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.

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
• Panel: WordPress in the Workplace — #dfwwptech: WordPress Developer and Technical User Group in Dallas/Fort Worth, November 18, 2010.
• Tricky Migrations — WordCamp Austin, December 4, 2010.
• Creating Good Presentation Visuals (video link) — Texas A&M University Writing Center, January 2011.
• Importing & Migrating (slides, video) — WordCamp Phoenix, January 29, 2011.
• Tips and Tricks — Dallas/Fort Worth WordPress Meetup, February 26, 2011.
• 40 useful tips, smart tricks and best-kept WordPress secrets for higher education — Webinar for HigherEdExperts, March 24, 2011. 
• WordPress Hidden Gems and Tricky Migrations — Bryan/College Station WordPress Meetup, July 25, 2011.
• The WordPress University — HighEdWeb 2011 (half-day workshop) with Shelley Keith, October 23, 2011.

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. (It’s on hiatus at the moment because my business partner has a new baby and I have one on the way!) 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 seven-year-old project.

Oh, yeah, and I write fiction in my copious spare time. In April 2011, I co-hosted Paradise Lost, a Viable Paradise alumni writing workshop. We’re doing it again in 2012, this time in San Antonio.