On a recent project I needed to extend the WordPress search functionality to search tags, categories, pages and posts. The default search function only searches post content. Through a bit of searching I found the Search Everything plugin.

This plugin ties in with the default WordPress search and allows you to search everything from categories to comments. You can also exclude certain categories, posts and pages from the search. Pretty handy and painless to setup.

In case you haven’t heard us yelling from the rooftops, our new product ClubDivot is almost in Beta! We launched a sign up page for those that want to be beta testers, which means you get to try it first before everyone else and tell us how rad it is or what it needs. We are excited to get some actual humans on our site and we have a lot to get done in the next few weeks as we get ready to launch the beta.

In case you aren’t familiar with the product, basically it makes your golf schedule easier to manage. We provide ways for you to send tee time invitations to your friends and business contacts and ClubDivot has a calendar view that will sync with your iCal or Outlook. We make it easy to book online and provide ways for small clubs to keep track of and communicate with its members. Pretty awesome if you ask me.

We hope to launch in the next few weeks, so get ready to PLAY MORE GOLF!

The golf pros

Golfin' it up!

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

Eric will be trying this in 2012, go team fourfour!

Sleigh Bells

Found a RAD new music site/player called thesixtyone that lets you listen to and purchase music.  I can’t really explain why it’s cool, you are just gonna have to check it out for yourself.

Song of the day: Kids by Sleigh Bells

Check it out!

When I say WordPress, you say…?  Blog.  It’s true many a great blog were designed on WordPress, it’s one of the more successful web apps and blogging platforms online today.  But did you know that you can also use WordPress to build a fully customizable website?  In fact the post you are reading right now is on the WordPress platform.  The reason we chose WordPress for our fourfour media site is simple: it’s easy to install, it’s free, VERY customizable and it’s easy to update.  We’ve also set up a few of our clients on WordPress because it speeds up the development process or just so the client can get creative update the content as often as they like.

Some of the WordPress features that we love include:

Plug-ins!

A lot of developers have spent time coming up with resources for WordPress sites that let you the user stay in the drivers seat.  For instance you can add social media buttons, shopping cart options, image galleries, contact forms etc.  All these plug-ins are easy to use and easy to install without having to go back to your developer every time you want to add something.  Now this won’t work in every situation and sometimes an experienced set of hands is required.  Think of it like a car, as the owner can change the oil, pump up the tires and maybe change the spark plugs.  But if you want to swap the engine or add new brake pads….. you really need to take it into a professional.  Make sense?

Ease of use:

WordPress text editors have what is called a WYSIWYG, which stands for “What You See is What You Get”.  Which means  that the text editor is VERY easy to use.  It has familiar text editing buttons (bold, bullets, spell check etc.)  just as you would see in MS Word and the way the layout looks in the editor is exactly the way it will look when published.  You don’t need to know any HTML to make things appear the way you want them.

And finally, customized themes:

A theme refers to the look or design of your site.  You can lay any design on top of the WordPress platform and luckily there are thousands of free themes you can choose from.  Although the best way to get a design that fits you and your business is to hire a team to do it for you.  Whichever way you go, there are a million different options to make your website stand out and make it completely you.

Bottom line:

WordPress is great for business, it’s great for blogs and there are new updates and plug-ins coming out every day.  WordPress can improve your site, keep your customers up to date and you can feel in control of your online presence.

In case you are unfamiliar with fourfour media and what we do here, I’ll tell ya.  We build awesome apps!  Plain and simple.  We love the painstaking process of building tools that make peoples lives easier or better or funner.  (Especially funner!)  Normally we build apps for clients such as the New York Stock Exchange or Crown Worldwide Moving to name a few of our most recent apps.  These tools allow businesses to function more intelligently and create a way for them interact with their clients in a more personal way.

In case you haven’t heard of our own app called ClubDivot, let me break it down for ya.  We are building a social app for golfers that enables them to schedule, book and organize tee times with their friends and co-workers online.  We have been working on the design and overall structure for over a year, but we are SOOOO close to done we can taste it.

On ClubDivot Golfers can:

1. Create their own private golf groups
2. Schedule tee times for the group
3. Book tee times online through our site
4. Maintain an easy to use calendar to see all your upcoming games
5. Meet new people

We have been hard at work on the app over the last few months and have made a lot of good changes and additions to the site.  Here are the latest updates on ClubDivot

1. Sign in using your social media user account, ie: Facebook login
2. We have finalized the new design for the web application, the mobile app is next for an overhaul
3. We are currently in negotiations with several booking engines to get our customers the best deals on tee times
4. We have finalized our membership model.  Good news golfers, we are using a freemium model which means you only pay for what you want.

Look for more updates to come out weekly as we near the finish line. 

