Wow…

I never thought I would do this, but I’ve dumped textpattern. It actually came about rather quickly and I’m quite happy after doing it. Just a few weeks ago, Megan and I began the process of re-vamping the website. She really wanted to start blogging some more, and well, I needed to stop slacking off and start really blogging again. We talked about the options and figured that a re-design of ryanbarr.com was the way to go. It’s been quite a journey. One that I’ll probably split over a few posts so that this one isn’t obscenely long!

Anyhow, here is the story… I started off by completely re-doing the site in textpattern. I nabbed a pretty nice theme from textplates.com, and then dove in. After working out with Megan how we should manage the whole site, we decided to move a ton of content around (which of course wreaked havoc on my google placements) and totally reset the way a bunch of things were handled. I installed a ton of new textpattern plug-ins to try and make the administration a little more user friendly and even wrote a few myself to handle some stock quote functionality I was looking for. After spending a few weekends working on it, we finally had it ready to go.

Then a good friend of mine asked me to help her setup a new website – michellerenephotography.com.

My response: No problem! I’d be happy to help you out. Lets get a domain setup, I’ve got a great host that you can work with etc…

Then the kicker… “We’ll you know, it’s a photography site. I’d really like to have some serious image management. Really, I’d like it to be a gallery first, then a blog second.”

Serious image management?

I wasn’t quite sure how to approach it. I’ve been using textpattern for quite some time, and have built quite a few client sites using it. Textpattern is a great CMS, but serious image management is not it’s strong point. So, like any good open source kinda guy I went in search of an existing project. I happened to stumble upon a project called Gallery 2, and a wordpress plug-in called WPG2. Interesting… a full image management studio with pre-existing integration into wordpress. This could be worth a try.

The only hangup that I had was, well… I’d never used wordpress, and the last time I looked at it customization and theme’s were all handled through php hacks. Not nearly as elegant a design as textpattern.

I was a little more than skeptical, but I figured what the heck.  It’s her site and  if I can get her started I’m sure she can finish it off.  So, after a bit more research, I was ready to install. Given that michellrenephotography.com is a brand new site, I put the tools up and started hacking away.

My host does a cool quick install of both wordpress and gallery2 so we were off to the races quickly.  I got the two systems up and running, did a bit of quick configuration and then went about getting the plug-in working.  That is when I realized that there was no way on earth she was going to get this all figured out without some serious help.  Permissions, themes, configuration, ssh, linux and a ton of other things that are way to geeky for her to understand.  Well, I figured I’d better dig in…

As I worked on getting things working, I found that wordpress had evolved quite a bit since the last time I took a look.  Quite frankly, I was  downright impressed with it!  I’ll walk through my challenges and learning through this hole process over the next few posts…

Stay tuned to hear about the configuration and setup of the WPG2 plug-in.  The core of the blog/gallery setup that runs ryanbarr.com

I have to admit it… I’m addicted to Google. I can’t live without their search, email and other services. I think the company is great and I’m hooked on their silly stock. Yesterday was a crazy day for google. They lost $8,000,000,000 (yes that is 9 zeros!) in market capitalization due to a couple of off the cuff comments by the CFO George Reyes. What cracks me up about the whole thing is basically Reyes said that they are going to have to find new customers to continue to keep growing; and that they are not going to grow at their google crazy pace forever. Somehow, that surprised people! Here is a quote:

Clearly our growth rates are slowing. We are going to have to find new ways to monetize the business. – George Reyes, CFO Google Inc.

I mean really, of course their growth rates are going to slow. Of course they have to find new ways to make money, but why on earth would you hack 7% off of the stock from those comments? I think this is really an indication that Google is going to have to start acting like a normal corporate citizen and give out more information. I love the fact that they are trying to “do no evil” and be unique. The IPO was great, so far their googlized approach to everything has been great; however, the fact that a small statement like that can whack 8 billion in market cap is just ridiculous.

With the momentum slowing down (Google is down 13% from the beginning of the year) something else is going to have to keep this train moving upward.  I’d say that the only way to keep this going is to start giving out the info that people are asking for basically manage expectations! Hopefully Google will do this tomorrow at the analyst meeting; otherwise, we’ll have to just keep rolling the dice trying to figure out which way this crazy stock is going to move!

Google drives me nuts! I love the company, love the software and lose money in the option chains! So with a miss in earnings today, I decided that once again I’ll throw out some cash and see what happens.  Luckily this time it panned out!

Here is the story: Last night Google ( GOOG) announced their earnings. Although they were up something ridiculous like 84%, the stock tanked over night. I decided that I’d try to take advantage of the volatility in the options and see if I can get a bit of profit from them. Here is the trade:

• Bought Feb 2006 370 Put for $5.30 Debit
• Later that day: Sold Feb 2006 370 Put for $5.80 Credit

• Result: $0.50 Profit or 9.4% profit in a few hours

Finally, I made money on a Google trade!

A related note about Google… I’m guessing its time for Google to come back to earth. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few weeks/months. I’m going to stay on the Google sidelines for a while, maybe I’ll play again but not for a while. I think it’s time to move back to the core strategies – indexes, indexes, indexes