making websites for clients, and I work for a company that makes websites for clients. I can connect.

The Big Web Show

Jeffrey Zeldman hosts the 5by5 branded Big Web Show. It’s an interview show, where Zeldman, and sometimes Dan Benjamin, interview prominent members of the web community. Guests range from startup founders to prominent developers, but some of my favorite episodes are when Jeffrey interviews Happy Cog employees, or just talks about his own experiences to Dan. His style is laid back and he asks his guests a lot of personal questions.

Considering Zeldman’s role in original web standards development and the web in general, I’m excited to listen to each episode to gain some perspective from someone with, well, so much perspective.

Shop Talk Show

Shop Talk is pretty new but it’s got some things going for it that are quite rare in this genre of podcast: it’s consistent and focused.

Chris Coyier and Dave Rupert do an excellent job focusing the conversation on front end web development, and they bring on great guests. They also do a nice job engaging an audience by answering audio and email questions during the show. And they balance it all with geeky humor, which is fun. It’s only a couple of months in and it’s skyrocketed to the top of my “must-listen” list.

SitePoint Podcast

I have a love hate relationship with the SitePoint podcast. It’s a weekly show, but it’s really two shows in one. Every other week, Louis Simoneau interviews people who I probably would never know about otherwise. The interviews are quite good and more in-depth than some other shows I listen to. Simoneau is a developer for Flippa and isn’t afraid to talk technical on these weeks.

On the opposite week, Simoneau hosts a panel show where a few others join him to talk about industry news. This week suffers from the same disease as most “tech” podcasts – branditis. They talk too much about the Apples and the Googles and yada yada. I keep listening to it because periodically there’s a good story I’m interested in, but the non-interview week is typically lower on my listening priorities.

Creative Coding Podcast

Creative Coding is a good and informative podcast, but leans toward the boring side. The hosts are mostly front end devs, I think, and they have quiet, English accents, and sometimes I realize my mind is wondering off while I listen. The content can be good, and I listen when I don’t have something better, but it’s just not as engaging a podcast as some others. It’s a good one to listen to while you’re doing a mindless task so you can concentrate on what they’re saying, because the topics are pretty good ones most of the time. It’s hosted by Iain Lebb and Seb Lee-Delisle (sorry if y’all happen to read this – not trying to be rude).

The Non-Breaking Space

I found out about Non Breaking Space from Shop Talk, as the two shows did a joint show. It’s also quite new, only a few episodes in, and I don’t have much experience with it. However, in the joint shows, the conversation was informative and entertaining. It’s hosted by front end developers Christopher Schmitt, Dave McFarland, and Chris Enns. It’s been fun so far, despite the near identical guest list to Shop Talk. I’m addicted, like I said, and it’s fun, so I listen.

The Industry Radio Show

The Industry Radio Show is another podcast I found because of Chris Coyier. It’s both a new blog and podcast. It’s only had a couple of episodes. They’ve been decent. The verdict is still out.

The hosts are a bit hipsterish (sorry if that offends you hipsters) but the topics are mostly relevant. My general annoyance with “The Industry” is the name. It comes off very cocky to me, calling your own industry the industry. But that’s just me bitching. The podcast has that same quasi-cockiness in my opinion, but I have enjoyed it – and it’s welcome when there really just aren’t a lot of podcasts focused for web developers.

Freelance Jam Podcast

Freelance Jam is a podcast by Dave Yankowiak and Brian Casel. They’re both WordPress developers, and their guests tend to skew toward WordPress oriented freelancers and people, but not totally. They’re nice guys, and I like WordPress (a lot), so I really like this show.

A bonus for me is that they recently made an mp3 format of the show available in addition to video, so now I can subscribe without hogging my limited iPhone storage capacity.

If you’re a freelancer, it’s good. If you’re a freelancing WordPress developer, it’s great.

