Devir Kahan

My Inbox! This Time Filled With: My Hair, Dual Monitors, and WicketPixie

// January 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // Blog, Community, Electronics, Emails, Hardware, How To, Information, Internet, Tech

As you all should know by now, I love answering your questions. I remember when I had all the questions and how much I just wanted easy answers. Well, this is not to say that I no longer have any questions, but this is to say that I started an ongoing video series called “My Inbox”!

I get many questions through email (or other places that end up in my inbox like YouTube and so on), and the answers to many of them can really benefit the community. That’s why I will be answering a selection of the questions I receive on YouTube for everyone!

Sometimes I will just reply with the answer because I don’t think it needs to be in an episode. Other times I will reply with an answer and say that I will talk more about it in the next episode of “My Inbox”. Other times still, it just may be too much information for an email and I will only be able to talk about it in a video. Whatever the case though, the questions will always be answered!

Questions answered in this episode:

1. How do I get my hair to look the way it does?
2. How did I make my old blue logo?
3. Is it possible to get WicketPixie on Blogger?
4. How can you customize the WicketPixie theme like I did?
5. How can you set up dual monitors (with only one VGA port)?
6. Will I ever talk, and give my opinions about, the news and so on?

I look forward to getting and answering many more questions in the future. The only way I can do that is if you send them, so keep them coming! My email address is mail@devirkahan.com, and My Inbox is always open.

Help With WordPress Themes

// December 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // Blog, Emails, How To, Tech

The other day I got an email from Anthony asking me about my WordPress theme. Anthony said that he did not know much about WordPress, but just wanted me to give him a quick rundown about my theme.

Hi. My name is Anthony. I recently saw your Chris Pirillo screencast. You
were very funny in that video, so I decided to check out your channel. I
subscribed (ynkno13) and I checked out your website. I see you are using the
WicketPixie theme. I am a WordPress N00b, and I was wondering how you add
themes to WordPress? Do you have to download some software or is the editor
online. Also does the Wibiya toolbar come with it?

Thanks
- Anthony Guidetti

Well, thank you for your compliment and the subscription. I really appreciate it.

Now, here is the deal; the theme I am running is indeed WicketPixie. Now, WicketPixie was created by Chris Pirillo (he himself did not code it, but it is his theme). Since then, the community has developed newer versions, improving upon the first. WicketPixie is currently in version 1.2. Recently, I jumped on to the wagon of WicketPixie developers and started working on version 2.0 along with a recently acquired friend of mine, Eddie Ringle. Eddie is a lot more versed in code than I am, and he is actually doing most of the work. I myself, though, am doing a bit of the design, ad placement, error pages, and other smaller things like that. 2.0 is nearing it’s final stages and should be released sometime in 2010. I’m really excited about it, and it has a ton of awesome new features, and a much newer, cleaner look. I will, of course, talk more about it when it gets closer to being released.

Anthony also asked how to install a theme. The answer is actually fairly simple; WordPress.org has a huge selection of themes in their online database. You can browse that and download any theme that you would like. As it happens, there are a number of themes that are not in the database. Take for instance WicketPixie – you can’t download WicketPixie from WordPress’s database. You can only get it where Chris decided to host it – on Oholo. And that is the route that some theme developers choose. Some developers would prefer to host their theme on their own site, and not on WordPress’s. No matter where you download the theme from though, you will find that what you have downloaded is a folder, inside of which are all of the files that tell WordPress how to display your theme on your site. You will need to upload this folder to your ‘/themes’ folder inside of your ‘/wp-content’ folder, which would be found in your site’s root directory (sometimes though, it will be in a separate folder in the root directory if you want the WordPress blog to be located at a sub directory).

If you really don’t know much at all about FTP (server files) or code at all, then what I just explained may seem a little complicated. If that is the case, I would recommend starting out on WordPress.com (different from WordPress.org) where you can register a free blog, and change themes without any code, or need of uploading files. When you register your blog, it will look something like ‘blogname.wordpress.com’, but you can pay to get rid of the ‘.wordpress’ part and register your domain so it will be just ‘blogname.com’ like most sites. WordPress.com is an easy to use, simpler way to use WordPress for those that don’t want to deal with the hassle of code and such – and believe me – it’s a hassle.

