Hello. My name is Harry Wolff.

I am a web developer working at GetGlue.

I enjoy tweeting, taking pictures, and making movies.

This is where I write.

Permalink Structure Update

Posted on 05/02/2012 by Harry

I’ve just updated the permalink structure of the URLs for this blog.

Previously I was using the ‘month and name’ configuration for each post, i.e. this post would be “/2012/05/post-name”.

My main problem with this structure was the impersonal tone it set for each post. Rather than each post being unique, important, and self-contained, the numerical structure set a very ordered tone for the posts. That being that each post was sequential and the order held some importance, when in reality that was far from true.

Keeping the URL scheme as just “/post-name” will now put the focus on the content and not the blog as a whole. Often-times I update posts and at that point I always ask myself, “Should I update the URL as well?”. Also I find it much more important to know when a post was last updated than when it was first created. Look to a theme change to reflect that desire.

On a technical note I used the following post by Yoast to help with my URL migration. This way old URLs won’t point to dead 404 pages and users will still be able to see the content they requested.

Version 0.3 of HarryWolff WordPress Theme In Use

Posted on 04/25/2012 by Harry

Well, look what we have here!

If you would be so kind as to look around you’ll notice that this blog has a new paint of coat. This paint of coat is one that I’m particularly happy with as it’s the first WordPress theme I’ve used for this blog that I created myself.

I shouldn’t take all the credit. This theme is still a child-theme of the already excellent Twenty Eleven theme (which was the theme I was using previously). However this child-theme has enough design of my own making that I feel comfortably calling it my own theme.

But wait! There’s more!

Along with creating this new theme I’ve also begun to develop it openly. You can view the source code for this theme on its GitHub page. Any changes that you see appear on this blog will appear in that repo. Watch it for fun, or ignore it for glee.

There’s still a few things left that I need to do with this redesign. I need to add a few more splotches of color (somewhere, not really sure where) and also fix up any other styling issues that might pop up. But I was so eager to start using this theme that I figured there was nothing to lose by switching over to it today.

Development Notes

In case you’re curious I grabbed the background repeating pattern from Subtle Patterns. It’s a great design resource to add just that right hint of flavor to the background. I might try a few different backgrounds but for now I’m quite pleased with ‘furley_bg’.

Also I’ve started an important practice while developing this theme: using a local dev environment. This is awesome for two very important reasons:

Any changes I make to my local environment don’t affect my live blog.
The workflow is much, much faster. Since all files are local the time it takes to refresh the page to see how my changes look is close to nil.

I’ve also kept my ‘wp-content’ folder out of my local WordPress installation. It was getting lost amidst the rest of WordPress files so I moved it into my root directory, which you can see in my GitHub repo.

I followed the information given here on how to move your wp-content and you can see how it looks in my wp-config.php file on my repo. This made the entire dev process much more enjoyable.

And as they say, a happy dev is a productive dev.

How To Choose a WordPress Theme

Posted on 01/08/2012 by Harry

The old saying goes, ‘the clothes don’t make the man’, to which I reply, ‘Yes that may be true, but they certainly don’t hurt.’

For instance, take this blog. For the past few months I’ve used one theme that – while not ugly – wasn’t the best looking theme in the world. The readability of the text could have been better, the page elements were too close to each other, and (despite originally desiring) there was far too much white space.

When I chose to that theme my process for making my decision was to look for all the features that I wanted. That list remains largely unchanged: the theme must be clean and minimalistic while making it easy to read the content – be it text or visual.

The main problem of looking for a theme in this way is that most themes seemed to fit my requirements. I found it very easy to convince myself that most themes I found fit my requirements. This process wasn’t efficient and caused me to deliberate much more than necessary.
Continue reading →

Updated Blog Theme, Using Twenty Eleven

Posted on 01/05/2012 by Harry

For a while I’ve been itching to use a new theme for this blog. That’s why starting today I’ve switched over to using one of the latest WordPress default themes ‘Twenty Eleven’. Some of the things that I love about this theme is its awesome readability, support of post types, and compatibility with all the plugins that I use.

I intend to slowly make edits and customizations to these theme so don’t be shocked to see things moved around one day. To be honest I was hoping to have more customizations ready to show off today but time wasn’t my friend.

It’s my expectation that this new theme will make reading my blog more enjoyable. There is now much more white space around the text, making the process of enjoying the words a little less cramped and a little more fun.

This theme also gets rid of the fixed menus on the left. I liked those guys at first but I’ve grown to find them very annoying.

Also something else that I’m excited about with this new theme is its support for Aside posts. An Aside post is an update that is usually a link to a trailer or a cool YouTube video: something which I want to share but doesn’t need a full-fledged post. I hope to take advantage of this short-form post and share even more fun links I find throughtout the day.

Till next time.

