How to set up another wordpress site locally

Prerequisites:

• Install Wordpress Locally on Mac using MAMP

Steps:

1. Create a new folder in the Document Root  directory. e.g. /home/Users/john_smith/newsite
• If you don't know where the Document Root directory is set to, check in MAMP -> Preferences -> Apache -> Document Root
2. Download and unzip the latest version of wordpress.zip.
3. Copy the contents of the wordpress directory to your new folder e.g.newsite
4. Open MAMP, then click on Start Servers.
   
5. Go to phpMyAdmin.
   
6. Create a new database via the Databases tab, go to Create Database  
7. Navigate to localhost:8888/[new site name]
8. Create a configuration file as below.
   
9. Enter the database name you created in the previous step and use User Name/Password as root/root.
   Click on Submit
   
10. Click on Run the Install
    
11. Enter the credentials for your website and click on Install WordPress

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Review of Wordpress A Year Later

I wanted to write a blog relating to my experience with Wordpress a year after I began learning it. When I first started blogging, I just wanted something quick to set up. I overlooked Wordpress at the time because at first I thought it was one of these "free to try, then pay to use" kind of sites.  During that time I was heavily involved in Google products such as the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) so making a decision to use Google's Blogger seemed like a no brainer.
I revisited Wordpress after searching freelance jobs. I saw that there were an abundance of postings for help on fixing or creating Wordpress sites.  At first I was a bit reluctant to delve to learn yet another technology stack, but after a year of developing Wordpress sites I'm glad I changed my mind.
Here is a summary of my observations:

1. Wordpress is Popular

Whether you're a developer or blogger it pays to be with the most popular blogging platform. Why? Support. Apart from the excellent documentation found on www.wordpress.org, there are countless forums and sites that you can visit if you need help with a theme or you need a particular widget.

2. Wordpress is not just about blogging

Thanks to the countless number of plugins available to Wordpress, Wordpress sites can be made to become eCommerce sites, scheduling sites and sales campaign sites amongst other things. There are literally thousands of plugins available for Wordpress to give added functionality.  For example for a recent client, I was asked to set up registration forms for courses that were available on their site. A quick search in the www.wordpress.org plugin directory led me to "Contact Form DB" and within minutes I was able to add this functionality to the site. (You can see that example here:http://thepeartree.com.sg/register-for-a-workshop/)

3. Wordpress is customisable

As long as you have a programming background, you can customise Wordpress to your heart's content. This can be done through child-themes and plugins.  I set up a WooCommerce site for one client and they wanted a particular 'list' view for their composite products. To do this I had to modify the child theme and plugin (CSS3 and PHP) to achieve the desired result.
If you're not able to modify the theme or plugin yourself, you can post a request on a site like www.freelancer.com and there will be lots of Wordpress developers able to help.
Overall in terms of spiking new ideas or creating minimum viable products, I still prefer Google App Engine over Wordpress. Google just has more of that 'hacker/developer' feel, where as Wordpress is more commercial and formal. That commercial and formal feeling however has lead me to the majority of my paid work so in terms of financial success, I definitely think that all web developers should learn Wordpress.

How to add a custom font (OTF, TTF) to iDraw for MAC

If you can't find a custom font in your iDraw for Mac here are some simple instructions on how to do it. In my example I was trying to download a google font Ubuntu.

1. Download and install Skyfonts http://www.fonts.com/web-fonts/google.
2. Once you install Skyfonts, access it via the top toolbar on your Mac.
3. Click on the Cloud Service to search for your font (in my case I chose Google Fonts). 
4. Add the required font.  (I chose Ubuntu regular). 
   
5. In the main menu, select the font you just added, and click on "Reveal font in Finder". 
6. Now copy the font file eg. Ubuntu regualr.ttf to your fonts directory \Library\Fonts\ directory.
7. The new font will now appear in iDraw. 
   

How Learning Flask, Python and Google App Engine helped me make the website My3Pages.appspot.com

Hi all.  Over the past few months, I've been learning Python on Google App Engine.  Why?  Well after attending some of the Google App Engine Developer group presentations, I noticed that most of the presenters used Python in their examples.

Being a typical programmer I just wanted to be able to create my own website quickly and that's when one of my colleagues recommended using the Flask Python Framework.  I have never looked back.  It has excellent documentation and from what I hear its a whole lot easier to set up and learn then Django.  I will eventually try to tackle Django in the future, but in the meantime, I'm really enjoying how easy Flask (and Python) make it easy to create websites.  On top of this you can create Flask websites on Google's App Engine.

In the next few days, I'm going to be putting up some How To Guides on using Flask on Google App Engine.  In the meantime, you can check out what I created in 3 weeks.  It's still a work in progress, but I hope you can see how easy it is to create:

http://my3pages.appspot.com

 
For those interested, the code is available here:

https://bitbucket.org/vincentcaesar/my3pages