Item-9 Consulting » News

WordPress 3.3 Has Just Been Released!

Jason Pelker — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:18:46 +0000

It’s the first big WordPress release since July 4, 2011. If you need help upgrading or figuring out how to take advantage of all the new features and bug fixes, contact Item-9 and we’ll get back to you immediately.

Download upPrev Version 1.4 – Thumbnails, Excepts and Lots of other New Features!

Jason Pelker — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 17:05:25 +0000

Our WordPress plugin, upPrev, the New York Times-style jQuery-animated previous post flyout box, has been updated to version 1.4. Here are the major changes:

Fixed incorrectly shown number of WordPress posts (incorrect mysql query),
Resolved jQuery compatibility issue,
Improved stylesheet mechanism. One external global stylesheet + embedded one for a custom animation. Additional css selectors for easier modification.
Modified settings page,
Ability to add thumbnails and excerpt (lots of users requested this!),
Custom notification for pages with a shortcode [upprev]Sample Text[/upprev],
Disabled PHP errors notification for a javascript file.

Check it out on this page (by scrolling down) and then use the plugin update feature on your WordPress site or download a new copy from the WordPress repository!

WordPress Plugin – upPrev: NYTimes Style “Next Post” jQuery Animated Button

Jason Pelker — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 01:26:13 +0000

Our expert jQuery programmer, Grzegorz Krzyminski, has created a WordPress Plugin to emulate the “Next Post” buttons you see once you scroll to the bottom of New York Times web articles.

UpPrev has been updated to V1.4. There’s a boat-load of changes, so you should update accordingly. Subscribe to our RSS feed to learn when additional updates occur.

New York Times “Next Post” Animated Button Examples

Just like the NYTimes button, upPrev allows WordPress site admins to provide the same functionality for their readers. When a reader scrolls to the bottom of a single post, a button animates in the page’s bottom right corner, allowing the reader to select the next available post in the single post’s category (the category is also clickable to access an archive page). If no next post exists, no button is displayed.

The plugin’s only current option is choosing a fade-in or a fly-in animation.

It’s absolutely beautiful. I love Grzegorz’s work and I invite you to download the plugin in the WordPress repository.

DEMO | DOWNLOAD

Improving WordPress Theme Development through Standardization

Jason Pelker — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:52:11 +0000

I spoke at WordPress Chicago on June 6, 2010. In my presentation, I spoke about three ways theme developers can trim down and standardize their theme building efforts. My suggestions were:

modularizing theme parts
enacting naming conventions
sharing theme options

I owe an entire post (heck, maybe three) to cover these ideas, but I’m going to save those for another day. But do check out the presentation below. If you were at WordCamp, drop a hello in the comment form, too.

Improving WordPress Theme Development through Standardization

View more presentations from Jason Pelker.

Jason Fried Drops Item-9 Some Love on Signal vs. Noise

Jason Pelker — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:17:53 +0000

In his December 2 article Creative Haystack Listings, Jason Fried of 37signals used a sample from my advertisement on Haystack as an example of creative marketing on the service:

I’ll quote the exchange we had in the article’s comments:

(Me) Thanks for the mention! Haystack has [cliche alert] changed the way I do business. I’m booking clients with bigger budgets who actually come to me. That’s a vast improvement on trolling Craigslist where hardly anyone replies to emails and when they do, they “have a limited budget” (read: spec).

…Last month was the most profitable since I went freelance eight months ago and I don’t think it’d be possible without this service. Keep up the good work!

(JF) AWESOME . That warms us up inside! So glad to hear Haystack is bringing you good business. Thanks for listing. Continued success.

Wow, that whole writeup and exchange definitely made my day. Not only is Jason Fried one of my business heroes, but since I began freelancing, I’ve never been an example on a public blog. I feels great to be recognized—one of the things I miss most about working in an office.

Another funny thing is that the logo/slogan I created actually did take a while to get just right, so I appreciate the fact that someone took notice (I hope potential clients do, too). It was a design and marketing experiment that seems to have worked. By the way, I also appreciate the traffic spike I received from Signal vs. Noise that day. Thanks, guys!

The Item-9 Big List of WordPress Themes, Plugins and Resources

Jason Pelker — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 05:47:38 +0000

Tomorrow I’ll be speaking at OfficePort Chicago for the official 1-Day WordPress Workshop. This event seems to be sold out but hopefully, there will more workshops in the near future for those who can’t make it.

My topic list includes WordPress themes and plugins, so I thought I could provide a list ahead of time of some links we might use during the discussions.

Finding the Perfect WordPress Theme

40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes (via Smashing Magazine)
40 Awesome and Fresh WordPress Themes (via SpeckyBoy)
Free Themes Reviewed on Weblog Tools Collection
What I consider to be the best value in WordPress themes: ThemeForest
WooThemes
WPBest
Theme Atlas

WordPress Plugins List – The Most Useful + Highest Quality

…And Other WordPress Resources

I’m on YouTube

Jason Pelker — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:21:04 +0000

…but, then again, so is everyone else. Check me (Jason Pelker of Item-9 Consulting) out anyway–I’m being interviewed on Chicago public access about WordPress.

Looking good, right?