I might package this up into a plugin at some point, but right now I’m just going to throw it up here for use in custom themes.

Here is the code you can use to create a basic, horizontal Pinterest share button on your site.

This code assumes that it’s either on a single post page or in the loop. It assumes you want to use the full size featured post image as the Pin image. It assumes you want to use the post title as the Pin description. If those things aren’t true, you’ll need to modify the code below to suit your needs.

This might not be perfect, it’s down and dirty and should really only be used if you’re fairly comfortable modifying/working on your WordPress theme.

<?php
global $post;
$pin_url = '';
if (has_post_thumbnail( $post->ID ) ){
	$image = wp_get_attachment_image_src( get_post_thumbnail_id( $post->ID ), 'single-post-thumbnail' );
	$pin_url = $image[0];
}
 
$pin_title = urlencode(get_the_title());
?>
<a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=<?php echo urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID)); ?>&media=<?php echo $pin_url; ?>&description=<?php echo $pin_title; ?>" class="pin-it-button" count-layout="horizontal">Pin It</a>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js"></script>

In this post I’m sort of covering two things:
1. A review of The Guild web series
2. My thoughts on the genre of web series/shows

First off, The Guild is simply hilarious. It stars Felicia Day as well as a great ensemble cast along with some pretty impressive cameos. The show follows the real life dealings of an MMORPG guild. I’ll let you do some searching if you don’t understand the words I used in that last sentence. However, even if you’ve never played an online RPG (role playing game) you can still enjoy the series universal nerd humor. There are currently 5 seasons. Each season consists of ~12 episodes that are 5-10 minutes long, so it’s not a huge commitment, but the episodes are long enough that the plot can move along and we can see some character development.

You can watch all five seasons here (season 6 is supposed to be coming soon): Watch The Guild Online

Now onto the more broad topic of web series in general.

I really like and support the idea of web series. It allows actors, producers and other content creators to really explore and build their pet projects. The Guild was originally written to be a TV show. I could see it gaining some traction as a TV show, but would it get enough viewers to stay on the air for multiple seasons? Probably not. It caters to a niche. That niche happens to spend a lot of time in front of their computers. This makes a web series a perfect fit for this audience. As of right now The Guild has several million (with an m) viewers. I don’t have the raw numbers, but I know during season 1 the numbers were a fraction of what they are now. The series was able to slowly grow by appealing to a niche audience and taking advantage of social media to spread the message. The first season was shot in standard definition across a few locations. The fourth and fifth seasons were shot on obviously (semi) professional sets and had some basic special effects mixed in as well. The production values are getting better and better as the show goes on.

Web series allow a show to slowly grow and tell a story, instead of forcing the show to get 5 million viewers per episode, simply to not get canceled on network television.

I am personally very excited about this emerging new genre/market and I especially look forward to the next season of The Guild.

A bargain in my opinion at only .99

Most people probably associate drinking events in Savannah to the (usually week long) St. Patrick’s Day festivities, which have an almost Mardi Gras atmosphere. The Craft Brew Fest was almost the opposite of this. There were no beads, no public indecency and no public urination.

There were only 3000+ people who love beer and a good time. If you happen to be in the Savannah area next September I highly recommend this event. The cost of tickets ($30-40 depending on how you buy) is well worth it due to the unlimited amount of quality beer you can [safely] consume.

Here are some pictures I took.

It’s over on the Nicasio Design Blog, so go check it out.

Read More at Nicasio Design →

How I did it after the break.

It was pretty simple to get going. I searched for a domain name that worked (dc1.me), registered it and pointed it to my hosting account to get started.

Next I installed YOURLS, an open source URL shortening system, that I was able to very quickly install on my server. I just FTPed the files up, created the database, created a config file and I was good to go. Once I logged in I started playing around with creating new URLs and found everything working just fine right out of the box.

Now I had my own URL shortener, but without integration into my everyday life it wasn’t going to do me much good. I first set my new YOURL install to be my custom URL shortening service in Tweetdeck (my preferred desktop Twitter app). Those instructions can be found here.

Next I installed the YOURLS plugin on my WordPress sites. Adjusted a few settings and my new URL shortener is now WordPress’s default shortener. The plugin also has an option for auto tweeting with your new custom short-url, but I chose to have it only automatically generate the URL for now.

There is also a handy bookmarklet you can copy from the site admin area which you can place on your bookmarks toolbar. So now I’m good to go, total integration!

While cForms got the job done, there were several issues that bothered me. This is a brief comparison of the 2 plugins and why I will be using Gravity Forms from now on.

cForms Grievances

Now keep in mind that cForms is a free plugin while Gravity Forms is paid, so we aren’t exactly comparing apples to apples here. I also resepect the developer(s) of cForms a lot and thank them for putting a robust plugin out there for free. That being said there were several things that cForms did that made me willing to drop a couple of Benjamins on Gravity Forms.

