1. Custom Font Replacement: We had been using sIFR, but shortly after we built this site, cufón came around and we fell in love. Any custom fonts you see are now generated by cufón.

2. Dynamic Sidebar: The old sidebar was hard coded. I took that out and made each section it’s own widget which allows to move them around easily if needed and also add third-party widgets should we choose to do so.

3. RSS: I created a FeedBurner RSS so be sure to update – http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheCodeDojo

4. The Clan: Under The Clan section in the sidebar, you can now click on one of the names and it takes you to a new page with that persons bio and all the posts they have written.

5. Facebook Fan Page: We started a Facebook Fan Page – you can become a fan here: http://www.facebook.com/CodeGreene

6. Custom Share Icons: Mike built us custom share icons to fit our ninja theme. Thanks Mike!

7. Contact Page: Rather than sending you, the user, to codegreene.com to fill out a contact form, you can now send us your requests by going here: http://dojo.codegreene.com/ninjas-for-hire – so drop us a line.

A few subtle changes will be coming in the future – let us know what you think!

Chad, The Beginner’s Guide to Tricking Out Your WordPress Blog
I liked this post/entry about WP because it was built and geared for the beginner. Once you installed it now what. I find these type of articles interesting because sometimes they are just so simple that I don’t even think of them. And it helps me to explain or think of other things that I feel our clients may want or need.

Mike, Web Designer’s Who Can’t Code
Twitter exploded in a debate this week when Elliot Jay Stocks boldly tweeted:

“Honestly, I’m shocked that in 2010 I’m still coming across ‘web designers’ who can’t code their own designs. No excuse.”

The world is full of talented designers trained in a wide array of media, but just like other mediums, the web offers its own constraints and limitations. Knowing how to code definitely gives you an edge, even if you don’t code the site yourself. Image resolution, measurements, typography, and browser discrepancies all play a role in what is possible, and help determine the collective best practices of the web. So does a good architect need to know how to dry wall? Maybe not. What about a fundamental understanding of construction and engineering? Absolutely. How much does a good web designer need to know about their craft in order to build a successful website? What do you think?

Mac, Content Management for Sites that Matter
I liked this article because it gets right at the core of the cost/benefit trade-off that many people don’t think enough about when building their web site. Either there’s a significant value to the work you’re doing on your site, which justifies spending some money on it and getting it done right, or there isn’t a significant value to your site, so why bother? I don’t 100% agree with them about the WYSIWIG comments, but I’ve never tried to tell a client to assume it would look identical in TinyMCE and on the public site. We’ve generally had to train them to be very careful to keep it simple. Use bold if you want, make some lists, paragraphs, links, and stuff like that, but don’t try and do anything funky or you’ll end up disappointed. Another annoying thing about TinyMCE is that even when you tweak the HTML manually in their HTML view, it often wants to “automatically fix” some of the things you did. I was trying to leave a <br /> or two between a couple of separate lists if I remember right, and it kept either taking it completely out, or turning into a paragraph, constantly leaving too much or too little whitespace, even though the HTML I manually entered would display exactly how I intended.

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I’m getting excited for the upcoming Utah Open Source Conference 2009, Thursday October 8 through Saturday October 10. It’s hard to believe another year has gone by already. There are a ton of great speakers and events that I anxiously await. Not to make light of the conference presentations, some of my favorite parts are the social events, like the Boardgame Bash at the end of the conference. For a bunch of geeks, we seem to be a pretty fun crowd, I think. I also love that the UTOS folks take family seriously, and have family events on Saturday that are fun for the wife, kids, and other non-geek family members. There’s a healthy focus on bringing new people, and less technical people, into the Open Source fold, which I think is great.

This year, as soon as submission of abstracts opened, I tossed in a presentation for the first idea that came to mind, which happened to be about one of my favorite open source platforms, FreeBSD. Lo and behold, after the voting and committee meetings were over, I was one left standing, so now I’ll be presenting “Why FreeBSD is the Best Linux Distro*” at the conference. Of course, when I decided to run the risk of making a joke in a room full of highly technical purists, I knew I better use the asterisk and let them in on the joke: “* Yes, FreeBSD isn’t really a Linux Distro. It’s a different Operating System that has emulation for and binary compatibility with Linux and can run almost all the same programs.” Even though it isn’t really a Linux distribution, for me it serves the same purpose and I think it does a better job than the various Linux distributions I’ve experienced.

Anyway, early-bird discounts end on Saturday the 19th, and there are some 50% off coupon codes drifting around if you’re interested. There are codes you can get from speakers, any local Linux User Group (LUG), or other groups like UPHPU.

Bryan’s music ranges from classical Chopin covers, to smooth new age Jazz, to LDS, to instrumental, and everything in between. Check out his site and give him some props for sharing his music with the world.

bryanrichardsmusic.com