Category Archives: Web Development

Week 17: Tutorial – How To Install A WordPress Website From Scratch

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I created this tutorial a while back, but hadn’t posted if because I’d put this site aside for a little while and sort of forgot about it. In this tutorial I show how to set up a WordPress website from scratch, including registering a domain and a server account, setting up an email address at your new domain, installing WP, and setting up some basic functionality with your new site.

There are a few potential server hosts you could go with, but I highly recommend Bluehost, and this tutorial involves their particular platform. I’ve had various websites hosted with them for several years now and I’ve never had any desire to switch to another hosting service. The package you get is as good as it gets (can host unlimited domains, unlimited emails, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited GB of server space, etc.), and the price is quite low.

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial. If you’re interested in additional steps to customizing your WordPress website, let me know and I’ll put something together. But for right now, I need to switch things up again, so I think my next post will be more music. 🙂

Week 10: InityPirates.com

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This week’s creation came at the request of a regular Inity Studios artist named Chris Tipsy who wanted a place to share his 2011 release The Game Of Life Mixtape. I’ve long thought that it would be great to have our own private, customizable place where we could give away music created by myself and other Inity artists for those who would otherwise seek to download a pirated copy elsewhere. With Chris’ suggestion I thought why not include our local, connected musical family and make a broader community out of it?

InityPirates.com is a site based on “permissive piracy”. It’s permissive because, well, the artists said it’s okay. But it’s piracy ’cause free, full, high quality mp3s of entire albums that are for sale elsewhere is as good as robbery! Of course, you can always make a donation to the artist(s) if you choose to.

The site will have Inity Studios artist, as well as our friends, including artists recorded by Diverse and others. It is newly built, so will have more artists and albums added soon. I haven’t even got any of my own tunes up there yet! But there are a few artists with great music up there already.

Delay and Perfect, or Warts and All?

Although the site does just fine it’s main purpose of making mp3s available for playing or downloading, there’s still many problems with the site at the moment. For starters, the social sharing doesn’t seem to function as it should. Also, getting the PayPal donation button to work properly has proven equally difficult, so I had to leave it out for the time being. There’s some fundamental issues with the way the artist/album pages are generated that I haven’t been able to resolve yet.

But, as much as the perfectionist in me wants to fix all that before launching, Weekly Creations is all about getting something finished and posted. It’s Saturday night, at the end of week 10 of the year, and there’s no delaying tonight’s post. I’m proud of myself for keeping to schedule this far! The perfectionist in me cringes each weekend. But I’m glad to be posting. 🙂

So here it is, warts and all: InityPirates.com

 

Week 7: InityTV.com Updates – New Design & 15 New Channels

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Two weeks ago I posted about Inity TV for week 5’s creation. This past week I’ve updated the site with a new design and 15 new channels, including some of my personal favorites like Discovery, Comedy, A&E, Spike and TSN and bringing the total channel count to 52!

New Design

Earlier this week I launched the new design. I personally have a widescreen monitor, but after hearing from others who don’t and trying out InityTV.com on my laptop, I found that the channel selector on the side didn’t work well for most users because it always had to be manually opened and closed. I resolved this issue by having the channel menu slide up from a bar along the bottom, and then slide out of the way again when you click on the next channel you’d like to view.

I also added some nicer looking graphic design. The old look was bland – just something to get by. I like the feel of the new look. Here’s a side-by-side comparison:

Eew, gross!

Mmmmm, sexy!

 15 New Channels – 52 Total

Wooohooo! New channels are always good! I wanted to put these ones in from the beginning but they don’t load within the Inity frame, so I had to devise some solutions. The only option for the time being is to have them come up as a pop-up video player window. I was hoping to avoid that, but it’s the only choice for now.

The new channels are amongst the best on the site! Here’s a list of all the InityTV channels.

