Darren Hoyt Dot Com

May 2009

Thu 7^th

Creating a Flickr Carousel in Expression Engine

Flickr is still one of my favorite online services in terms of features and interface. The Uploadr tool also makes it an especially easy image-hosting solution for clients who are out in the field, taking their own photos, and updating them frequently. Lately a few Expression Engine clients have needed to display their photostream dynamically [...]

Tue 28^th

A New Design and Game Plan

This spring brought a few surprises which inspired the site redesign. The biggest was that my wife got into grad school in NYC so we’re currently scrambling to find an apartment and start new lives. It also means I’ll be taking the plunge and beginning a freelance design career.

Sun 15^th

Mimbo Pro 2.0 Released

As Ben Gillbanks already mentioned, last week we quietly released a major upgrade of the Mimbo Pro theme for WordPress. Older quirks were smoothed out, suggestions from the forum were implemented, as well as vital new features we both felt were necessary.

Tue 3^rd

Best Designs of 2008, from the Client's Perspective

Every client I meet with is given a questionnaire beforehand so they can clarify their design tastes. It usually includes links to galleries like StyleGala or Web Creme (or my own Yahoo Pipes gallery mashup feed) to get them started. During the meeting, we discuss their responses and analyze their favorite designs on a large screen projector.

Fri 30^th

Mimbo 3.0 Released

The theme is new and improved, but the download page remains the same. Please have a look and go play around with the live Mimbo 3.0 demo.
Thu 8^th

Interviews with Church Designers

Browsing the various CSS galleries is one way to gauge which industries place value on good design. I was surprised these past couple years to see a big surge in lavishly designed church websites. As a non-churchgoer, I wasn’t sure I understood why so many churches suddenly wanted a cutting-edge image for themselves.
Wed 7^th

Update: Spider, Frog and Turtle

Late last summer, I blogged about 3 critters my girlfriend and I had found nearly drowning in a pool filter. Since then, the story has gotten some exposure.

Sat 20^th

A Twitter I Would Pay For

To be blunt, I’ll admit: I’ve poked fun at Twitter since the very beginning. Because it seemed like fluff, like noise, because it reduced smart people to oversharing narcissists, because it created strange, artificial, disproportionate popular kid/unpopular kid/cult leader/sheep hierarchies. I felt dorky just saying the word Twitter.
Thu 4^th

Effectively Advertising an RSS Feed

Google Reader’s popularity is surging and the number of people consuming web content via RSS readers has grown overall, but no one’s claiming RSS is a mainstream concept just yet. It’s mostly the geeks and early-adopters who know what it is and what to do with it, thus they don’t need to be sold on whether a blog offers an RSS feed…
Tue 2^nd

Dreaming of the Portable Workspace

For ten years, I’ve wanted the ability to develop websites comfortably on any system. This means traveling to South America somewhere, sitting down at a public computer in a coffee shop and having all my bookmarks, RSS feeds, applications and development files available. I’m pretty picky about streamlining my workflow, so a truly portable workspace would be ideal.

Wed 22^nd

Creating Custom Listings with Expression Engine, Part II

In Part I of the tutorial, we learned how to use Expression Engine’s control panel to set up a custom field group which powers our “Homes” listings. In Part II, we learn how to upload, resize and display images in a variety of contexts.
Tue 21^st

WordPress as a CMS: Making Your Content Unbreakable

It might surprise you how infrequently I build WordPress sites intended for actual blogging. More often, I’m building 15- or 20-page websites for businesses who need a bunch of static content displayed in a variety of ways. Some of this can be accomplished with plugins, but the rest must be inserted in the post-edit screen, making things messy for the client.
Fri 3^rd

Improvisation in Design

On days when I’m not designing mockups, I’m creating paintbrushes and downloading textures and editing Kuler palettes, organizing them all in a central library, plus writing documentation, chipping away at baseline PSDs, CSS and WordPress frameworks, and generally streamlining the process. Setting the Rules and Regulations for the design department is part of my job description. This can be a double-edged sword.

Thu 18^th

Exploring WordPress Frameworks and Child Themes

If you’ve been keeping up with Ian Stewart’s ThemeShaper blog this summer (if you haven’t, you should be looking deep within yourself to ask why not), you’ve seen loads of documentation for his WordPress framework, Thematic and the various child themes which inherit their power from Thematic’s mothership functionality.
Sun 14^th

Notes on the Agregado Theme

Since Agregado launched on Monday, we’ve had about 3500 downloads plus a lot of questions about how it works and why it was made. Here’s a bit more documentation to add to what Smashing already published.
Wed 10^th

Agregado 1.2 Released

More feedback, more changes to the theme, thanks again for everyone’s testing and patience.
Tue 9^th

Agregado 1.1 Released

The response to the Agregado release has been fantastic and the folks at Smashing were great to collaborate with. Here are some changes we’ve already made
Mon 8^th

Agregado Lifestream Theme for WordPress Released

Agregado is a WordPress theme by Darren Hoyt and Matt Dawson, commissioned by the folks at Smashing Magazine. It features a built-in lifestream module and contact form with with custom control panel options.