So as developers and designers we are constantly pushing ourselves to hone our skills and learn new techniques or technologies. A fair amount of learning is done on the job, but most times we practice these new skills in our free time.  Staying up to date and honing our skills on relevant technologies is what makes the distinction between successful developers/designers and the ones whose skills stagnate.  When hired, we are expected to execute fast and correctly, not experiment with edge technologies and implementations.

My personality type and hunger for knowledge have lead me down the path of learning organically. For instance, on the two projects I am currently working on, I kept getting frustrated with the lack of access to a htaccess file on Heroku. For both of these projects I wanted to password protect the staging and production sites while in development. Don’t get me wrong, I am loving Heroku. But if you guess, stumble upon or happen to know the URL, its completely unprotected. This poses problems for ‘top secret’ projects. So I started thinking, maybe we could build an add-on that serves a proxy and has basic http authentication.  Joshua, my main Rails developer, pointed out that this is simple enough to implement in a Rails app, that a proxy is not really necessary.  But will anyone (including me) implement it on every project?

Solution – build a simple gem that implements basic auth and pulls the config from a YAML file.

Sounds easy – if you know how to write gems. I didn’t. So, the learning began. After several failed attempts, lots of advice from Josh and a hundred google searches – I finally figured it out.  I learned how Rails uses gems to extend classes, include modules and load YAML files.  All in all I learned a lot and developed a resource I can easily use on future projects.  This is a no-frills gem, pretty basic, but very useful.  Next I’m going to work on creating a generator for the YAML file and adding tests.

I think the best products and tools are always developed organically.  If your company needs a tool, try to build it and learn as you go.  Make the mistakes on your own pet projects, not only will you gain valuable skills for future projects but you might even learn something about yourself in the process.

Get my gem on github: https://github.com/fourfour/gatekeeper

We’ve been absent from the blog for a few weeks and with good reason, we have been CRAZY busy!!
We finally completed the last 3 projects we were working on, almost simultaneously. It made for a hectic couple of weeks but now that the dust has settled, we are ready for what’s next, here is what has kept us so busy.

Black Gold Industries
Custom WordPress site, this site was really all about updating their old, outdated site. We designed the theme and back end to their specifications.

New York Stock Exchange Wellness Application
WOW that was a mouthful! This was a really fun project for the NYSE employees to be able to compete against eachother in  how many minutes they can log working out over a 5 week period.  It was a fun project, we got to work the NYSE team in New York and installed our first live Titter feed.

Network Hardware Resale
NHR contacted us to put a new “skin” on their existing website.  They had the design all ready to go, all we had to do was apply it.  And now we are set to do the same project for their 7 other language sites.  Can you say nous sommes ravis?  (Disclaimer: not sure the French is accurate, but the excitement is)

Check back soon for more updates on apps and stuff.

Our kids working just as hard as we do.

This past year at fourfour we have had an amazing journey.  We were so blessed in 2010, it turned out to be our biggest year ever in terms of the amount of work and profit!  Woot!  We moved twice, once in Lake Tahoe (we technically lived in Nevada for 2 months, so that makes 7 states I’ve lived in) and then to Santa Barbara.  Eric traveled to London, Paris and Chicago and Amber went to Redding, CA, San Francisco and Denver.

Things that kept us busy in 2010:

• Deveolped 16 team sites for Major League Soccer
• Built a Groupon style app for Blue Casa Communications
• Wrote a weekly online newsletter and developed print collateral for Vy Group
• Designed updated websites for Black Gold Industries, Santa Barbara Fish Market, and Newmark Schools
• And And if that wasn’t enough, we started building our own app called ClubDivot.

Whew, I’m tired just thinking about all that work.

Looking Ahead

So far 2011 is looking really good too!  We are working on an app for the New York Stock Exchange, have signed a contract with Network Hardware Resale for some ongoing work and a few projects that are in the negotiation stage.  We plan to launch our golf app, ClubDivot, this coming spring and will be spending a significant amount of time getting that off the ground and beta tested.  We can’t wait to get this thing into the hands of our users, let’s get this baby born!

And as for travel, we will be hitting up San Francisco in a few weeks and then hitting the slopes in Tahoe.  We also plan on going to the World Domination Summit in Portland in June and see Seattle while we are up that way.  Denver is on the list and possibly Argentina too. And we are planning another move, not sure where yet…which is why we have to travel to all these places to see what feels like home.

Also new in 2011 is that we are starting to work with Expat Life Coach John Falchetto.  John will be helping us gain focus on where our business is going and how to make our business work overseas, for when we move to France again. Or Bali.  Or Ireland.  Or Spain.

Hope everyone has a happy and blessed new year.

Bee Happy!