We’ve been playing quite a bit of soccer at WooThemes since last year when we entered a soccer league in Cape Town. Last night we played in a 5 a side tournament, and although we didn’t get far, we still had a blast! The picture was taken by Mark Forrester’s wife, Xenia.
WooCommerce
So after having done a customization for African Cartel recently using WooCommerce and a WooTheme, I thought I’d spend some more time with it for a personal project of mine. And (even though I’m slightly biased*) I gotta say that I love it 
It’s really easy to use and to extend. I’m using it as an engine for a manual payment system and it is really powerful.
Check it out – you wont be disappointed - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/woocommerce/ and it’s a FREE plugin.
* Disclaimer: in the interest of full disclosure, I work for WooThemes who built the WooCommerce plugin
If This Then That
I started using the If This Then That service today, after Matty recommended it. Quite a neat service to create social actions, and its free This could be useful for development projects that need automated social elements.
For example - I created a task that posts to my twitter everytime my blog feed has a new article.
There are many more tasks that you can create as well as some preset ‘recipes’. Check it out here: http://ifttt.com/
Get to know me
I was interviewed at work recently as part of a “Getting to know the Team” series. Check it out on the WooThemes site.
Metrics and Ads
I was listening to a few Mixergy podcasts this weekend and heard about SpringMetrics, so I was naturally inquisitive and signed up for a free account. I’ve also been experimenting with some AdSense spots – you’ll see the one in the right sidebar, and I’m considering putting one after the content in each post.
Any thoughts on ad placement on this site? I experimented with AdGator last year, which was pathetic both in functionality and service, so I’ve stayed away from ad spots until now – I’ve been playing with the new Google Analytics and it seems to meet my needs.
Anyways will post a follow up at the end of December with my findings!
African Cartel WooCommerce
I recently did some work for African Cartel (I previously worked on the original site) to move them over to using the WooCommerce plugin instead of some of the other WordPress e-commerce plugins out there. I also wrote a content schema plugin so that they didn’t lose their content when moving from theme to theme, and created another plugin that allows them to link 2 different post types together.
Click the title to read the case study on the WooThemes site.
Coding at WooThemes
This week I upgraded our Listings directory theme at WooThemes from the Google Maps API V2 to V3 and I thought it would be pretty cool to show you what I actually do when I code.
The upgrade process took about an hour and a half of coding, testing, and deploying. And for those wondering, I’m coding in Coda, and the video was created using Screenflow.
And for those wondering about the music, it’s one of my favorite pieces recorded by JerryC called Canon Rock.
Update: the video was featured on WPCandy.
Inspiring
In everyone’s life there are several key defining moments – moments that you will always carry with you and treasure as they helped shape you into who you are today.
One of my key moments was in 2006 in my final year of study. My father, who has been one of the greatest inspirations to me in life and my career, handed me a copy of the transcript of Steve Jobs “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” address at Stanford. That article really hit home for me, it inspired me. And it’s stayed with me ever since. I’ve still got it filed in my office under “important documents”
In the wake of his death people have been calling Steve Jobs i-this and i-that, an icon, but to me he was above all else…inspiring.
So enjoy the video, be inspired by it, watch it over and over, and do something great with your life – don’t waste it.
Thanks for the memories Steve.
