The Story of Abe

What is my online presence, why is that, and what do I want it to be?

What is my online presence?

I spend a lot of time cruising the internet.  Much of it is spent on a small number of websites.  I check ESPN.com at least once per day, I try to check out nytimes.com and haaretz.com also every now and again.  I usually have gmail open in the background.  The site I spend the most time on, though, is google reader.  I have a large number of subscriptions there.  From Chicago sports news to tech updates to web comics to torrent feeds to culture web magazines to really random stuff.

While I may read a lot, I subscribe to very few websites, and comment on even fewer.  [A few months ago, I got really excited about something I found, and commented about it on a website.  Seconds later someone pointed out how very wrong I was…]  There is something about logging in to sites that doesn’t click with me.  Even more so, commenting is a strangely public thing that I just don’t feel comfortable with. » Read the rest of this entry «

I suppose, seeing as though I’m a web developer, my first post on my new WordPress blog should be about WordPress.

I first encountered WordPress a number of years ago when I was working on a project that never took off.  I was intrigued by the idea of a simple interface for bloggers, and especially the multi-blog features.

Last year I took on a large project that I ended up basing on the Joomla framework.  That was a very interesting experience.  I found some parts of Joomla to be fantastic for giving me a platform on which to create, but other times it was a stifling mass of code. In particular, I needed to create registration forms with numerous fields. I spent a significant amount of time downloading, installing, testing, and rejecting various Joomla form components.  I decided that I didn’t like any of them.  Mostly, it was the clunky way you created new forms.  They were trying so hard to create dynamic interfaces, but none of them were something I felt comfortable putting in front of the client without giving them a week long seminar in how to use it. » Read the rest of this entry «