Import Posterous Posts Into WordPress

Posted on 01/02/2012 by Harry

Even though I’ve been using Posterous to host my photo blog for the past few months I’ve begun to grow weary of not using WordPress. While Posterous is easy to use I don’t feel like I’m in complete possession of all the content I’ve been creating. With that in mind, last night I started the process of exporting my Posterous posts and importing them into a WordPress installation.

Exporting posts from Posterous was not as easy as I had hoped. There is no native export tool on Posterous’ website nor any 3rd-party Posterous export tool.

After a fair amount of searching I found the only way to get my posts out of Posterous was to use WordPress’ import Posterous tool.
Continue reading →

WordPress 3.3 ‘Sonny’ Released

Posted on 12/13/2011 by Harry

This blog has been updated to the latest version of WordPress, version 3.3 ‘Sonny’. This new version comes with an improved admin experience, enhanced uploader, and a lot more. Check out the blog announcement on WordPress.org and watch the video to see what is in this upgrade.

If you use WordPress I wholeheartedly encourage you to upgrade your installation. Not only do updates bring about great new features but they also always come with increased security, making your blogging experience safer and secure.

I haven’t delved too far into all the changes WordPress 3.3 offers but I know I’m already digging the new admin experience.

Go upgrade now and enjoy a new and improved WordPress.

The Magic Bullet To Write More Often

Posted on 11/10/2011 by Harry

Every so often I get the idea that if I were to blog underneath a different name I’d blog more often. I get some weird idea that because I actually blog as my ‘real life self’ that I’m inhibited in what I say and how I often I post.

To that I call bullshit. If I wanted to blog more often I would – pen-name be damned. The only real reason I don’t blog as much as I want to is because other things in my life get in the way. Like work. Or social life. Or just living. You know, that thing that is done away from the computer. Something that I don’t take part in nearly enough.

Sadly I don’t call bullshit on myself nearly enough. Sometimes I’ll get so carried away that the magic bullet to get myself to write more is to create a new anonymous alias for myself, register a new domain name as anonymously as possible, and then blog posts will just start to flow.

That’s a crock of shit and I know it. Although sometimes I wish there was a magic bullet to get me to post more. And then I start setting up a new WordPress blog, and before I know it I’ve wasted 3 hours not writing a blog post and having nothing to show for my time.

Ah well. So it goes.

New Theme, ‘Ari’

Posted on 09/06/2011 by Harry

If you can’t tell, I’ve changed the theme of my blog. The old one was beginning to grow old for me. I liked a lot of what it did, which is why I haven’t switched to a radically different layout, but I was yearning for something a little more fresh. (Also the font choices on the old theme were beginning to really grate on me. They didn’t make any sense and seemed to arbitrarily capitalize things with no reason arbitrarily. Just like that sentence.)

So this new theme’s name is Ari. I found it from this post about WordPress themes and downloaded it from the official WordPress theme repository (which always makes me feel safer).

It has three columns like the old theme with the left column staying fixed as you scroll.

For comparison’s sake here’s what the old theme looked like:

As you can see, not much different.

But as everyone likes to say, it’s the little things that matter! And matter they do!

Quick Picture Posting

Posted on 05/22/2011 by Harry

The first picture app I started using was Picplz on my Android phone. There wasn’t any other options for me to go to. At the time the app that had all the media in a tizzy was Instagram – and they were iPhone only.

But I wanted to post my pictures – easily and quickly too! And starting out picplz handled that quite handsomely. So I went on my merry way, snapping pictures on my Droid and using picplz to get them online quickly.

And then the Verizon iPhone came out and I gobbled one up as fast as I could. I installed both picplz and Instagram on my phone right away – Instagram to try out and picplz to resume my account.

I tried out Instagram quickly and swiftly After running through its basic feature set I deleted it out of a sense of loyalty to picplz.

I should let it be known that when I first started using Picplz its quite affable and friendly founder – Dalton – quickly followed my account and liked a picture of mine. I further went on to write an unofficial WordPress Picplz widget that was again liked by Dalton and praised by other Picplz users. All of this instilled in me a relatively strong sense of loyalty to Picplz that I find kind of hard to break.

So today I’m on my second day of vacation in Miami and ready and willing to share my experiences through pictures. I would normally turn to Picplz to help me accomplish this task however recently two points of friction have caused me to not use Picplz as frequently.
Continue reading →

WordPress JetPack

Posted on 03/17/2011 by Harry

Just got started with WordPress new and most excellent plug-in JetPack. The gist of this doo-hickey is that it brings all of the advanced features and benefits of having a hosted WordPress.com blog to every self-hosted WordPress.org blog. In laymen terms that means that I now have access to neat hover-cards, improved Site Stats UI, and WP.me short-links – to name a few. I haven’t had an extended amount of time to play around with every aspect of JetPack but from what I see so far this plug-in seems like a must-have for every WordPress.org blogger. Kudos WordPress team.