General

  • CTV
  • CBC
  • Global Television
  • TVO
  • City TV
  • TV Tropolis
  • APTN
  • Canoe TV

Comedy

  • Comedy
  • Bite

Music

  • Much Music
  • MTV Canada
  • MTV2
  • Aux
  • BET
  • CMT
  • Juicebox

Kids

  • Treehouse
  • Disney XD
  • Teletoon
  • YTV
  • Family

Education

  • History Television
  • Food Network
  • HGTV
  • TED
  • Discovery
  • Space

Documentary

  • A&E
  • Bravo
  • Biography
  • National Geographic Channel
  • Nat Geo Wild

Late Night

  • Showcase
  • Action
  • Spike

Movies

  • Silver Screen Classics

Sports

  • TSN
  • Sportsnet
  • NHL
  • Toronto FC

News

  • CTV News
  • Sun News
  • Global News
  • CPAC
  • The Weather Network
  • C-SPAN
  • BNN

Specialty

  • Fashion Television
  • Out TV
  • Slice
  • Grace TV

Hope you enjoy the updated InityTV.com!

Week 5: InityTV.com

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I love this week’s creation!

I’ve been wanting to cancel my cable for a veeeeery long time.I always feel like I’m being ripped off ’cause there’s so much good content online for free. Why am I paying for both? It’s so expensive, but when you just want to relax for an hour and put something on, it’s so very convenient.

Well, I’ve taken the time to scour the interwebs and find all the goodness of tv land, and put it all together in one place so you can essentially channel surf through the video pages of tv network websites! It’s called InityTV.

The main thing I’ve never liked about watching TV online is that it’s so hard to find the various networks or programs you want without having to do a bunch of Google searches. Here’s a way to watch TV online for free, from an aggregate of your favorite networks video websites! Inity TV is sort of like a search engine like Google, or a discovery site like Digg, but focused solely on cable channels that are providing full episodes of their shows online for all to watch. It’s sort of like a free Netflix!

There’s still some bugs to work out. I plan to change the channel navigation to a smoother and less obtrusive design. Maybe a few other things too. Please test it out and let me know how to make it better.

And if you like it and find it useful, please SHARE IT!!

Week 2: SolarElectricExchange.com

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Well, I was hoping to post a new song recording or DIY project this week, but I’ve been pretty tied up ’til today, and recording just wasn’t working out when I took a stab at it. Fortunately, what I’ve been tied up with this week was an excellent website project! With last week’s creation being this very website, I was reluctant to focus this week’s creation on another web project. But I quite like the site, as well as the cause.

Solar Electric Exchange are a GTA (Greater Toronto Area) based solar panel installation company. In Ontario, the government is supporting the solar power industry by paying out $0.80/kWh to the owners of solar panels set up to contribute to the grid. As such, Ontario is quickly becoming a world leader in green energy production because it’s not only a conscientious choice, but it’s a great high-return investment.

I created the site on the WordPress platform. I love WordPress!! WeeklyCreations.com is built on WordPress as well. This open source software started as a blogging platform, but has grown into an exceptionally dynamic tool that can function as the back-end to virtually any type of contemporary website. Not only is it so well written and flexible enough of a platform that you can get a basic site up in minutes (like the initial launch of this site), but it’s also exceptionally user friendly to update, so clients love it! And with it being so flexible and dynamic, you can make a site as simple or complex as the circumstances require and always end up with something awesome.

Most of the additional functionality of SolarElectricExchange.com came from the vast selection of available WP plugins. There’s literally tens of thousands of them to choose from. Those were then embellished and sown together with some graphic design. I use Photoshop when I design. Having friends who have worked on half-million dollar websites for major name-brand clients because they can do magic when it comes to graphic design, I’m quite humble about my design skills. These days there’s a tonne of tutorials online to teach you just about anything that’s possible with Photoshop – thank God. 🙂

Week 1: The Weekly Creations Website

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Okay, so for the first week’s creation, and to start of the Weekly Creations endeavor, I’ve created this Weekly Creations website! It’s nice and simple – designed to get the job done, not glorify it. You can check out the About page for some basic info on this site and what it’s for.

It’s a simple site, but I hope it’ll be a great foundation for this endeavor. I’ve added some basic functionality, like a social plugin, a contact form and some pic changes and other minor tweaks to the basic theme. But in the spirit of social collaboration, I’d love to hear some thoughts on what would make this site better, while keeping it simple. Please comment!

And while I have a few things in mind, I’d also love to hear some ideas for future weekly creations topics!

Until next week, stay creative.