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Rick Tuttle - Miami Web Application Developer

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WordPress Custom Content: Refresh So Fla + WordPress

8 Sep 11 by Rick Tuttle

Here is my presentation from the Refresh South Florida + WordPress meetup on September 8, 2011. It’s an overview of Custom Content in WordPress and meant as a general over. Resources links can be found below as well.

  • Online Presentation: WordPress Custom Content: Refresh South Florida + WordPress – September 8, 2011

Resource Links

  • Mark Jaquith: Post Formats vs. Custom Post Types
  • Otto: Post Types and Formats and Taxonomies, Oh My! (Please read the other relevant articles on Otto’s site)
  • Justin Tadlock: Custom Post Types in WordPress
  • WordPress Codex: Custom Taxonomies
  • WordPress Codex: Post Types
  • WordPress Codex: Post Formats
  • just read the codex 🙂

Filed Under: Blog, Presentations, WordPress

WordPress Web Hosting Lessons Learned

24 Aug 10 by Rick Tuttle

Recently I helped a client move their WordPress web site to a new web host. They had been using Earthlink for years. (I didn’t even know that Earthlink did web hosting.)

We decided to get a VPS account at HostGator, where we got our own cPanel and lots more control than we actually needed for the site. However, the assurance that only our web sites would be running in our virtual space made me feel a lot better.

Overall I have been impressed with HostGator. It was my first experience using them. I have been a DreamHost customer for years and were it not for the fact that I have 30+ sites running on my DH account I would move to HostGator in a heartbeat. I did not feel confident enough about DH to recommend them to my customer.

So, after we got the new account set up on HostGator I uploaded the web site files and the WordPress database and we were in business. The only thing left was to do the DNS cutover.

In all my years of web development experience DNS cutovers have usually taken anywhere between 4 and 8 hours to propagate. Of course, when you do a cutover you want to ensure that the old web site is available for long enough to support the propagation and that was the plan with this cutover.

It turns out that using HostGator VPS you have to create your own nameservers. No problem I thought. Even NameCheap.com which is a reseller for eNom which is a reseller for Verisign let me create my own nameservers. We contacted Earthlink and their support staff didn’t even know what it meant to create a nameserver. The customer was handling the contact with Earthlink and during the course of a few days trying to get the nameservers set up Earthlink at one point recommended shutting down the existing account. For whatever reason, this actually happened and the DNS had not been cut over yet.

To make a long story short, my client’s web site was down for close to 2 whole days and Earthlink still had no way for us to create a nameserver. For every DNS change request that we had with Earthlink they told us it would take between 24 and 72 hours. It turns out that they use Network Solutions and they only put in change requests during a certain time in the afternoon. So, we would have to call Earthlink and wait for their request to get sent to NetSol. Then we’d have to wait for NetSol to handle the request.

The solution I came up with was to create my own temporary name servers and point those to the new HostGator VPS IP address. I then told Earthlink to use those nameservers. After waiting an unusually long time the web site finally came up.

Here’s how you can avoid a similar horror story in the future:

  • Don’t use a company to host your website that is not really in the business of web hosting (hint: Earthlink).
  • No matter what, make sure your current web host will keep the site up during the DNS changeover.
  • Plan for the worst.

The last thing I would recommend is to use a site like webhostgear.com to get cPanel hosting reviews and recommendations on WordPress hosting options.

Filed Under: WordPress Tagged With: web hosting

WordCamp Miami 2010 Slides

20 Feb 10 by Rick Tuttle

Here are my slides for my WordCamp Miami 2010 presentation: Using WordPress as a CMS.

Filed Under: WordPress

WordCamp Miami 2010

29 Jan 10 by Rick Tuttle


WordCamp is coming to Miami, Saturday February 20, 2010. This year’s speakers will include Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress, Mark Jaquith, Jim Turner and lots more…including yours truly.

Find out everything you need to know and register at the WordCamp Miami website. Follow WordCamp Miami on Twitter to keep in touch.

Kudos to local WordPress gurus, David Bisset, John James Jacoby and John Carcutt who have done a super job organizing the event in an extremely short timeframe!

Feel free to add your comments to let me know what you would like to learn at WordCamp Miami 2010.

Filed Under: WordPress

Miami Beach Church Launches New WordPress-Powered Website

9 Jan 10 by Rick Tuttle

Calvary Chapel Miami Beach recently launched a new website and I was privileged to be part of the project. Along with actual site implementation the church also started using multiple social media successfully to improve communication with the community. I am a volunteer assistant pastor at Calvary Chapel Miami Beach and I hope you can tell that I put my heart into this project.  🙂

Calvary Chapel Miami Beach

Powered by WordPress

Calvary Chapel has been using WordPress for several years and we wanted to keep the momentum going with this redesign. One of the major goals of the new site was to allow church staff to design promotional graphics for events and activities and incorporate them into the site in addition to adding events, news and other textual content.

Site Design

For this project I started with the Aperture theme from Woo Themes (affiliate link) and then customized the design and developed new widgets and along with other PHP enhancements.

We wanted to keep the design framework minimal but feature the colorful promotional images that Paul Funk (J.P.), our creative assistant pastor, creates week after week. The Aperture theme was designed for a photo blog and that worked out great to feature the image links on the home page which draw site visitors in to find out more.

Church and Social Media

Many of the church family members have been using Facebook, including the pastoral staff. It has been a great way to keep in touch with people here in Miami but even more so as a way to stay connected with those who have moved away. Calvary Chapel Miami Beach is in a “transient” community and we see many people come and go. If you come to our church and then return 6 months later you will find many new faces.

The logical next step was to create a Facebook Fan Page for Calvary Chapel Miami Beach. Pastor Robert Fountain updates the page regularly to let people know what’s coming up and to share devotional and encouraging messages.

We hooked up the Facebook page to the Calvary Chapel Miami Beach Twitter account. The twitter posts are really links back to the public Facebook page. We have found this to be effective since it expands our audience to the general Twitter community but makes it easier for us to post on Facebook.

The custom theme features in-site integration of our Facebook feed as well as an embedded Google Calendar for our events. It was a definite win to use Google Calendar for managing our schedule. With a little bit of tweaking I was able to get it into a widget on our site footer.

Lastly, we started using MailChimp for our email newsletters and mailing list management. MailChimp has an API that we use to allow people to subscribe right from the website and also manage what groups they are interested in.

The Point: Better Communication

The new site looks better and is easier to use. But the major change we have seen is improved communication with our community. Using WordPress and social media has allowed me (geek) to get out of the way and allow the pastoral staff to do the communicating themselves. I think I did my job right this time.

Filed Under: Papasoft, WordPress

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