My hResume Plugin

I’ve had a few requests in the past week for a copy of my enhanced hResume plugin, so I decided it was finally time to post it to my site. The hResume plugin you will find below was used to generate my entire resume as seen on the Resume page.

Before I get into the details, much of the credit should go to the Spur Team who built the original hResume plugin.

Background

When I first started thinking of adding my resume online I thought for sure I’d be writing a plugin from scratch. In fact I did start down that path. After some frustration, I went searching for a better solution. When I first found the hResume plugin I was extremely pleased with its ease of use and functionality. However, there were a few bells and whistles I was looking for in my resume.

In particular, I was looking for a more interactive and modern web experience, as that is part of my profession. A tag cloud seemed like perfect model to use for displaying experiences on a personal resume. Each experience is displayed in the typical tag format with higher experience levels indicated by larger font, typical to a tag cloud. Each experience item can be selected and additional deatils are faded in below - nice rich UI.

Next I was tired of constantly updating my resume in numerous places online - first in Word, then copy-paste to my site, etc. I wanted the ability to manage my resume through a web interface, in particular through my personal website admin area. Then after I was done editing, I wanted the application to automatically spit out a Word and PDF document. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a FREE Word PHP library (go figure, it is Microsoft after all), but was able to find a fairly decent PDF library, fpdf. I integrated the library into the plugin so that a PDF document is generated each time the resume is updated.

Setup/Integration

The plugin is your typical WordPress plugin. Copy (ftp) the plugin up to your WordPress plugins directory and proceed as your normally would. The administration is done in the My hResume section within Settings.

I have not spent the time to make the available skillset tags dynamic, so if you’re not a developer, and wish to change the skills options, you’ll need to edit the my-hresume.php file. It’s a simple change and should be able to be made by all. Basically, in the my_hresume.php file you’ll need to change/add/delete the tags (see below). You can search for EDIT - it should be around line 27.

// EDIT

$myresume_options = 

    array(

        'tag_title'     => 'Technical Skills',

        

        // Skills for each tag, broken out in details page (can add/remove)

        'skills' => array(

        // Key          => Display Name

        'software'      => 'Software', 

        'language'      => 'Language', 

        'db'            => 'Database', 

        'os'            => 'Operating System'),

Download Now (927.3 K)
my-hresume.zip

Please reach out and leave a comment if you integrate this plugin into your site. Feel free to leave a link.

iPhone 3.0 Has a Use

iPhone 3.0 Released

Yes, I know iPhone 3.0 was released several weeks ago, it’s not late breaking news anymore. Well, I’m not here to post about up-to-the minute product releases, but more just my personal experiences with them.

The minute I heard OS 3.0 was released, I was at my PC, plugged into iTunes and downloading the latest OS. I had read all about it and was anticipating the release. Once I finally sat through the painful download and installation I was excited, but also extremely disappointed at the same time. All of the features I was really looking forward to were either not released in the U.S. or only available in the upgraded 3.0s model.

A Little Background

For a little bit of background, I am currently on my second iPhone, not because I had to have the 3G version, but out of necessity. While on a beach trip in OBX with the family sporting a pair of board shorts with no pockets, I managed to leave my phone on the roof of the car only to be freed of its placement while we were going 60 on the highway. KABOOM! It sounded like a firecracker exploded on my bumper. After pulling over and navigating down the busy highway I was amazed to find the phone was still in one piece. Still working? Maybe, it is still in one piece.

Well the bad news was the actual phone no longer worked, however all of the application features remained in working condition, including all of the jailbroken applications. Yes, that’s right, it was a jailbroken phone. Even back in version 1.x I had a video camera on my iPhone. So, more than a year passes and I still can’t get a video recording application on my phone unless I want to buy the upgraded 3.0s, or the alternative jailbroken applications. No thanks.

Fun with iPhone 3.0

Anyway, after toying with the long sought after copy-paste feature I came across the video recorder. Hmm, what to use it for? Should I start recording all of my meetings at work so I can back up “verbal agreements” made by clients and other team members?

It was only a few weeks later when I found a use, or should I say my son did. Why not let my 3 year old son play with it. He enjoys being loud, singing and hearing recordings of himself. Upon showing him the application he immediately took to singing an American classic, take me out to the ball game. While it’s not video, for me it is still priceless.