ExplicitWeb Podcast

I honestly don’t know if ExplicitWeb is still going. It’s been terribly inconsistent from the start, but when they do a show, I enjoy it. It’s hosted by Hannah Wolfe, John O’Nolan, and Rob Hawkes. They are very entertaining, and somewhat on topic. But the topics are fun, mostly front end and design and sometimes about WordPress. Every three months or so it comes around, I listen.

WPCandy Shows

I had to have a shameless plug, right? WPCandy is probably the leading WordPress blog there is, and it’s got a full gauntlet of audio (and some video) shows. I’ve been a part of the main podcast for quite a while, where I talk with Ryan Imel about WordPress news. It’s crazy meta, so don’t listen unless you geek out on WordPress.

In the last few months, Ryan has expanded the shows to include others with more interviews and some where we preview plugins and stuff. We also do one jointly that’s similar to Paul Boag’s Boos, called Pressbits, where we share quick thoughts about WordPress. So, if you do like WordPress and podcasts, check them out. If you’re obsessed with WordPress like me, I recommend the master show feed in iTunes to catch them all.

Not quite web

Inevitably, if I don’t mention it, someone will comment about some “tech” podcasts I’ve left out. I haven’t left them out, I’m trying to focus on web stuff. But, Here is a short list of some tech podcasts I like.

• Mixergy – Great if you’re into startups. Tons of interviews, each around an hour long. Pretty evergreen, though. Set your iTunes to delete these after you listen, or your iPhone will fill up fast.
• TWiT – Leo Laporte still does tech news better than most. His weekly TWiT show is good for listening to while you’re doing something else. I don’t waste my time listening to all the other This Week in Big Companies he does, this one has plenty of that.
• The Verge – I’ve listened to a couple of these, but they seem to be more hipster versions of TWiT. Their blog is fantastic, though.
• 5by5 – Dan Benjamin has tons of podcasts. I really don’t subscribe but periodically go to his site and see what’s recent and if I want to listen to something. I really like what Dan does, despite not keeping many of his feeds in iTunes.

Podcasts of my past

Sometimes I listen to podcasts for a bit and then they just sort of fizzle out. Here are a few I’ve tried that I can think of.

• Think Vitamin – use to be decent, though somewhat boring (lots of inside baseball – not boring personalities) podcast by Ryan Carson and company. It hasn’t had an episode since their Treehouse product came out.
• This Developer’s Life – I tried this one based on a recommendation I saw somewhere, but it’s just too personal and off topic. I’ve unsubscribed.
• Unmatched Style – I imagine this is like the one above. I honestly can’t remember anything about it.
• Copyblogger – Copyblogger does a online marketing podcast that is so marketing-y it made my ears bleed, so I unsubscribed.
• Probably a lot of others I can’t think of right now.

Find any worth listening?

If you found any of these worth checking out, then good, that’s why I shared them. But you get extra internet points if you share some others with me that maybe I’ve not heard of. I can always go for more web related podcasts in my queue.

Web development podcasts worth listening to is a post Brian on Brian Krogsgard. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a comment.

Using wp_trim_words() allows us to limit the title and excerpt, and anything else really, to a particular number of words. How practical a name. You can define the number of words to limit them to, and also define what you’d like the “more” text to be. My example just uses ellipses.

Below is a gist to show it in use. Everything but the use of wp_trim_words() is totally arbitrary, but there for fun.

<div class="info-box">

	<?php	$krogsquery = new WP_Query( array( 
						'post_type' => 'post',
						'posts_per_page' => 3
						)); ?>

		<h3 class="info-headline">City News</h3>					

	<?php while($krogsquery->have_posts()) : $krogsquery->the_post(); ?>

		<div <?php post_class(); ?> id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">

			<?php 

			$trimtitle = get_the_title();

			$shorttitle = wp_trim_words( $trimtitle, $num_words = 4, $more = '… ' );

				echo '<h6 class="info-title">' . '<a href="' . get_permalink() . '">' . $shorttitle . '</a></h6>';  

			$trimexcerpt = get_the_excerpt();

			$shortexcerpt = wp_trim_words( $trimexcerpt, $num_words = 10, $more = '… ' ); 

				echo '<a href="' . get_permalink() . '"><p>' . $shortexcerpt . '</p></a>'; 

			?>

		</div><!-- post class -->

	<?php endwhile; ?>

	<?php wp_reset_postdata(); // reset the query ?> 

</div><!-- .info-box -->

Now quit reading and go make some stuff.