If you did understand what I explained about uploading folders, then go ahead and find and enable a theme that you like that way. And, yes, you do need to actually enable the theme from your WordPress Admin page.

Either route you choose to take, you’ll have yourself a nice looking blog. I hope I helped and I would love to see what your site looks like once you have set it up, so be sure to let me know when it’s done.

As to the Wibiya toolbar, no – it doesn’t come with WicketPixie. You need to request an invitation (it’s in Beta), but I got one within a day or two after I requested one, so it’s not that big a deal. I will say this though: We are working on an awesome footer for WicketPixie 2.0, so you won’t necessarily need the toolbar then, although it will always be personal preference.

My email address is mail@devirkahan.com, so if any of you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, just drop me a line. With any luck, you’ll see your question answered right here on my blog. And if not, I’ll be sure to answer you just through email. Whatever the case though – my inbox is always open.

Let It Snow – On Your Blog

// November 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // Blog, Holidays, How To

The past few days I’ve had a plugin enabled that creates little snow flakes floating around on my blog. Of course, I did this in the spirit of the holiday season, but since then I’ve taken it down. Sure, it’s nice to have for a while, but then it gets a little bothersome. I’ll probably put it back up when we get real close, but for now, it’s back to normal.

Probably the coolest thing about this plugin though, is that the snow is HTML – so that means that it will work no matter where you are viewing the site from. So, even if you were to look at my site on, say, an iPhone, you would see those little snow flakes drifting down from the top of the screen and accumulating a bit on the bottom.

The plugin is really cool, and I look forward to using it again. What is the plugin you ask? Well, very fittingly it is called “Let It Snow!” and you can download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/let-it-snow/. As usual, just place the folder in your plugins directory in WordPress and enable it from the Admin panel. There are other snow plugins for WordPress, but I’ve found this one to be the best. The only thing this one is lacking is customization – but you really don’t need that.

Well, I hope you enjoy, and it will be snowing at http://devirkahan.com again soon!

Woops! My Website Crashed!: What Turned Out To Be My WordPress Review

// October 25th, 2009 // No Comments » // Apple, Blog, Life, Reviews, Tech, Uncategorized

My god… The past many hours of my life have been insane. I don’t know if you know this already, but late Friday afternoon my entire website crashed. It just crashed! Why? I’ll tell you why. It happened because I changed a setting in the WordPress control panel. And BOOM, just like that my entire website crashed. Apparently, WordPress couldn’t find a certain file pertaining to the change that I just made, so instead of telling me within the control panel, it decided to crash my entire site, and post the “Fatal Error” up there instead.

So, I scrambled to get at least a temporary theme up in the mean time, so when people came to the site, they would at least see something. And, then I spent the next day figuring out how to fix it. Well, you’re looking at it now, because after 3 hours of coding, I got everything back to how it was, to the best of my knowledge fixed the problem with the setting change so it won’t happen again, and even updating the functionality of the status update bar on the top right of the page.

Now, I could go on ranting about WordPress, and I could then go on to talk about that stupid “Insert Video” button that does nothing but put a link in your post, but I’m not. Because the truth is, WordPress is an incredibly powerful, free, blogging tool. And, true, I am incredibly pissed off at what WordPress did, but that’s the past. I now know how to fix a website crash, should it ever happen again, and my website is back to normal and even a little better.

I could go on and talk about everything I did to fix the site, but I don’t think you’d enjoy that much. The truth is, I don’t even know how to code much! I just have a very basic understanding of php. Apparently just enough to create a site like the one you’re looking at. And, I only learned all of that, from actually sitting down and starting to make a site.

And hey, I guess this post ended up turning into my review of WordPress and so, in that sense I must say that overall I am happy with it. I really like how my website looks, and how I have my own blog and website now. I am really happy with the site, and it was everything I wanted it to be. All of that of course brings me back to WordPress itself. The truth is, WordPress is relatively easy to use and incredibly powerful, once you know what you’re doing and how to get it set up. It’s not perfect, but that’s why it will continue to grow and change and evolve. It will probably never be as easy to use as we would all love it to be, but all us WordPress bloggers use it anyway. Because it is a great blogging platform, that offers lots of features and abilities, and the surrounding community is incredible. Is it the the most intuitive thing on the planet? FAR from it – but hey, it wasn’t made by Apple :).