1. Easily corrupted data – I don’t know why, but any time I moved a site that used cForms (example: moving from a dev environment to a live environment), the cForms data would be come corrupted. This was extremely annoying and required several extra steps to get up and running
2. Automatically inserted link back – Any cForms form you create automatically has a link back to the cForms site at the bottom.  As a plugin author myself, I see nothing wrong with getting a little link love, but you have to make it opt in rather than opt out (and the only way to opt out was to hide it with CSS).
3. cForms does it’s own JS and CSS inclusions – There are functions in WordPress that allow plugins to include JavaScript and CSS code in the head area in such a way that it won’t interfere with other plugins, and is loaded in the correct manner. cForms justs adds their own stuff to the head which can be problematic. This is particularly annoying on e-commerce sites where you need to force SSL usage. You almost always get a warning because cForms JS and CSS files are loaded without https://
4. Changing Styling Could be Tricky – cForms used its own styling system which made it slightly more annoying to customize the style and layout of forms.
5. No Conditional Logic – Maybe I missed this somewhere in cForms, but I have never been able to find a way to easily implement conditional logic in a form with cForms.
6. No Built in Support for Front End posting – This is more of a “missing feature” than a bug, but it is something that Gravity Forms has that I plan on making use of.

Cool Stuff About Gravity Forms

1. Front End Posting – Unlike cForms, Gravity Forms allows you to create forms which allow for creating posts from the front end. I haven’t really had a chance to play with this too much, but I can already think of several places this would have come in handy on past projects.
2. Solid Email Customizations – I really like how the notification system in Gravity Forms works. Simple interface with lots of customizations
3. Database Tracking – While both cForms and Gravity Forms both have database tracking/export options, IMHO the Gravity Forms implementation wins out.
4. Editor Button – For some reason the WordPress editor button in cForms always seems to interfere with some other plugin I’m running. I haven’t encountered anything like that with Gravity Forms.
5. Support – This isn’t really a fair comparison since we’re talking free vs. paid, but the added support for Gravity Forms is nice. Being a developer I doubt that I’ll use the support that much, but it’s always nice to know that it’s there if you need it. cForms does have a decent little support forum, but it can be hit or miss.
6. Add Ons – Probably one of the coolest thing about Gravity Forms are the add ons. Right now there are only 3, but according to the chatter on Twitter, several others are already in the works. Being able to tweak the plugin’s functionality with add ons on a site by site basis is a huge plus for me. cForms does have the ability to tie in custom functionality through a custom functions file, but this is more reminiscent of the old WordPress My Hacks functionality than the way modern plugins should work.

Conclusion

So there you have it. The reasons that I switched from cForms to Gravity Forms. Full disclosure, the links in this post are my affiliate link to Gravity Forms. If you read this blog or my posts at Nicasio, you know I almost never personally endorse anything, but I will if I use it and like it, as is the case with Gravity Forms

I use Tweetdeck all the time on my desktop and I have been anxiously waiting until it was released for Android so I can have the same functionality with me anywhere I go. Now I have it, as Tweetdeck for Android Beta is officially out.

This app has replaced Tweetcaster, Facebook, and Foursquare for me on my phone. Now I only have 1 sleek app running in the background at any given time. I love that I can get updates from all my social media services and share across all of them as well.

The only thing missing for me is support for Facebook Places which seems like it would be easy enough to integrate into a production version.

I do have somewhat good excuses though. I’ve released a new WordPress plugin called Related Posts by Category Widget. I spoke about Automating Your WordPress Plugins With WP-Cron at WordCamp Savannah. I’ve been working on custom web apps for Fortune 500 clients at Nicasio Design. I’ve also been spending way too much time playing with the new Tweetdeck for Android app. I’ve also been trying to spend as much time as possible at Tybee Beach this summer.

So as you can see I’ve been pretty busy, and any blog negligence should be promptly excused.

Not a bad little tool.

My Flavors.me Page →

Chuck Norris wrote a plugin once. It was called “Roundhouse Kick”. It had to be removed from the repository due to the number of fatalities.

WordPress and Web Design Chuck Norris Facts →

Note that the sample size was only 5k people, so more research into this matter would help.

More at CrunhGear →

K-9 Mail is almost everything I want in a mail client. Clean interface, multiple accounts, batch operations, configurable check times and more. This app is a must have if you’re an email junkie.

Some very telling information here including info on the guy behind the program and some new comments from past students.

More at Stryde Hax→

Video after the break.