Quick tip: Use wp_trim_words() to limit words in WordPress is a post Brian on Brian Krogsgard. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a comment.

I wanted to do the same thing for a post’s modified date for a project, so I copied (so credit to Justin Tadlock) the shortcode from Hybrid Core and changed get_the_time() with get_the_modified_time().

It’s that easy. You can use this in your templates with the do_shortcode() function, or however you want to display them.

Here’s the gist.

add_shortcode( 'entry-modified', 'krogs_entry_modified_shortcode' );

function krogs_entry_modified_shortcode( $attr ) {

	$domain = hybrid_get_textdomain();
	$attr = shortcode_atts( array( 'before' => '', 'after' => '', 'format' => get_option( 'date_format' ) ), $attr );

	$modified = '<abbr class="modified" title="' . sprintf( get_the_modified_time( esc_attr__( 'l, F jS, Y, g:i a', $domain ) ) ) . '">' . sprintf( get_the_modified_time( $attr['format'] ) ) . '</abbr>';
	return $attr['before'] . $modified . $attr['after'];

}

The part that says $domain = hybrid_get_textdomain() can be replaced by whatever your theme’s textdomain is if you don’t use a Hybrid Core theme. Now you can simply use the entry-modified shortcode to show when a post was updated.

It can be quite useful if you have a lot of consistently updated content in your blog and want to show that a post is still up to date. I find it highly preferable to removing the post date entirely.

Create a shortcode to show when a post was last updated is a post Brian on Brian Krogsgard. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a comment.

“The car shaped our environment in the 20th century in this huge, tectonic way. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the screen will be as important to shaping our environment in the 21st century. What goes on those screens is pretty important, because the things that we choose to surround ourself with will shape what we become. We’re not just making pretty interfaces, we’re actually in the process of building an environment where we’ll spend the most of our time for the rest of our lives. We’re the designers. We’re the builders. What do we want that enviornment to feel like? What do we want to feel like?”

Wilson Miner said this in this presentation called “When We Build” at a 2011 web conference. I didn’t know who Miner was before the video, but he had a lot to do with Apple’s first major redesign, and is also one of the original developers of the Django framework.

Not much of the presentation is about the web specifically, but it’s really a great talk about how our industry and work fits in with our world experience. He also discusses the relationship between users and the things they interact with, whether a magazine, a car, or a screen. There are too many good quotes in the video to put here, so I included the one that hit me first and hardest. It’s definitely worth the watch, and does a really great job expressing why I get excited about building things on the web.

(hat tip to my coworker, and Infomedia Creative Director, David)

On building the web is a post Brian on Brian Krogsgard. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a comment.

It’s essentially the same concept as the “+ New” menu items in the WordPress 3.3 toolbar, except that it directs you to the main edit.php screen (or equivalent for non-Post post types), rather than the add new post screen. It essentially eliminates one click from the front end.

I often want to just go to the generic post / page / post_type / etc overview screens, and I find this extra toolbar menu useful. Maybe you will too.

Coding this was pretty darn simple. I essentially stole code from the admin-bar.php file from within WordPress’ wp-includes folder, except I used the new add_node function rather than add_menu to register the new items to the toolbar. My favorite part of this plugin is that it will automatically pick up your custom post types for inclusion in the “View” menu.

I’ve created an information page on this site for Toolbar Quick View for anyone that cares. You can download it from the plugin page on WordPress.org, or of course from your dashboard.

If you have any feedback for improvement, I’d certainly appreciate it. This was fun. I already want to do it again.

My first WordPress plugin, Toolbar Quick View is a post Brian on Brian Krogsgard. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a comment.