Here is Kieran’s version of “Take me out to the ball game” as recorded on the iPhone

Color Paper Ajax Tabs Fix

Background

For the most part, I have been very happy with the Color Paper wordpress theme. As with anything free, there are usually a few gotchas. The broken ajax tabs were the only technical problem I’ve had with the theme thus far. Since I haven’t spoken with the author, I wasn’t sure what the initial intentions were for the ajax tabs.

It looks like the tabs can be setup to support true AJAX functionality. However, if you look into the sidebar.php file you’ll notice the theme itself includes the HTML contents directly within the initial response, rather than fetched with client side JavaScript via AJAX calls. For me, the additional overhead of loading all three tabs isn’t that bad, and therefore I have decided not to fully implement a true AJAX tab control.

With that said, the below steps will get your side bar tabs up and working in the Color Paper WordPress theme. Kudos to the author and Smashing Magazine for yet another great theme.

As with any javascript, you can choose to either include it in a separate file or directly within the HTML. For several reasons, I would recommend always including the majority of your javascript in an external, browser cacheable, file and reference it from your HTML.

Recommended Fix (external file)

1. Download ajax.tabs javascript file.
2. Upload the javascript file to your theme’s js folder (wp-content/themes/colorpaper/js).
3. Include a reference to the javascript library in header.php as indicated below, or by other javascript include mechanism if installed, such as wp_js.

<script 

     type="text/javascript" 

     src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory');?>/js/ajax.tabs.js">

</script>

Quick Fix

1. Copy the below javascript into header.php.

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/js">

jQuery(document).ready(function()

{

        jQuery('ul.tabs a.tab').click(function() {

                

                jQuery('div#' + jQuery('ul.tabs a.active').attr('title')).toggle();

                jQuery('ul.tabs a.active').toggleClass('active');

                                                

                jQuery(this).toggleClass('active');

                jQuery('div#' + this.title).toggle();

                return false; // cancel event bubble

        });

});

</script>

2. That’s it.

Stay tuned over the next few days for another Color Paper theme enhancement guaranteed to increase page load times and improve the overall user experience of your site.Hint: large images.

Drop me a line if you have any questions or problems implementing the fix.

Wosko.us Launch Party

Now that the title has caught your attention, I can take this opportunity to officially welcome you with open arms to my new web site, wosko.us. Here you will find my recently redesigned personal website (I have a technical website in the works as well). The new site has been redesigned from ground up to accommodate the list of demands I ask for in a site.

SimonWosko.com has been Retired

There are times in a website’s lifetime when change is not just needed but necessary. This happens to be one of those times for my personal website. My old site, www.simonwosko.com, was outdated, cumbersome and not terribly pleasing on the eyes. However, I am proud of it because it was built and designed from scratch, by me, using PHP, MySql and the Zend Framework.

Simon Wosko Web Site Screenshot

I have owned the simonwosko.com domain since 2000, with a minor lapse occurring last year. A miscommunication between the domain registrar and myself lead to a month of site downtime. This downtime got me to thinking, “what do I really use my personal site for”. The answer, nothing but to post my resume and serve as my presence on the web. This motivated me to rethink my online presence and how I wanted to be perceived on the web.

Out with the Old in with the New

For my new site, wosko.us, I have decided to go with the traditional personal blog rather than a custom built site. I feel a robust blog, and it’s accompanying software, offer far more capabilities then a custom solution. Hosting my site using a pre-built CMS like Wordpress allows me to focus more on the content rather than the code necessary to make it work.

• Photo Gallery – I tossed around the option of including a photo gallery and decided in the end to leverage the kPicasa plug-in for Wordpress. Pictures in the album are updated regularly, so please check back for updates. Each time a new album is created, I will also create a new post on this site to ensure my loyal subscribers are notified of the update. Subscribe today to stay updated.

• Me Around the Web (my lifestream) – One of my favorite features of this site is the integration of my online lifestream. You may have already noticed it over there on the right (that is of course if you’re on the site and not reading this via feed reader). The lifestream widget will display my activity on several popular social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pandora and Last.fm. A big thanks to Darryn Hoyt for developing the template and providing the rudimentary code necessary to implement this feature. Nice job Darryn.

• Improved Resume – My resume has been updated with my latest experiences and published in accordance with the hResume micro format. If you’re not familiar with micro formats, you can read more on their official site, microformats.org.

• Contact Form – A major feature lacking in my previous site(s) was the ability to directly contact me through the site. In the past, I always took the easy way out by using a simple mailto anchor. Get in touch with me today.

I hope you enjoy the new site. Please direct any feedback regarding the site to me in the form of a comment on this post (see below) or contact me using the Contact form. I appreciate any and all feedback.