For one, I needed a page that would display posts from my EchoDitto blog and EchoDitto labs blog. I probably over-engineered this (in fact, I know I did), but rather than keep it simple… I downloaded and installed FeedWordpress. This plugin reminds me of Feeds (and Feed Aggregator) for Drupal – it basically does the same thing. I can pull a feed in from anywhere, and it creates posts from that feed as posts on my site. You can see this in action here. I set it up to automatically categorize posts in a certain category, and then created a page template to have it display posts of that category using <?php query_posts(‘category_name=echoditto’); ?>. This is the part I’m sure I over-engineered. There must be an easier way.

In any case…

The second plugin I am using is called Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu. Another comparison: this one is quite like Administration Menu for Drupal. It provides a nice admin menu. It removes the standard sidebar admin menu and instead gives you a horizontal one at the top with dropdowns. You can customize colors, remove the WordPress admin header (as I have done here).

Other than that, the plugins I have installed are relatively standard. I’ve made some theme tweaks (this one is from WooThemes), including adding a “Post a Comment” link in the left sidebar for each post and changing the link colors to NOT be a hideous red (sorry theme developer, I do love the theme though). I still need to fix instances of text running out of appropriate areas (twitter links in the sidebar) and figure out how to actually blog on this thing regularly.

- I’ve become really interested and fully invested in upping my technical skills, particularly w/ php, mysql, Drupal, etc. More to come on that subject.

- Despite my recent struggles with WordPress I’ve decided to keep this blog on WordPress for the time being. I don’t love WordPress for many reasons, but I don’t hate it either. It makes blogging pretty easy, and as long as that’s all you want to do it definitely works. Redesign forthcoming. I have a ‘real’ website in development elsewhere. I started development on it in WordPress and am slowly moving over to Drupal.

- I also have a pretty fun php project in the works. Launches in early September. Stay tuned.

- Check out centerfieldgate.com, a Washington Nationals blog customized and maintained by yours truly. You may remember a post from last year in which I mentioned my work on river-dogz. I’m happy to say that my skillz are a bit better than back then. Granted I’m using a stock theme but all of it just generally looks better. It’s also a recent addition to the NL East Chatter community. Hawt.

- I helped out a bunch on masspoetry.org and attended the festival last October. I’m not helping as much with it this year given other commitments but it’s still a really awesome event so you should probably go to masspoetry.org. Masspoetry.org. Oh also, you’re only cool if you actually attend the festival!

- I developed and was tech support for vetsforobama.org during most of his campaign until the campaign actually took the site over. That’s probably the site I am most proud of on my resume, given tons of custom design work and functionality, trying to manage a massive petition, and pretty much always being on call for any site issues despite my objections (“I have a job!”). They had to take the site down for legal reasons after the campaign ended, but maybe I’ll find a screenshot and post it later. He won, too, so that doesn’t hurt.

- I also did The Truth About Palin and The Truth About McCain. Tumblr is fun.

- I moved to Boston from DC successfully, with my 2 cats. I’m in the same crappy apartment but moving to a better one soon (September 1).

- Oh, I signed up for Twitter. If you came here from me posting a link to Twitter, that’s awesome. If not, email me if you want my twitter name or just want to stalk me.

- that reminds me, I need to set up a penfall.com email address

- I’m getting a new iPhone, suckas.

- I may start to write those Musings again soon. Maybe musings from Cambridge? Ideas are welcome.

I think that’s it. I’m on the Acela to DC at the moment, it’s 7am, I’ve been awake for 3 hours and only got 3.5hrs of sleep. I have a long day ahead, a long week ahead, and I’ve officially exhausted my want or ability to write (or say?) anything creative at least for the next 24 hours. Time to go check Google Analytics and see if Tweeting about this made any difference in site traffic.

So I’ve decided to get some real hosting (you know, paid hosting…) for this site so I can install fun things and make it more interesting. But I’m nervous about transferring the hosting for this site. Will I lose data? What if something happens? Is it really as easy as going to bluehost and clicking on “transfer client?”

Suggestions, anyone?

Since being at South by Southwest and doing my best to blog about all of the amazing panels I have attended (or at least take detailed notes for future posts), I’ve come to the realization that I have deprived my loyal readers (all four of you) of my daily rantings, ravings, thoughts, insights, poems, and everything else.

Well, that’s going to change, starting now. I’m committing myself to at least 5 posts per week, if not more. Welcome back Penfall lovers – I have returned!