Over a year ago I launched this site and it was an amazing accomplishment for me. To the average visitor, this site is nothing more than another wordpress blog; to me, on the other hand, it was (is) the pinnacle of my learning success in regards to understanding PHP, WordPress’ API, and web development. I created my own custom theme/widgets and–as flawed as it may be–I was (am) very proud of my work. The site immediately started generating a great deal of interest amongst my peers and the online community; to this day, I find this exciting enough for me to want to keep the site a priority in my busy schedule.

Unfortunately as my coursework began to pick up, these fun, extra-curricular projects were unjustly competing for my attention and had to go. But, without further ado, I am returning to my blog after almost an entire year away. I return with hopes that I can manage this site with minimal effort; being powered by wordpress, I believe this to be possible.

Having just come back I do have a bit of a to-do list to take care of:

• First and foremost, I want to get this blog caught up with my last year of activities. This includes a project I am re-hatching–the project management plugin for wordpress. This is my MIS capstone project, so I can assure the world it will be done.
• I would like to see this site slightly more organized to enhance user navigation. This means changing blog categories and such.
• I want the photo blog moved to a sub-domain. I love the pics, but I feel they distract the blog from its purpose-a professional reference. I don’t know how to do this without installing another instance of wordpress. But, as always, I will be sure to share my solution.
• And finally, I am seriously considering adding in some video blogs. I feel this would be a good way to add personality to my site and show a little more of myself. If nothing else it could be fun-we shall see.

To wrap this up, I appreciate the feedback I have gotten over the past year–even though I have been hiding from the world. I look forward to bringing this site back to life and hopefully it can be exciting as what it was once before.

WordPress plugins open the doors for advanced features and functionality.  Some of the plugins on my site now include:

• NextGEN Gallery — which creates these beautiful photo galleries,
• Google XML Sitemaps — which creates a dynamic site map and notifies the major search engines of site changes, and
• Wordbook — which makes a note on my facebook every time I write a post on my site.

WordPress creates a set of “hooks” that can be used by scripts–”plugins”–to interface with the site.

My plugin is going to be a Project Management Tool that will allow teams to use the wordpress admin console as a center for their project task lists. With no further ado I created a dossier reviewing the planning phase of the plugin:

See the PDF: Project Management

WordPress is an application that creates an interface that users can access from the internet to manage their website.

Why this matters

In the past to update your website, users would use a tool such as dreamweaver to create, edit, add, or delete content and then create a FTP connection to transfer the updated files.  Learning the basics of dreamweaver can take a fair amount of time-thus discouraging the average person from contributing to the internet.

WordPress creates an admin console that is extremely user-friendly to use and is accessible online-available anywhere your website is.  This empowers the average person–having very limited knowledge of html–with the ability to create and manage content on their very own website.  With increased accessibility you can manage your website from anywhere; right now for example, this article is being posted from a public internet connection at the Apple store in King of Prussia.

This technology enables users of all skill levels to share their knowledge with the world–making the internet that much richer!

How wordpress works is another question for another day; we will be revisiting this..

My question is “All things considered, is wordpress an innovation or an enabler?”  Is it means for productivity, does it create a platform that allows innovation, or is it a health mix of both?