A Year of Responsive Design with WordPress

Originally published

A little over a year ago, my second book (and the first one to actually be in book stores) came out. It’s called Responsive Design with WordPress and it’s all about how to leverage WordPress to create responsive themes. It’s been an incredible year and I wanted to talk about two things: what has happened since the book’s release, and what’s coming in the new year.

What Has Happened Since

First and foremost, I traveled. A lot. I spoke at 11 WordPress related events, 7 of them being WordCamps. Most of the time I gave a talk of the same title as my book. A few are up at WordPress.TV so you can watch them there.

I learned a lot. One of the big benefits of going to so many conferences is I got to meet a lot of people and learn from them. Among the most important skills and tools I picked up:

  • Sass (wish I got into it sooner. If you want a start, there’s a great book by Dan Cederholm and published by A Book Apart).
  • WP Engine. I moved this site over to them and it’s been great so far.
  • Gravity Forms. Seriously. This plugin is worth every penny.
  • git and Github. A year ago, I was doing things so very, very wrong.

I also got a new job in part to the traveling. I covered that in my announcement post.

The Future with Parsec

It’s fair to say that since Responsive Design with WordPress was published, a lot has changed. WordPress has changed, tools have gotten better, and I’ve completely changed how I develop.

Because of that, I want to update the theme that the book uses as an example, and I want people to learn from it. I am still working out the details but my current plan is:

  1. Do all development and issue tracking on Github
  2. Record my notes and design process
  3. Write up why I’m doing things the way I’m doing them.
  4. Use my book as a guide. I will still follow the principles, I will just update the code.

I will also be giving a brand new talk at WordCamps in 2015 called Building Parsec: a Fully Responsive WordPress Theme. The first time you can see this talk is at WordCamp San Antonio on January 24th.

Keep an eye out for more announcements regarding Parsec, and oh, if you haven’t already, buy my book! It’s a good one 🙂