Sillybean

About

During the day, I work for the Texas A&M University Writing Center. Before I moved over here, I did the website for the Texas A&M System Offices, and before that I did the one for the Texas A&M Health Science Center. I love the Writing Center. It’s small, student-oriented, not very political, and relevant to my interests.

I’m pretty active in the web design community, mostly in CSS, standards, accessibility, WordPress, and higher ed. I was on the programming committee for the HighEdWeb conference from 2006 until 2009. (I still love them to bits, but I got overscheduled this year. Thank goodness they’re all on Twitter, or I’d be bereft.)

WordPress Book & Other Work

I’ve written a book, Beginning WordPress 3, published in June 2010 by Apress.

I’ve also published over a dozen plugins. Most of my themes have been proprietary client or day-job projects, but I have published a couple of demos from the book.

I publish WordPress tips on a regular basis.

Presentations

• Lots of half-day workshops on XHTML & CSS for Texas A&M designers, some solo and some with Cody Bailey, 2004-2009
• Making Do When the Web ‘Team’ Is You —  HighEdWeb 2005 (Winner, Best Showcase)
• Getting Started with WordPress Blogs — HighEdWeb 2006
• Getting Started with WordPress Blogs — HighEdWeb 2007
  • recorded again later for higheredexperts.org
• Getting Started with WordPress (not just for blogs anymore) — HighEdWeb 2008
• WordPress U — half-day workshop on WordPress as a CMS, HighEdWeb 2009
• WordPress U — one-hour edition, CASE District IV conference, April 2010
• Creating Themes for WordPress Workshop Day — half-day online workshop, April 2010 (sorry; slides & video not available for this one)
• Social Media for Higher Ed — Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC) Summer Meeting, June 2010
• I’m with Stupid — keynote, Arkansas Regional HighEdWeb conference, July 23, 2010
• What’s New in WordPress 3.0 — WordCamp Houston, August 7, 2010
• WordPress Hidden Gems — OpenCamp Dallas, August 28, 2010

Interviews

• collegewebeditor.com by Karine Joly, 2005
• Content Creation by Pem McNerney, 2010

Freelance Work

Paged Media is a web design company for authors and other publishing professionals. I also do some modifications of my WordPress plugins on occasion.

Other Projects

I have revived an abandoned open source content management system, Whisper. I’ve released one update and am working on the next version, although I got derailed for several months on the WordPress book.

I’ve written plugins and templates for Movable Type, Textpattern, Expression Engine, but I no longer use any of those CMSs, and my code is all outdated by now.

My PHP breadcrumb script is surprisingly popular for a six-year-old project.

Oh, yeah, and I write fiction in my copious spare time.