Tod means Fox

Supporting decisions through sound data management

Posts Tagged Wordpress

Reorganization at TmF

May 22

Posted by Tod McKenna in Personal

Unlike the real reorganization going on at my work, this one should have a minimal impact. As you know, I have recently updated Tod means Fox to the latest version of WordPress, as well as updated the look and feel of the entire place. While I’ll continue to tweak the graphics, layout, and functionality, I think that I have finally finished reorganizing the content.

What did I do? Well, in the old version of WordPress, I had no ability to add tags (without the help of a widget, which I avoided). I was forced to rely on categories instead. A single post might end up filed under multiple categories. In theory and practice, this isn’t a big deal. Many people do it, and there are many reasons why a blog post might fit into multiple categories.

But as I wrote more over 2.5 years, my list of categories began to grow in odd directions: Partially a result of bad planning and partially because my focus here on this website has moved away from software development and more into data management. The old categories were too restrictive in some places and too broad in others. But now, I’ve carefully thought about what I want to talk about, and I’ve created categories that reflect.

So instead of using categories to drill into topics, I’ll use tags. But I’ll be careful. You can be sure that I think about the tags as much as I think about the categories. The tags will be relevant, and consistent across my postings.

New Categories

The following new categories will now be used:

Business & IT Issues
Issues and topics that relate to business and IT decisions, information management, project management, and planning. Common tags: Marketing, Productivity, Security, Compliance.
Data Management
Data management comprises all the disciplines related to managing data. Common tags: Data Warehousing, Data Integration, ETL, MDM, Data Quality, Data Profiling, SQL.
Decision Support
Everything and anything related to business intelligence which is not covered in Data Management. Common tags: Analysis, Analytical Databases, OLAP, Aggregates.
Events and Trainings
Educational and informational events, sessions, conferences, and trainings that are worth writing about.Common Tags: Conference, Training
In The News
The postings in this category come directly from current events, dispatches, and other blog posts that I find interesting. Common Tags: Globalization, Green, Security, VFP.
Personal
These topics are of a personal nature and cover topics not included elsewhere on Tod means Fox. Common tags: TmF, Family, Twitter.
Reviews
My criticism of technology and business books and articles, in which I examine the book’s content, style, and merit. Common tags: Social Science, Open Source.
Software Development
This category includes posts having to do with the research, new development, modification, reuse, re-engineering, and maintenance of software. Common tags: Visual Studio, VFP, Codeplex, SQL, C#, Debugging.

Other tags exist in addition to the ones mentioned above. I’ll be installing a tag cloud a bit later to help navigate through the new structure. I’ll also be updating my sitemap.

Consequences

Changing a post’s category has consequences, I know. If you had linked to an old category either through the Web or RSS, your link will break. The best I can say is to either subscribe to one of the new categories, or use a tag if you want to read very specific content from me (e.g. BI, DW, VFP, MDM, SOA).

Thanks for reading!

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Book Review: WordPress Theme Design

Sep 6

Posted by Tod McKenna in Reviews

wordpress theme design.thumbnail Book Review: Wordpress Theme DesignOver the past few months I’ve had the book “WordPress Theme Design” on my desk ready to be reviewed (it’s another book from Packt publishing). I finally got to it earlier this week. You can read my review over at Amazon. I gave it 3 stars mainly because it wasn’t complete and lacked some of the details I’d like to see in a “guide” book. But I can’t say I didn’t learn anything.

One of the reasons I picked up this title was because I’ve been itching to redesign Tod means Fox. I use WordPress (and like it very much) and have all the tools (and some questionable skills) for a redesign. But don’t worry, any redesign will have the same glorious orange that helps remind me of FoxPro, Firefox, ING, Packt, and Holland! But honestly, It’s been a while and I’m restless. I also want a redesign to be done entirely on my new iMac. If I do it quick enough, it will be my first real work performed on the new machine.

It turns out though that the book wasn’t very helpful. I’m sure it will sit on my shelf until some day in the distant future when its time to “clean up” the office. I’ll likely be on revision n of Tod means Fox, and who knows where WordPress will be. But I suppose that’s the nature of buying technology books.

Very few tech books stand the test of time. Those that do are usually pure reference and theory books and not how-to books.

I keep reference books (like the PHP Cookbook, The Complete Reference: MySQL, and of course the Hacker’s Guide to Visual FoxPro) at arms length. These books I go to often. Then there are the theory books. These are books I keep further away but access often — and usually not in front of the computer. Books like Kimball’s The Data Warehouse Toolkit and Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards fit into this category.

OK, enough babbling. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on a redesign, WordPress, time-tested tech books, or the fabulous color orange.

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